Artistic Robots
Nemomatic.com. ".... a portfolio of images and movies of the work of sculptor Nemo Gould. Many of the pieces that you find here are have mechanical movement, so look for video clips at the bottom of each page. Nearly every piece is made entirely from found materials..."
Clayton Bailey "....
has made approximately 100 life-size robot sculptures of found objects since 1976. He searches the local flea markets and scrap metal yards for discarded home appliances, cookware, bicycle and automobile parts. He carefully grafts the parts together into new forms; reincarnating them as robot sculptures. The "past lives" of the robot's various "mechanical molecules" are said to give them their soul. His family of robot sculptures range from the humanoid to the pet dog or exotic bird or insect. They don't walk around and break your china and endanger your art collection. They are static; they stand still and blink their lights. (The robot sculptures sometimes function as clocks and radios that speak and sing in the native tongue wherever they travel.)..."
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Historic and Victorian Robots
Boilerplate ".... was a mechanical man developed by Professor Archibald Campion during the 1880s and unveiled at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
Built in a small Chicago laboratory, Boilerplate was originally designed as a prototype soldier for use in resolving the conflicts of nations. Although it was the only such prototype, Boilerplate was eventually able to exercise its proposed function by participating in several combat actions.
In the mid-1890s, Boilerplate embarked on a series of expeditions to demonstrate its abilities, the most ambitious being a voyage to Antarctica. Boilerplate is one of history's great ironies, a technological milestone that remains largely unknown. Even in an age that gave birth to the automobile and aeroplane, a functioning mechanical man should have been accorded more significance...."
Automates Anciens ".... a tribute to the talented European watchmakers and technicians, who, through the 18th and 19th centuries, tried to discover the secrets of life by giving birth to extraordinary creatures of great mechanical complexity: automatons and androids created by Vaucanson and the Jaquet-Droz family, talking heads created by Abbot Mical, the fake automaton and the talking machine by the Baron von Kempelen, clock automatons by the Maillardet brothers, writer automaton by Von Knauss, android automaton by Kintzing, tricked automatons by Robert-Houdin, « pygmy » automaton by Stèvenard..." |
