Before anyone complains that this removes the human aspect of art, it's worth stressing that sculptors have always looked for ways to automate work and save time (as the website itself points out).
As far back as ancient Egypt, grids and measuring tools were used to reproduce figures at different scales. Roman workshops churned out copies of Greek statues in marble and bronze, using casts and moulds. From the 18th century onwards, sculptors used outright pointing machines to transfer models into marble. James Watt, the steam engine guy, even built a mechanical sculpture-copying machine that could (somewhat) automatically reproduce reliefs and medallions.
Gothic architectural decoration wasn't about expressing the inner world of its makers in the way we think of art today. Much of it was produced by large masonry workshops using standardized geometry, wooden templates and repeated designs.
Understood and agreed, they need to construct or repair buildings efficiently...
However there is the concept of 'the resistance of the material' where the act of working with the material with bare hands and simple tools is a meditative process. Something I would have thought applicable to the contemplative and monastical life of a monk.
They address this in a roundabout way in the article:
> Ornate pieces that used to take months for a skilled carver, now can be accomplished in a matter of days. Instead of cutting out the beauty, using the excuse that it takes too long, thus doesn’t fit into the budget, modern technology can be used to make true Gothic in all its beauty a reality again today.
The options are either use the best tool for the job, or don't do the job at all because the budget (time or monetary I'm not sure) is not there.
I don't see any reason that someone couldn't still enjoy working with the material with bare hands and simple tools to meditate, even with the automated stone carving. People still play chess even though AI dominates.
Sure - but if you take especially late Gothic cathedrals like Milan's, there's 3400 Statues and 135 spires, decorated with almost 100.000 Crockets (the decorative elements on the steeple roofs). I feel these things are more mass production than meditative process...
They still do, it's just that the first 95% of carving things out of rock is literally getting the rock into the shape needed to start doing actual scuplting.
I'm short, it's artistic boilerate with no meaningful value to either the artist or the viewer.
I have a fascination with hobos and freight train riders and watch a fair amount of videos on Youtube about it. One of hobo had a RAG he would query about train yards and catchout points. Wasn't a full timer, but built it last spring I gathered. Not art exactly, but a similar idea. Humans like shortcuts.
One small correction/addition! While the pointing machine is 18th century, the practice of pointing itself is quite a lot older. Its precursor was the three-compass method, which was known in antiquity and recovered in the 15th century. In fact, if you look closely at Michelangelo's David, you can see the little holes on the marble used for pointing.
That said, actual Gothic sculpture and decoration fell into that gap when pointing was lost. And the frankly lower quality of most medieval sculpture more or less reflects that. And anyway, nothing wrong with neo-Gothic.
One of the interpretations of the poem is that it criticises organised religion and that the mills in question are the church as an organisation represented in concrete terms by the church buildings.
As far back as ancient Egypt, grids and measuring tools were used to reproduce figures at different scales. Roman workshops churned out copies of Greek statues in marble and bronze, using casts and moulds. From the 18th century onwards, sculptors used outright pointing machines to transfer models into marble. James Watt, the steam engine guy, even built a mechanical sculpture-copying machine that could (somewhat) automatically reproduce reliefs and medallions.
Gothic architectural decoration wasn't about expressing the inner world of its makers in the way we think of art today. Much of it was produced by large masonry workshops using standardized geometry, wooden templates and repeated designs.
So, yeah, using a CNC machine is truly Gothic.