alt Hacker NewsUnderstood 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.
There's a fascinating article from BBC 4 on the topic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xqt
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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 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.
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.