Ice Milling with Jussi Ängeslevä

Date: 27.2—3.3.23
Institution: AATB
Zurich, CH

With: Jussi Ängeslevä
Collaborators: Mark Pauly (EPFL), Ismo Alakärppä (University of Lapland)
Research project: A Third Hand – Creative Applications for Robotics, ECAL
Research team: AATB (Andrea Anner and Thibault Brevet), Alain Bellet, Martin Hertig
Discussion partner: Jonas Berthod
Supported by: ECAL, HES-SO
Photos: Gianni Camporota

Ice Milling on third-hand.xyz

Ice Milling is one of the six experiments of A Third Hand – Creative Applications for Robotics, a research project conducted at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, Switzerland by AATB (Andrea Anner and Thibault Brevet), Alain Bellet and Martin Hertig, developed in collaboration with the media artist, designer and educator Jussi Ängeslevä.

Together they built a robot that mills clear ice into caustic lenses: a UR10 arm with a milling spindle carves a block of ice into a computed geometry that refracts the light of an attached flashlight into an image on the wall. The experiment built on Jussi Ängeslevä’s earlier research into caustic lenses made from natural ice, with Berlin University of the Arts, the University of Lapland and EPFL, and made safe and precise ice milling possible for Pinnannousu, Ängeslevä’s work for the Sapporo International Art Festival 2024.