FreeD is a tool for wannabe Rodins who don't have time to learn the craft. "I was fascinated by sculpting, but couldn't spend ten hours a day for five years to develop the skill," says Amit Zoran, a computer engineer at the Media Lab's Responsive Environments group. "So I thought of borrowing this ability from a computer."
Zoran, 36, developed the FreeD: a handheld tool that allows you to sculpt freely from a foam block, while software prevents you from making mistakes. Trackers on the tool's head are connected to a CAD model to monitor your handiwork. If the tracker pushes past a geofenced boundary, the tool pulls itself back; if you keep pushing, it turns itself off. Zoran's goal is to bring the artist's hand back into digital fabrication, allowing for a freedom of artistic expression -- backed with the precision of CAD. "The element I'd like to preserve is the quality of authenticity," he says. "There's a very rich literature discussing the importance of craft to the individual and to society. But in a modern environment we lose it, we replace everything by machine because they are much more efficient."
By: Jeremy Kingsley, Edited by: David Cornish
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via Wired.co.uk
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/11/start/a-stabiliser-for-first-time-sculptors
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