Italian designer Giuseppe Randazzo has released a series of sculptures made from carefully arranged stones. However, these are no ordinary rocks and pebbles- these tiny grey balls are actually created using 3D printers. From the colour, varied textures and ridged finish of the stones, these 3D printed stones appear very realistic. Randazzo arranges the stones according to their different sizes so to create intriguing textures and patterns on the ground. This artwork is actually a revisitation of an earlier artwork he constructed in 2009 that involved a series of generative digital sculptures that depicted pebbles and rock arrangements. Keeping up with technological advancements and new modes of artistic creation, he recently teamed up with Shapeways, a 3D printing company, to create physical prototypes of the digital artwork he showcased in 2009. 

Randazzo shares, ” Starting from 2009 project “Stone Fields”, some 3dmodels were produced from the original meshes. The conversion was rather difficult, the initial models weren’t created with 3dprinting in mind. The handling of millions of triangles and the check for errors required a complex process. Each model is 25cm x 25cm wide and was produced by Shapeways in polyamide (white strong & flexible). Subsequently they were painted with airbrush. […] The minute details of the original meshes were by far too tiny to be printed, however despite the small scale, these prototypes give an idea of the complexity of the gradients of artificial stones.” 

View more of Randazzo’s artwork on novastructura

Images via novastructura