Author: Gianpiero Moioli
Department of Visual Arts, School of Sculpture
Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy
- Ideas, Materials, Technologies and Aesthetics
- Modeling as Creative Gesture
- Procedurality and Artificial Growth
- Uniqueness, Identity, and Digital Certification
- States of Transformation
- From Virtuality to Matter
- Artificial Intelligence as a Creative Tool
- Landscapes and Forces
- The Metaverse as an Exhibition Space
- Fields of Immersion
Gianpiero Moioli is a sculptor, architect, and professor of sculpture, virtual architecture, and history of contemporary architecture at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. He has been a certified Blender Foundation Certified Trainer (BFCT) since 2008.
He holds an MA in Sculpture from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and an MA in Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Milan.
In 2008, together with Stefania Albertini, he founded the Brera Academy Virtual Lab, a pioneering virtual sculpture and architecture laboratory.
He began using Blender in 2004 and presented his early work at three international Blender Conferences (2008, 2010, 2011).
Art Between Matter and Code explores the intersection of traditional sculpture, digital modeling, 3D printing, procedural generation, AI, and immersive virtual spaces. Contemporary sculpture balances structure and organic transformation while questioning authenticity and uniqueness. NFTs, blockchain, and hybrid artworks challenge the boundaries between physical matter, digital code, and metaverse experiences.
The book is divided into four parts.
The first part takes a historical and material perspective, tracing the shift from classical forms to digital energy and examining issues of dematerialization and digital aesthetics.
The second part focuses on creative processes: virtual modeling, procedural generation, algorithmic form-making, and artificial growth. It explores how algorithms collaborate with artists, creating evolving, hybrid, and unpredictable forms.
The third part examines five creative themes—Energy, Landscapes, Architecture, Memory, and Future Worlds—showing how traditional techniques merge with digital modeling and AI expansions.
The fourth part discusses blockchain, NFTs, and the metaverse, exploring how these redefine authenticity, ownership, and exhibition practices.
By following these approaches, artists and scholars can understand how contemporary art navigates the evolving intersection of matter, code, and imagination.
- Explore concepts of uniqueness, aura, authenticity, and the transformation of artwork in the digital and post-digital context
- Develop hybrid creative workflows integrating manual drawing, physical painting, and digital interventions
- Delve into new scenarios for certification and art presentation through blockchain, NFTs, and the metaverse
- Combine sculpture, digital modeling, AI image synthesis, procedural generation, and 3D printing into coherent artistic practices
- Integrates traditional sculptural methods with advanced digital tools to provide a complete workflow
- Demonstrates how manual drawing, virtual painting, AI image expansion, and physical sculpture combine into hybrid artworks
- Addresses crucial contemporary issues: blockchain certification, NFTs, and the role of the metaverse in the future of art
Materials are organized by chapter. Each chapter folder follows this layout:
Chapter_X/
├── README.md ← chapter overview and file descriptions
├── images/ ← reference images, artworks, screenshots
├── models/ ← 3D files (.blend, .obj, .stl)
├── scripts/ ← Python / Blender scripts
├── docs/ ← PDF and supplementary documents
└── media/ ← videos, animations, renders
| Chapter | Folder | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 01 | Ideas, Materials, Technologies and Aesthetics |
| 2 | 02 | Modeling as Creative Gesture |
| 3 | 03 | Procedurality and Artificial Growth |
| 4 | 04 | Uniqueness, Identity, and Digital Certification |
| 5 | 05 | States of Transformation |
| 6 | 06 | From Virtuality to Matter |
| 7 | 07 | Artificial Intelligence as a Creative Tool |
| 8 | 08 | Landscapes and Forces |
| 9 | 09 | The Metaverse as an Exhibition Space |
| 10 | 10 | Fields of Immersion |
- Install Blender 5.x
- Open
.blendfiles from File > Open - Python scripts in
scripts/can be run from Blender's Scripting workspace or from the terminal:blender --background --python script.py
Original materials (Blender files, SVG diagrams, renders, documents) are released under
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
© 2025 Gianpiero Moioli
Third-party assets retain their respective licenses. See individual license.txt files where present.
Book text and figures: © Gianpiero Moioli / Apress (Springer Nature) — all rights reserved.