These two robots were inspired by the rise of Artificial Intelligence. The smaller sculpture, titled “Natural Intelligence” can be seen holding a human like device as if it were a phone. It asks the question, are humans using technology, or does technology use humans?
Natural Intelligence
Big Brother
The large robot titled “Big Brother” was an engineering feat to build as a hollow one piece ceramic sculpture. The slip trailed “rivets” alone took twelve hours straight without stopping. This is because once you begin the process of adding liquid clay dots, the sculpture can no longer be wrapped up in plastic.
Big Brother also had to be assembled directly on a sheet of drywall that sat on a kiln shelf. The sculpture used roughly 75-100lbs of clay and was over 3 feet tall before firing. He was over 6 feet tall on top of my desk. This photo helps show his scale.
Due to the size and weight of the sculpture, drywall was needed to withstand the stress of shrinkage that occurs during firing. The weight on the legs when shrinking would otherwise cause cracking or breakage.
Big Brother’s pieces had to be strategically assembled in a particular order to withstand the weight and added moisture.
The second arm required impromptu scaffolding due to the weight of adding an additional arm making it impossible to pick up afterwards. This was done while racing the clock of the sculpture drying out.
When Big Brother was completely assembled it had to be slowly dried out before entering the kiln. This made transporting him to the kiln a feat in itself. Because when clay is at the bone dry stage it becomes brittle and extremely fragile.
With the help of others, we were able to carefully transfer him to an adjustable height cart that matched the height of the table. The cart had special off road wheels that were slightly deflated to cushion his long journey. We rolled him at snail speed, one bad bump could have easily broken him. He had to go through four sets of door jambs and two ramps at the University of South Florida to get to a front loading kiln.