Tyler Coburn

Robots Building Robots, 2013/16/23

An occasional ten-year project exploring automation, sabotage, and robot surrogacy.

Robots Building Robots began as an inquiry into “lights out” manufacturing, a type of automated production so named for the lack of need for regular human supervision. During a trip to Taiwan in July 2013, I visited a science park in Tainan where the Japanese robotics company FANUC was rumored to be building a lights out factory. On a long walk through the park’s grounds, speaking extemporaneously into an audio recorder, I considered literary and philosophical speculations on labor, mechanic intelligence, and the “automatic factory.” This travelogue was published by CCA Glasgow.

Ten years later, for my first-ever visit to Japan, I returned to this project by making a second travelogue in Oshino, where FANUC has its headquarters—including some lights out facilities. Just as I did in Tainan, I walked around the site. I also visited other places in the area that resonate with the subject, such as a museum of automated musical instruments.

Photocopies of both travelogues appear in my 2023 exhibition at Fig., Tokyo on a rug that approximates FANUC yellow. Charm bracelets extend from the ceiling and attach to each book.

Photocopy of the 2013 travelogue.

DeepL translation of the 2013 travelogue with handwritten annotations by Fig. gallerist Takayuki Kubota.

Photocopy of the 2023 travelogue.

DeepL translation of the 2023 travelogue with handwritten annotations by Taka.

In the decade between the travelogues, I had three sabots (clogs) 3D printed in lights out conditions at one of the most automated factories in the United States. One is on view at Fig. The word “sabotage” is said to derive from the acts of sabot-wearing workers during the Industrial Revolution. Ostensibly a product of the emerging automation economy, this plastic shoe also bears testament both to the history of industrial mechanization and the forms of protest that emerged in response to it. For more information, see Sabots (2016).

Most recently, lights out production has become a metaphoric device for me to consider the creative and waged labor of the artist, and the role robot surrogacy might play in negotiating their respective demands. In collaboration with Siqi Zhu, I made Taka (2023), a robot surrogate of Takayuki Kubota, an artist and teacher who also runs Fig.

Fig. primarily functions as an exhibiting space while also serving as Taka’s studio and home. On the days when Taka teaches, the gallery lights stay off, and this robot does studio work in his place: monitoring particulate matter imperceptible to the human eye, transforming the data, and sharing what results with Taka on a private web interface. During gallery hours, the robot “sleeps” in his futon.