• 27.08.2008

Dancing satyr

The Dancing Satyr was found in the Sicily Canal on 4th March 1988. Its arms and right leg, which supported it, were missing, and the left leg had been separated from the body. Restoration involved solving the problem of reassembling the detached parts, a support for exhibiting the Satyr in a museum, and the damaged caused by the bronze corroding and the considerable marine concretions.

The statue, two metres tall and weighing about one hundred kilograms, at the time it was found, still wrapped in the fishing nets. The statue was initially housed in the Multi-purpose Cultural Centre in Mazara del Vallo for initial inspection. Subsequently, it was moved to the Central restoration Institute in Rome.

The fact that the leg that supported the statue was missing meant that an internal support structure had to be designed and built, to allow the Satyr to be exhibited properly.

In order to study the inner support system in order to restore the statue to a formal unit and to allow it to be exhibited , the ICR Physics Laboratory  created a digital 3D model of the Satyr, utilizing a 3D laser scanner and employing reverse engineering and rapid prototyping methods.

This allows the form of the Satyr to be transferred from the material dimension of the bronze to a purely geometrical, immaterial dimension and then again from a a numerical matrix, provides the basis on which to produce a model of the statue using new automatic rapid prototyping techniques. The “copy” can be moved, touched and experimented without fear.

> project „Conoscere la forma“
> project in Milan
> project in Paris
> Dancing satyr