On this fine US Thanksgiving Day, as you reflect on the bounty that surrounds you (or on the turkey pot pie you just pulled from the microwave, whatever) remember that robots are not necessarily always the cold-hearted world-destroying automatons that we might presume them to be.

Apropos of this here is an absolutely cutie-patootie 80s-tastic irony-anerable music video by Dan Mangan and friends.

Robots By Dan Mangan

Roooobooots Neeed Looove Toooo. . . .

[A thousand times thank you for sending this our way, Heather Knight!]

Mind if I retweet? @rstevens

Every Halloween comic I’ve ever done. CRISIS on 8-Bit Earth:

We are breaking the radio silence to note our presence at a few events this past weekend in the Greater NYC area, and to formally announce our surprise that there are whole subsections of the population who do not need to be told that “fire” is “hot” when under the influence of alcohol.

Super mega huge thanks to Bar2D2 and his people, Jamie and Julie Price, for coming out from Tennessee and showing their stuff. Here are Jamie and Julie at Maker Faire NYC, in the Great Hall at the New York Hall of Science.

Photo Courtesy Laughing Squid’s Maker NYC Flickr Stream

Here is another shot of Bar2D2 (the blue blur in the lower left) meeting his public at the Diesel-sponsored Superglued/Gawker Media Silent Rave.

This was a rooftop soiree for young and adorable media types who flocked to Gawker headquarters in lower Manhattan somewhere in order to get their high-energy drink on to the lilting strains of The Eclectic Method*. The “silent rave” part came when they busted the headphones out at ten pm to outsmart the amplified noise ordinances. Everyone was bopping and rocking with the headphones on while simultaneously talking over the loud music being projected into their gently tipsy brainmeats.

El Espanol Borracho made appearances as well, which were warmly regarded, but unfortunately no one seems to have any pics of the 95 consecutive flaming absinthe shots it dispensed in two hours at the Maker Day NYC party. If you or your next of kin have photos, we here at SB.com would very greatly appreciate them and reward you richly with robot stickers and alcohol.

UPDATE: Jason Naumoff thoughtfully forwards one of these official photos taken at the MakerFaire/Red Bull Create The Future event of Borracho in action:

Yours truly operating El Espanol Borracho, hair pulled back because there’s FIRE.

Borracho, sadly, did not make an appearance at the Gawker Party due to physics and a refusal of the management to believe that nether it nor its operator have ever set anything on fire *unintentionally*. Any disappointed fans of fire please write in to Rave 2010, c/o Gawker NYC and lodge your complaints.

Anyhow, a good time was had by all, the media flowed freely, as did the booze, and we look forward to continuing to gently gloat about parties we get paid to go to in the future, for your reading enjoyment.

*Not particularly germane to this post but we had to say something: Eclectic Method slaughtered with their remixes of David Bowie plus Rick James and Lady Gaga with the Talking Heads and Marvin Gaye and I think they quoted Buckaroo Banzai in there somewhere too, maybe, it’s all a blur. I don’t even like DJs, but these guys win. We even have it on good authority that Laughing Squid‘s Primary Tentacle himself would have come out if he knew they were playing, and he had *heatstroke*.

Yeah, we iterate that with this:

Ear waving mechanism test. Yum.

Christian Ristow makes giant robots. His wife, Christina, also makes giant robots. They are about to be blessed with a small robobaby of their own.

This is not a robobaby. This is a giant killer robot.

If that is not enough, he has started up a new blog about hauling large piles of metal from one place to another, and back again.

He is a little like these here inhabitant of the RoBunker, only, *way* cooler. Please extend you attention to words by the maker of the Hand Of Man, The Subjugator, and the Spiderbot.

This is also not a robobaby, this is a robot made to look like and arachnid.

You may have seen their work during SRL shows, exquisite classy gallery shows, or in the desert:

Photo Montage courtesy Mr. Nightshade’s Flickr stream

The new blog is about the pitfalls and triumphs that happen when you are an artist and do everything for yourself for a living. It is a window one doesn’t often get to see through when one is a spectator at a slick show or well done live perfromance. We over here are enjoying it immensely!

Been sitting on this one unintentionally for a bit. As Nick Donaldson, the Michael Phelps of robot competitions, always says, “It’s surprisingly hard to give a robot soul.” Soul maybe not, but trippy 80s-style downtempo chillout rock, yes. The robot band Recorder was submitted via our handy dandy cutting edge Contact Form, and we here in the RoBunker were pleasantly surprised.

Also one of the finest example of how to use MySpace properly. Rock, robot, rock.

[Thanks Robbo!]

Mechanical Victorians -Mechtorians- look great in drawings, paintings, prints and prototypes. They also raise the bar for production-run, high end, limited edition vinyl toys.

Bruce Whistlecraft, aka Doktor A, employs an array of olde and nu skool craftsmanships to take the entire cast of fictional robots on a time-bending fantasmutational romp.

I’m completely charmed by the imagery from an actual past, informed by a recent past, reconfigured as robot characters from the past’s alternative future. Check it out for yourself.

Cris Rose has so many talent chops, that I’m thinking about writing this post in a spreadsheet.

Artist, Designer, Fabricator, Collaborator, Customizer, Collector Whew! He’s busier than a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest who designs, builds and sends original robot toys all over the world to collectors and galleries. Though the figures have no traditional “working parts”, they do have incredibly believable details and lovely backstories. Cris is particularly interested in the relationship between robots and nature, and each character shows its wear and tear with pride. I hope to catch up with Cris soon and find out more about his robots, their histories and the art of decay.

Okay that headline was lame. But what is *not* lame is the fact that Bon Jovi is now touring with a bunch of auto assembly robots:

These robots, by ABB Robotics North America, are not cheaper than regular backup singers, but at least the robots won’t get dumped out of a cop car in front of the venue ten minutes before show time, smelling of carcinogens and twitching.

Contrary to popular belief, @cozyrobot did not spring fully formed from the skull of a Mighty Mech.

Au contraire, my 5 fingered friends, the Cozy was clearly an emergent property of devoted time on robot tasks large and small, real and surreal, virtual and hopeful, over the course of many years… 2 decades to be precise… Pull up a fuel can and I’ll tell you a little about myself and some things I’ve seen and done along the way.

While spending all my free time in the throes of spectacular machine performance art at SRL, Seemen, Ape Technology (formerly PeopleHater), and other local performance groups, I was also developing mad skillz painting teeny tiny toy prototypes. The most memorable were the about to be discontinued Zbots and Mini ZBots (pictured above with a custom chrome finish*), which were mass produced by the now defunkt Galoob Toys in South San Francisco from ’92-’94. Some designs were developed thru ’96, but, sadly, that last series was never produced.

An idea for a mass produced toy product goes through many development stages before it’s available at a chain or novelty store. Earlier stages develop initial concepts of what the object will look like, and how it will behave. Later stages involve engineering spec sheets, and manufacturing master prototypes. In the marketing department, there are models made to be photographed for advertising. Long before any manufacturing can occur, the company needs to know how many to make. They pre-sell to buyers (stores) with TV commercials, trade show displays and magazine cut sheets. The models used for these are called Heroes. I painted hundreds of toy and packaging Heroes in the mid to late ’90′s for a variety of toy companies in the Bay Area.

I’m telling you all this to share an appreciation I developed for the amount of detail and design work that goes into toy making, and in particular, figure models.

In the early 00′s, with the introduction of DIY customizable vinyl figure toys by Kidrobot, there has been a steady widening pool of talented artists who specialize in highly original toy figures. Many are one of a kind or limited editions from 2-10, or upwards of 1000.

I’ll be showcasing some artists that I believe are doing fantastic robot designs and hope to inspire more of you to consider the range of robot building going on these days. Love ‘em or fear them, robots are deeply embedded in our work, play and our imaginations.

*(custom chrome finish on ZBot and Mini ZBot done in 2000, while working on the movie Bicentennial Man. Quote from model shop “We have seen the future, and it is chromed!”)

“Long ago when the world was old…”

Cute little animated film featuring elephants, a robot, a duck, Ganesh, Buddha and a mushroom for sitting under.

One doesn’t normally put “tiki” and “robots” in the same sentence, so it took a couple of art geniuses to create them. Designed by Flounder (Scott Sheidley) and sculpted by Squid (Dave Cohen) for TikiFarm. Sadly for you, these gems have long been sold out.

However, it seems that there are robot decanters and shot glasses still available.

I like my mugs filled with coffee and Kahlua on a Saturday morning. We have come to refer to it as Robot Coffee.

I named them Aloha and Mahalo. Cheers!

The folks at Wired magazine did an awesome story on BarBot, including some great images, and some amazing features!

The secret to a great cocktail, most connoisseurs would agree, has something to do with the ice, the liquor, the glass — and the bartender.

But what if the bartender is not a warm-blooded human with a sympathetic ear, but rather a cold, soulless machine made of pistons, valves and servos?

At a bar in San Francisco, a group of artists, engineers and tinkerers sought the answer with their creations: robots designed specifically to pour out a nice drink.

Well, like the man said, that was a hell of a thing. Thanks to everyone who turned up: robot makers, cocktail appreciators, and especially the staff at DNA Lounge, who took care of stuff so we didn’t have to.

Here’s a nice piece from CNET News which gives a pretty good indication of how things went:

Here are a few photos from lovely folks who showed up to take them:

LaughingSquid:

Dave Schumaker:

Mauricio Balvanera:

Josh Ellingson:

this is Nemomatic's "The Representative"

Well, the fabulous website WebUrbanist has totally done my home work for me this week by putting together an entire Gallery of Pseudo-Victorian, Steampunkesque and Retro Robot Art.       THANK YOU FOR THAT.