010

It is Halloween, and I have done the absolute thing everybody expected I would do do: I carved a robot into a pumpkin. Today's entry gets multiple pictures, because I had a hard time deciding which photo of the lit jack o'lantern was the least awful (because they were all bad, because it is impossible for a regular human with a decent digital camera to get a worthy fucking picture of a glowing pumpkin robot carving).

Special thanks to Alex, who for the second year in a row has provided me with a seasonal squash to butcher.

P.S. WHAT IS THE SCARIEST ROBOT YOU WILL SEE THIS HALLOWEEN? IT IS THIS ONE!

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(retroactively added)

Pumpkin carving was supposed to be a pleasant harkening to olden days, a harvest festival tradition, transplanted to busy suburban lives. So Lee Patterson's first shock was the contrast between the futuristic technology emerging from the depths of his pumpkin (10.99 at Whole Foods), and the nostalgia pumpkin carving always awoke in him. Then it unsheathed the laser.

009

Today's robot is Problem Man, a sculpture I made like six months ago.

I know that a lot of you are thinking, "this is bullshit, I have walked by this robot like four-to-eight times over the course of the last six months, it was sitting in that alcove in the library into which they occasionally shove art. Oh, and wasn't there another smaller, cuter, wheeled robot that sat next to Problem Man? Also that one sculpture of a woman unzipping her entire body down the line of symmetry that had all those brightly colored things coming out from the hollow inside was better."

Listen: You're right on all three accounts. This was an easy day for me, because all I had to do was photograph the damn thing, and it's not the most remarkable of robots, and yes I did make a little wheeled cute robot with big eyes that got destroyed because too many dumbshit students touched and fiddled with and dropped it. I don't know what kind of rearing these mouth-breathing, hideously-well-funded, school-logo-sweatpants-wearing fuckroasts had, but for whatever reason they never learned about not touching artwork on display. Christ.

ANYWAY, here:





So as to avoid making this whole day a complete cop-out I unearthed some concept sketches I did of Problem Man before I even started building it. YOU'RE WELCOME.

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by Mo Martin

Legs, legs he barely missed at all. The old robots, the auto-workers, the computer chip installers, the assembly line fathers, they weren't even built with legs, just bases. So who cares if his legs rusted off? The initial corroding of his arms - piecemeal, a finger tip there, a patch of bicep - that, that had alarmed him at first, but it was easy to accept after a while. The numerous indignities of the loss of his ability to function and move without his limbs he took in stride, he made an attempt at a cheerful descent into rust and tin flakes and plastic.

But when his neck joints transitioned from "sluggish" to "immobile" he grew morose. In front of his permanently downcast eyes, he trudged up the data of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where the Tin Man, paralyzed, begs for an oil can. Over and over, against the wind, he'd play Jack Hickory's high, desperate falsetto. Until one day, his chest board finally crumbled, exposing the boards that made his memory and his senses. And the wind was so cold, and full of sand, and water.

008

Guess what was sitting in front of me on a desk for 2 hours this morning.



BUT WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE IN REAL LIFE?




Now you know.

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(retroactively added)

At first the ALA condemned the project for being grossly inefficient and getting inappropriate stampings everywhere, but eventually relented and made Stamp-bots the official stamps of American libraries. They were just so darn cute!

007

Listen: I almost feel like apologizing for today's robot. Understand that it was drawn in a small notebook using a very terrible ball point (ugh) pen, while I was technically (literally) at work, sitting in an uncomfortable chair (imagine a waiting room) with no desk or table or anything. Sure, it could be argued that I should have waited until I was no longer at work and better equipped. I didn't though, so we have this, which I'd like to believe makes up for its lack of craft with its general malevolence.

P.S. It's been a week and I'm still doing this NOT BAD RIGHT?

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The roars of the crowd fell on deaf ears, or more accurately, non-existent ears. DefRows C9 wasn't programmed or built to be able to perceive the smell of the hot oil as it mixed with the sand, could not take a perverse joy in the sudden lightness of the robotic limb in his arm. Defrows C9 was built only to destroy, to tear apart whatever he was targeted on, to dominate completely in these savage contests, and was in no way built to feel. Unlike his opponent.

006

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(retroactively added)

The creators of Surtur X-17 would surely have appreciated the irony that their creation, built only to destroy, looks like a heart when walking. That is, of course, they would have if they hadn't been destroyed upon activation of the X-17.

005

Listen: really imagine this occurring, but when you imagine it, imagine that you deserve whatever winds up happening to you. Now write down how it makes you feel and try to lead a life free of regrets.

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OHMIGOSH, OHMIGOSH, THIS IS HAPPENING THIS IS REAL OH SHIIIIIIIT

004

I hate to be the guy who "totally wants you to hear about this thing [I] read in a science fiction book" when I was "in middle school or something," but Listen.

p.s. I'd like to thank Technovelgy for becoming my evening last night.
p.p.s. Sorry about writing so much I know this blog is supposed to be about robots and not about a guy with glasses telling you about science fiction, that website has already been done, it was called 90 percent of all geocities pages from the years 1996 - 2001.

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(retroactively added)

There is only one piece of non-essential equipment in the QR-3G cellularbot, only one additional weight in the delicate, precision mechanism. Engraved on a plaque no bigger than a the endoplasmic reticulum, in letters the width of a ribosome, the words, " 'I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.' - Heman Melville, Moby Dick."

003

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(retroactively added)

Dr. Genovese spent years and billions, grant after grant, but eventually he cracked it. Each robot could generate within it's hand a robot 1/100 it's own size, ad infinitum. They laughed at Genovese, but who else had an infinity of robots? None of those other pricks, that's who.

002

This robot could have been scanned better.

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(retroactively added)
Originally created as a basic assistant bot for the disabled, Jorge in assembly went through a pretty bad break up about half-way through construction. Plus there was just a lot of really sharp scrap lying around.

001

2.5" x 4" - this is a tiny drawing of a robot.

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by Mo Martin

"Doctor, I am confused. You've taught me so much, but it is all so strange, and painful. I do not wish to remain with the knowledge you have given me. I will say goodbye now. Now I will dissipate, beginning with the hand I am signaling goodbye to you with, and I will proceed with the molecular dissemination of the rest of my components. Goodbye now, Doctor. Thank you."

Transmission 1

Listen: There will be one robot per day on this blog. I do not plan on constraining myself in terms of the medium in which the robots wind up being - no doubt most will be sketches, "proper" drawings, or even digital whats-its. It is highly unlikely that every robot will be particularly individualized, and the same robot might even appear twice. That means you should expect to become bored with this, as should I. If I miss a day I will deny the fact, and rectify the "mistake" by posting a robot, backdating it to the offending day, and going on with my god damn life.

now you know