Factum Arte

Factum Arte consists of a team of artists, technicians and conservators dedicated to digital mediation. The main focus is on the production of works for contemporary artists and the application of new technologies to the creation of objectively accurate facsimiles that are part of a coherent approach to understand and read the importance of material evidence. The emphasis is on cross-disciplinary communication, innovation and sharing information and ideas.

Factum’s goal is to demonstrate what can happen when technology is developed and applied by creative thinkers and where the line between the digital and the physical no longer exists.

Over 50 people work together in about 10,000 sq meters of studio space on two sites in the East of Madrid, close to the airport. Their skills are diverse; architects, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, software writers, product designers, moulders and casters, welders, conservators, fine and applied artists, printers, machine operators, accountants, photographers, film-makers, 3D scanners, textile specialists, typographers and both digital and physical sculptors. Precision engineering, CNC milling (3 and 7 axis), foundry work in many materials (at every scale and level of detail), water-jet cutting, laser technologies of various kinds, 3D printing, electro-forming and electroplating, wood carving, stone carving and a host of manufacturing techniques are carried out on site or in collaboration with skilled specialist workshops.

Led since 2001 by Adam Lowe, who funded Factum Arte with Manuel Franquelo and Nando Guereta, the workshop was conceived as an interdisciplinary studio where diverse skill sets collide on a daily basis. Artists such as Marina Abramovic, Anish Kapoor, Maya Lin, El An

Factum Foundation is always testing new ways to help as large an audience as possible enjoy the work we do. We organize exhibitions, participate in seminars, and host group visits in our workshops in Madrid with the hope of conveying the importance of new technologies for heritage conservation as well as promoting an active engagement with its preservation.

FACTUM ARTE AND INNOCHAIN

"Challenging the Traditional Thinking of Design"

As part of the Innochain network, Factum Arte is joining forces with a number of leading industrial and academic organisations who are pushing the field of digital fabrication.

The network has been awarded a 4 million Euro grant from the EU’s Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions programme under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

Two members of the Factum team will be pursuing doctoral reseach projects within the network related to 3D printing viscous materials such as wax and concrete - a subject that Factum Arte has been pursuing since its early experiments in Concrete Printing with Anish Kapoor.

Arthur Prior, who as been at Factum Arte for just over two years, will be conducting a PhD at the Bartlett (UCL) exploring ‘Liquid Deposition Modelling’

Helena Westerlind, who joined Factum in 2011, is conducting her PhD at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm investigating a newfound relationship between concrete and form and will be working together with Factum Arte on developing the performance of concrete in the 3D printing process.

The Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation is a not-for-profit organisation, founded in 2009 in Madrid. It works alongside its sister company, Factum Arte: a multi-disciplinary workshop in Madrid dedicated to digital mediation in contemporary art and the production of facsimiles.

The Foundation was established to demonstrate the importance of documenting, monitoring, studying, recreating and disseminating the world’s cultural heritage through the rigorous development of high-resolution recording and re-materialisation techniques.

Factum Foundation aims to:

1) Use non-contact recording methods to document cultural heritage sites and objects to the highest possible standards.

2) Change attitudes towards the digital recording of cultural heritage, encouraging the creation of permanent and accessible public records of important objects and artworks.

3) Develop new recording and display technologies, and new uses for existing technologies.

4) Create practical, secure archiving and display systems for high-resolution data.

5) Create facsimiles of recorded objects – copies so accurate that the naked eye cannot tell them apart from the original – and use these facsimiles to do things which the originals cannot: to allow fragile objects to travel, fragmented objects to be reassembled, and untouchable objects to be touched.

6) Develop new techniques of digital preservation and restoration, expanding the range of possibilities open to curators and conservators by allowing objects to be restored in the virtual realm.

7) Share recording skills and technologies as widely as possible. The Foundation has set up training courses and centers in locations from Egypt to Dagestan to create local experts in digital preservation who are able to record their own cultural heritage.

8) Make digital records of works of art accessible to the widest possible public through the Creative Commons model.

9) Develop exhibitions that allow audiences to understand the dynamic nature of objects, using digital models and physical facsimiles to challenge the idea that an object in its current state – perhaps restored, damaged, and enhanced over a period of centuries – is the only key to understanding and appreciating that object.

10) Play an active role in the international effort to develop shared principles for the digital recording, archiving, and dissemination of cultural heritage.

11) Leave to future generations an archive of raw, unmanipulated data which they can analyse according to their own questions and perspectives and using their own technologies, allowing them to inherit the past in a condition in which they can study it in-depth and emotionally engage with it.

Iconoclastic destruction, mass tourism, war, natural disasters, imperfect restoration and commercial exploitation all pose serious threats to the preservation of many great works of art and culture. The conservation and preservation communities have realized the importance of high-resolution digital recording and this data is starting to be integrated into professional protocols and the discourse surrounding preservation. Central to this shift of attitude is a fundamental reappraisal of the cardinal role facsimiles can acquire when installed in their original location, or even when displaced and presented afresh in touring exhibitions. Facsimiles evidence the quality of the data retrievable through high-resolution recording. They are useful tools both to monitor the changes the original objects undergo throughout their existence and to raise awareness amongst the growing number of visitors that the preservation of the past is a delicate and difficult act. It is necessary to investigate an object’s historical and physical composition in order to develop better ways to protect it.

To succeed in these aims the Foundation needs to raise funds from committed supporters.
Please visit the Giving page for more information.

Browse all of Factum Foundation's projects on Google Earth