Zizi Night Light

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.

First run

Our first limited run of Zizi was for the Zeitz MOCAA gift shop. It takes a skilled wire artist a day to make this piece from galvanized steel wire. The wire work is incorporated with a custom circuit board cut from copper sheet, and the electronics are all hand-made.

We worked with Thingking to develop the electronics, basing it all on hand-made and CNC processes to custom make ‘circuit boards’ by routing copper plate.

Zizi utilises simple electronics for interaction, based around the light dependent resistor, which was invented over 100 years ago. The batteries should last for up to 3 months in normal operation.

The owl is venerable symbol in many cultures, and birds have been imagined as mechanical devices for many hundreds of years. More recently, Athena’s owl from Greek mythology was imagined as the clockwork owl Bubo, from the 1980s movie Clash of the Titans.

Zizi is a life-size Scops owl, one of the world’s smallest owls, and common to Southern Africa, continuing African Robots’ mode for working with specific local creatures as subjects – whether in Africa, Brazil or Korea.

The magic of wire art is the ability of a skilled pair of hands to turn ordinary hardware-store wire into a complex three dimensional drawing! Please note that galvanized steel wire turns grey with age – this is the Wabi Sabi of wire art.

Second run

We are now working with South African firm SunToy on a solar-powered version! Watch this space.