Red Owl

Red Owl

This ‘Red Owl’ was made during workshops for the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Durban, South Africa in 2018. We usually base all our robots on specific local creatures, but this one was more of a fantasy owl!

It’s made using red ‘scooby-wire’, the name we use for telephone wire. This has been used for a long time in South Africa for making a variety of objects, from plates and bowls to jewellery and ornamented walking sticks, knife- and club-handles. It’s associated particularly with the Kwa-Zulu Natal area of South Africa, where plastic-coated telephone wire replaced the plant fibre used in weaving baskets that had been used for the same purpose historically.

Its eyes are made from novelty spectacles bought in a shop in Rio de Janeiro on an African Robots trip there earlier that year.

The Red Owl, with its light-responsive glowing eyes, inspired the development of Zizi Night Light, our product in development.