Looking at the robots, I think

David Lewandowski, going to the store



Robot maker Azusa Amino recently won the Robot Japan 2 Dance competition with his 23-centimeter-high Toko Toko Maru robot. 


- they are the un-ego, the dream of letting go of the source. They are a life whose source is the non-live, whose origin is not identical, so a different, non-human causality comes into place. The source, here, is the source-code. And that makes all the difference. Saying it is matter brought to life explains nothing. Think, rather, of metamorphosis, of alchemy, of things becoming not-themselves. (Of us becoming not-ourselves). The robot is not a robot if it remains the sum of its parts. It is a robot when it does something it is not supposed to do - when we see it as inhabiting itself. (It - who?, we ask, excitedly). They are our hope for the unexpected: if we can control everything, and the result is somethig more than what we were making, then there is no everything.
And we can dream on.

The Auction of Athena: Our Pop Sculpture Cover Girl Goes on the Block

In the year-plus since "Pop Sculpture" has come out, we have been deluged with words of thanks from folks who find the book to be an indispensable guide to the art of sculpture. And we have nothing but thanks for all of you who have been so supportive of the book -- we hope it will serve you well in the years to come. But now that a year has passed, we're moving on to new projects, and we've got to make room in the studio.

Our cover girl, Athena, is almost two feet tall with her spear, and it's time she moved out on her own, so we're putting her up for auction in Tim's eBay store, at TimBrucknerShop.com. She's a one-of-a-kind piece -- a complete set of molds does NOT exist, so this is the only way to get her. Ever. Look for the auction to post sometime on Sunday, November 27, and expect it to run for ten days; a portion of the proceeds will go to the Arnell Memorial Humane Society of Wisconsin. Keep track of it over at our Facebook page, and enjoy some more photos of Athena below!

The House

This house which is almost gone. Which still has the lines and weight of a house, yet could very well be called landscape. This house which is a set of floors engraved with memories that no one you know could ever read. Things, as people, come and go, yet we believe them to be different, we invest what is left of our faith in this space or that. It's what you think as you move the objects around, pretty damn self-conscious, pretty certain that this armchair in this place is pure iconoclasm. 

You'd rather it were a farm. You would prefer it to be pragmatic, and you would strive for it to be pure function, eliminating any sentiment, oiling the squeaking doors so the sound doesn't leave traces, cleaning the floor so there are no signatures. No time travels. 

Then you picture this farm, and somehow it's not so proper, the weather is muddy, or maybe that's the way it always looks, there are traces everywhere, things have a rhythm they will never ever retain, things have a rhythm they will never ever give up. It is your wildest dream, and this land is full of you, it does not allow you to leave. You seem to have been here long before you've ever pictured this place.

You move back, trying not to stare, so as not to keep any of this. Then you see the roof, its perfectly symmetrical form (it is not symmetric, but that is how you see it), its blissful abstraction. The way this alien form remains here. Now, yes, you can leave. You exit the picture, you go back to the house where the armchair is elsewhere, you walk out through the garden, and you take your hard-earned sight to another nest.

Nicholas McLeod, The Farm (2010)