Panel Statement

This panel will present a slide and video survey illustrating the growing use of computers by sculptors in the USA and France.

Participants are:

• Christian Lavigne (France) is an artist mixing cultures and technological fields. He is a self-taught explorer in art. With a basis in mathematics and poetry, he develops an abstract writing in space (graphemes) based on myths and symbols. A pioneer in “robosculpture” (using high-tech tools and NC machines), he realizes both small works and public art composition.
• Rob Fisher [1939-2006] (USA) was an internationally recognized sculptor, author and lecturer and a pioneer in the application of the computer to large-scale sculpture. He has received many commissions throughout the U.S.A., Japan and Saudi Arabia. He was a research fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was Artistic Director of the “Living Cell” project, a group-immersive, interactive visualization event for planetariums. groundsforsculpture.org/artists/rob-fisher
• Timothy Duffield (UK) has created many public sculptures throughout the USA . He uses the computer to design sculpture and to visualize how it will fit in an existing site. This has led to a fascination with three-dimensional animation as an end in itself. He is also a landscape architect and, as Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, is exploring the use of the computer in terrain modeling.