African Robots
Zizi Night Light Zizi is the Shona for owl – we hope this night light helps you zzz easy! Just turn on the power switch, and adjust the dial till the eyes are off in a lit room and on when it’s dark. Then every night when lights go out Zizi wakes up.
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 […]
Coruja This is a little owl – ‘Coruja’ in Portuguese – made with wire artists and interactive electronics students and hobbyists in an African Robots workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2018. Many similar forms to African wire art are produced in Brazil, including cars and motorbikes that look much the same. The materials […]
Starling 1.2 is our advanced model Starling 🙂 It was produced with attention to the aesthetics of the piece, incorporating fine wire art by Lewis Kaluzi, and a ‘spacey’ transparent body by Ralph Borland. Ralph designed and constructed the wire inner mechanisms that drive the wings, based on the ‘Scotch Yoke’ linkage system. For the […]
Flapping Bird This mechanical and electronic flapping bird was made by wire artist Lewis Kaluzi on his own initiative, who brought it to show African Robots after hearing about the work we were doing, back in 2015. We took it to London to exhibit it at Machines Room Maker Library. Lewis has worked on many […]
Starling 1.1, the second starling, pictured here on exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum, Germany, as part of a Maker Library exhibition. This starling relies on a hacked pirate iPod playing a recording of a real starling for its call!
Starling 1.0 Our very first African Robot! In 2013 we made Starling 1.0, depicting a nimble local bird, the Red-Winged Starling, in wire art, with innards composed of Nokia cellphone parts and other cheap electronic components, moving wings, glowing eyes, and a light-responsive call. Wire artists share the same urban spaces as informal cellphone repair […]