
“Learning to Fly” is the arresting backdrop for this pool at the State Gymnasium of Iowa State University. The oil painting by artist Eric Sealine was transformed into a 75-foot-wide tile mural using technology from Artaic, a Boston-based computer robotics company.



The 1,395-square-foot mosaic above was prepared using a computer-controlled robot, which can create massive mosaics by selecting small colored tiles (down to 3/8 inch) and arranging them on 1-square-foot grids to form mosaic tile sheets. (Humans can do the same thing, of course, but Arty, the robot, does it really fast.)
One large mosaic can comprise more than 1,000 such sheets, which are installed on site.
Arty works for Artaic, a Boston-based manufacturer of high-end, custom mosaic projects.
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