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2008 - 2010 Barry X Ball
Sleeping Hermaphrodite
Belgian black marble. Scanned, manipulated, and milled from original Hermaphrodite Endormi (Ermafrodito Borghese), Musee du Louvre, Paris (ex Collezione Borhese, Roma), Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1620.
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Sleeping Hermaphrodite
Sleeping Hermaphrodite healed, unioned and rendered in Polygonica (24M triangles).
It is not often that MachineWorks receives enquiries from outside the manufacturing sector, so when an artist contacted the CNC simulation and verification software solutions provider, the team seized the chance.
New York-based sculptor, Barry X Ball, was the artist in need of MachineWorks' expertise to help him bring his latest work to life.
MachineWorks is proud of its Sheffield roots - and with Yorkshire is considered by many to be the Sculpture capital of the UK capital, boasting the Henry Moore Institute, Barbara Hepworth Gallery and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park - Barry X Ball's request struck a chord with the team.
The sculptor is renowned in the contemporary art world for employing industrial manufacturing methods, such as CNC milling, to create some of his works. More recently, Ball and his team have been combining Digital Sculpting using software tools such as ZBrush from Pixologic Inc, and 3D printing to fabricate his creations.
Doug DeGaetano, Fabrication Manager for his studio, contacted MachineWorks to see if the Polygonica mesh processing software toolkit could help piece together the various parts of the polygon meshes that make up sculptures such as Ball's Sleeping Hermaphrodite. The challenge was to ensure precious detail was not lost in the process. The individual mesh pieces all required healing: closing open edges, removing self intersections and noise shells. The healed sections were then joined together by our powerful Boolean engine. The result was a healed, watertight mesh, ready for processing by standard additive or subtractive manufacturing methods.
DeGaetano stated: "Polygonica was able to quickly and effectively handle our large meshes. It takes very robust software to heal and join meshes of that size and complexity. Polygonica made it easy."
Dr David Knight, Polygonica Sales Manager, added: "We are really pleased to be helping the Barry X Ball Studio with Polygonica. This shows how our powerful polygon mesh Boolean and Healing capabilities can be applied to very diverse and demanding requirements."