The special product requirement

During one of his trips to Iceland, painter Peter Lang (pictured here on the left) came up with the idea for an absolutely extraordinary art project. Standing on a swaying boat, he looked down on a rugged lava island in the sea. Inspired by this landscape image with different colored sediment layers and their shapes, the sculpture Sker was created in his head.

Sker is a sculpture characterized by rugged shapes, a constantly changing play of colors and a rough, fibrous surface. The sculpture consists of several segments. Each of these segments is unique in itself, but only together do they create the image of this rocky island off Iceland.

But it is not only visually that Sker stands out. The artwork was completely digitally developed by Peter Lang and additively manufactured by FIT, but not in a factory hall, but live, directly at the exhibition venue, the renowned Sprengel Museum in Hanover. Dr. Reinhard Spieler, museum director and curator of the project explains:

"By printing a sculpture on this scale and using this technology, both the artist and the museum are entering absolutely new territory - no other museum has implemented such a project to date. SKER combines science, technology and art at the very highest level."

FIT solution

For the production of SKER, it was necessary to develop a completely new manufacturing process that makes it possible to create a real work of art from the artist's idea. A perfect use case for our Art Fabrication solution.

Working with Peter Lang, the design and technology experts at Additive Tectonics, a subsidiary of FIT, found a way for the artist to draw the work not on paper or canvas in 2D, but directly as a cybersculpture in a virtual 3D world. This digital twin was the template for programming two robots that interact in perfect harmony to autonomously produce the artwork in the museum's viewing hall. One robot is responsible for providing the material, which it has previously mixed exactly according to the artist's specifications. The second robot uses this material to produce the sculpture by extruding an endless thread of a fusible, 100% biocompatible wood granulate layer by layer (Robotic FDM). Not a single overlap occurs in the process. This is made possible by an algorithm developed by AT especially for this project, which controls the robot's travel path.

Would you like to learn more about the technical details of the manufacturing process? Then we recommend our process use case, which explains the production of the artwork step by step.

Outstanding properties

The collaboration with FIT and Additive Tectonics resulted in a work of art by Peter Lang that could

• could only be produced with a specially designed 3D printing system.
• Produced fully autonomously by two interacting robots live in one of the world's leading modern art museums.
• is 100% digitally designed and manufactured, and
• is sustainable because the material used is 100% biocompatible.

In this project, Peter Lang has pushed the boundaries of painting from 2D to 3D and found a new form of 3D printed sculpture. In FIT and Additive Tectonics, he found a partner who was able to implement SKER's vision in such a technically successful way that the result lived up to his high artistic standards.

"The history of an object can be read from its exterior. I imagine the viewer looking at the finished rock formation and wondering what story it tells and how they managed to get this structure to look like this." says Peter Lang. We’d like to add: "That’s the fascination of progress".

If you wish to express your artistic ideas in new ways, we would be happy to learn more about your project. Thanks to our experience and possibilities, you are in the best hands with us.