“In the birthplace of Italian sculpture, a powerful automated machine tries its hand at an ancient craft?
Today, Tincolini, Massari, and their team of technicians and artisans create sculptures on commission for artists, architects and designers, and they sell their technology to clients around the world, including three sizes of Litix’s signature robot and a proprietary software that uses a digital scan of an artist’s 3D model or maquette to auto-program the robot for sculpting. They also use their technology for cultural preservation. A few years ago, for example, in collaboration with the Institute for Digital Archaeology, a heritage-preservation organization based in Oxford, England, their robot produced a one-third scale model of Syria’s Palmyra Arch, the 1,800-year-old monument destroyed by Islamic State fighters in 2015. The copy, a 20-foot-high scale reproduction made of Egyptian marble, took five weeks to manufacture. It toured several cities around the world, including London and Washington, D.C., and is now undergoing cleaning and maintenance in Carrara. The hope is that its final destination will be near the site of the original in Palmyra. “The message was, ‘You can destroy it, but we have the technology to make it live again,’” Tincolini told me.”