“Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.”

This is the description of the Telectroscope from the artists website, it could also be that it is all done by fiber optics, the first explanation by artist Paul St George is a little more magical though.

One end of the “tunnel” is next to Tower Bridge on the Thames river in London. The opposite end is next to Brooklyn Bridge by New York’s East River.

It is similar to a gigantic webcam, people on one side can look in and see people on the other side. Unlike using a webcam however most of the people on the other end will be wearing clothes.

You can view a video of the piece over at the BBC.

The term robot originates from the Czech word robota, meaning “compulsory labor.” It was first used in the 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by the Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. The word robot has been used since to refer to a machine that performs work to assist people or work that humans find difficult or undesirable.

Unfortunately for the human race, robots will eventually become self aware killing machines and exterminate everyone who doesn’t move to an underground city. I’m not really sure what robots do after the humans are gone, but that really doesn’t matter. This more than likely outcome is a great starting point for robotic based artwork. There are many many sources for robot artwork out there. From digital works to paintings to sculptures, I’ve posted some of my favorite below.

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How to Survive a Robot Uprising

One of my all time favorite works of fiction is the book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising. In this little gem you will learn such things as:

• How to spot a robot mimicking a human
• How to recognize and deactivate a rebel robot
• How to escape a murderous “smart house” and or a swarm of robot flies
• and many more essential tips

This really is a great short book, it appears also that they will be making it into a movie. One can only hope anyway.

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Jeremy Mayer: Cyborg robotic figures from disassembled typewriters

Jeremy Mayer, a California artist, does all kinds of neat sculptures and CAD drawings. ” Mr. Mayer stresses the importance of quality of materials used and attention to detail that resonates with each work. His larger sculptures can take up to 1,200 hours to complete, and the drawings (often done with use of CAD and 3D modeling programs to assist in constructing each figure before hand-rendering) can take up to 200 hours.”

Just look at these amazing robot sculptures he made out of old typewriter parts.

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Dave the Robot

I love this little guy. He has been around for a little while now and I would probably buy one of the aluminum, brass, cast resin and glass sculptures if I had any way to display it. My purchase will have to wait until I move into a bigger place maybe further out from the city. It would be glorious to have a little army of these guys.

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Nemo Gould

“With years of accumulating post-consumer waste and a lifetime of absorbing pop culture imagery, Nemo Gould has been creating his signature style of kinetic metal and found object sculpture for over 20 years. Old vacuum cleaners, dead bugs, used dentures and sewing machine motors all find their unerringly rightful place in his surreal creatures and abstract sculptures, which have attracted museums, galleries and eccentric art collectors throughout the Bay Area and abroad.”

Nemo is just amazing. Look at some of these pieces:

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Vintage Robot Pin

I found this awesome and very inexpensive Robot pin over on etsy for only $5.

“I made this Jet-Age Robot pin using images of actual vintage robots and transforming them into a Brooch. Printed paper on wood and laser cut with incredible detail.
Image protected with clear finish. Reverse painted black with locking pinback. Measures 2 1/2″ high x 1 1/4″ wide x 1/8″ thick.”

The only problem is I don’t have any use for a pin. I can just see the package arriving at home to my wifes excited hands. She rips open the box to see a small robot pin, all her hopes of jewelry or plane tickets to some exotic location smashed. I would get that “why did you buy this” look I get when she sees a piece of art I bought that she just doesn’t understand.

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You’ve Convinced Me

I love robot books and movies and art, so how could I not create my own? My work can’t compare to the amazing works I’ve found and put here, but I want to show you what I’ve been influenced to make. BEHOLD!

So these are some of my favorite pieces I’ve found around. Please share any others you know of that you like.

It seems now-a-days people aren’t asking themselves that question any more. I know I haven’t been, but this post on digg got me thinking.

How many times have you heard a professor or someone else say “today this may not be shocking, but when it was made it was ahead of it’s time”. Jackson Pollock, whose pieces have recently sold for over $135,000,000 was, and still is, considered by many not to have produced art. Who of you out there have heard someone scoff at a piece by Pollock and exclaim, “My child could do this, it’s not art”.

The internet is popular among the younger age group, and it is the younger adults today who are creating the newest art. Take web programming for example. Programming jobs are in high demand right now with almost 40% of companies hiring for that position last year. That means a large group of people understand a programming language.

For that large population, this website could be a form of art.

IF you clicked on that image then the answer you are asking yourself is yes, I did that wonderfully horrid jpg compression on purpose because I think it added to the comedy of the piece.

If art is a way to communicate to people , then it must be art. I take myself as an example. This page reminded me of when I was 16 years old and I was building my first webpages. I think I had a geocities page somewhere in Area-51, the coolest thing I was able to do was to embed MIDI files into my pages. It was such an adventure lycosing around the internet for .midi files I could download. It’s hard to believe that was only 10 years ago. Now we have blogging platforms and people making millions selling their blogs. We have websites with tens of millions of people using them each month, and we have almost 1 billion people online. That’s a long way to go in just 10 years.

Think of how long things have taken to gain acceptance and how long they have been around. Christianity for example is 2000 years old and Hinduism is over 20,000 years old. That is a long time to hold on to part of a culture. If things keep going the way they are now, how much different will technology and the internet be in 2,000 years, or how about 20,000?

If you hold that art both communicates to the viewer, and is part of a culture, then the answer is yes, it is art. It especially was for me at any rate, I spent almost an hour there just remembering things and enjoying it. So to whomever made it, I would like to give you $14 via paypal, as it was just as good as any exhibit or museum I’ve paid to see.

“We do not feel that these new standards will be restrictive, quite the contrary. In some cases, contributors will simply have to find new and more creative ways to present a scene or a subject matter, such as a shallower depth of field and a stronger and more suggesting composition… ultimately resulting in more challenging, intelligent and useful stock imagery.” - JJRD

iStockphoto is cracking down on submitters violating Intellectual Properties. No longer will photographers be able to submit other peoples work or photos with recognizable trademarks or artistic creations. It seems about time that they take some of this stuff seriously. The submission process over at iStock has pretty much been based solely on quality. If the image looks good at a large size they almost always accepted it. You can read all 3 articles here , here and here .

“As an example, one of our first issues to tackle are uploads which contain unmodified NASA images: these will no longer be accepted by iStock as they do not contain the creative work that iStockphoto and its members want to foster.”

Voting for images is discouraged at iStock as well. Almost a year ago the voting privaleges on my account were suspended for voting pictures low. I had to call their corporate headquarters to even get my account turned back on. I was told “artists don’t want negative feedback, even if you don’t like what they are offering”.

iStock has been growing rapidly and it has become a great resource for many designers. I have a few issues with the people running the company, but I still prefer to pay $10 for a website image opposed to $200 from Getty.

British artist Nick Veasey has been x-raying, tulips to tennis-playing skeletons, laptops and even a freaking Boeing 777. The Boeing project took 3 months and is 185 ft, the largest x-ray ever. The images require so much radiation that he has to lock himself outside of his lead-lined studio while working. That has to be one expensive studio.

The people he x-rays can’t be living bodies because of the large amounts of radiation, so he rents out skeletons to image. I wonder how one goes about doing that?

Veasey has a new book out with the oh-so-clever title of, “X-ray ”.

You can watch a 2:30 minute video about his process from msnbc.