Industrial Surplus Transformed into Art Robots

Posted 2 Mar 2009 at 16:42 UTC (updated 2 Mar 2009 at 16:43 UTC) by steve

Reader Doug Emes sent us a link to the Guy Robots website which contains a gallery of art robots built from industrial surplus and salvaged parts. Intrigued, I contacted Rich Muller, the artist, to find out a little more. He writes,

I work in the aerospace industry in Los Angeles, and I've been making robots for a few years. Los Angeles is a good place for finding raw material, there are flea markets, swap meets, and countless garage sales every weekend. There are also a number of surplus stores that sell old electronic and avionic equipment, not surprising considering the large amount of aerospace industry in Los Angeles. The old material gets sold to small businesses and garage tinkerers setting up laboratories as well as Hollywood set-decorators and artists. A favorite place is Apex Electronics, where you can find anything from bakelite knobs to a rocket nose-cone. I build and photograph the robots, and my brother, Eric, comes up with the names and bios.

Read on for more photos and info...

The Guy Robot website describes the artist's creation process in three easy steps:

Genesis: The piece parts that go into each Guy Robot flow from a range of industrial tributaries: aerospace and avionics surplus suppliers, automotive salvage yards, long-haul microwave equipment recyclers, decommissioned plumbing and refrigeration remnants, vintage hand-tool swap-meet winnings. And, yes, truth be told, sometimes the perfect Guy Robot find is that gem that is spotted and rescued from among the flotsam hauled to the curb by the neighbors and otherwise destined for final disposal.

Metamorphosis: With the reclamation process continually replenishing the Guy Robot parts pipeline, arms, legs, feet, eyeballs, and all prospect appendages are next spread across the laboratory bench where they are left to slowly distill, intermix, and, over time, trigger alchemistic inspiration. It is during this Frankenstein-like step that shoulders are matched to torsos, knuckles to wrists, and body-types to temperaments.

Synthesis: After much tinkering and experimentation, the personality of each Guy Robot begins to take shape. This gelling is achieved through a precise, repeatable recipe consisting of one-part slide-rule calculation, two-parts trial-and-error metallurgical alloying, and four-parts leap-of-faith improvisation.

Check out these cool robots at the artist's website, Guy Robot. You can also see more photos on the artist's flickr photostream.