Robotor's chief technician, also a sculptor, turns the artist's model into a 3D file. That generates a complex set of instructions that tells the robot exactly where to carve—right down to the last half-inch.
Bill Whitaker: How much of the work is done by the robot and the computer, and how much by the human artist?
Giacomo Massari: We are talking a very high percentage that can be done by the machine.
Bill Whitaker: Like how much?
Giacomo Massari: Like, 99 percent.
Bill Whitaker: 99 percent?
Giacomo Massari: Yeah. And the very final 1% that is the most important is still done by very skilled artisans in our workshop.
Just one percent? But that one percent, Massari told us, can translate into months of human work. Still, we wondered, was using a robot a bit like cheating?
Bill Whitaker: If you have a robot doing 99 percent of the work, where's the artistry?
Giacomo Massari: In the idea. How you program the machine is a work of art because it's an artistic approach. You need to have a sculptural background to program the machine in the way that you want.
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