From the robots that fail miserably at their jobs to the robots dealing with our literal crap,web sex m? Mashable’s Crappy Robotsdives into the complex world of automation — for better or worse or much, much worse.
I have two favorite robot creators on TikTok. One creates art that isn't necessarily useful, but is artistic and fun to watch. And the other, who creates work that is entirely unusable and arguably absurd, does not appear to want to be found.
The latter's username is @hmg....4, and they go, colloquially, by user9942938153949. Their videos are all "very human" and "very easy to use." They take a problem — one that might not really exist, like having to go for a bike ride but being warm in your bed, or getting tired when you walk— and solves it in a way that can only be described as straight shitposting. For the bike riding problem, they created a way to ride your bike directly from a bed. The catch is that you have to be laying down, and it doesn't look particularly comfortable or easy to use. For being tired when you walk, they created an automatic walker made of metal poles that you duct tape to your body. When someone tries to use it in the video, they stumble around, at one point losing a shoe.
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An invention, shown on TikTok, by @hmg....4 that solves the problem of being too tired to walk by creating an automatic walker made of metal poles that you duct tape to your body. Credit: tiktok/ @hmg....4 They follow no one, and they can't receive messages on TikTok from anyone they don't follow. They respond to the occasional comment — but none from me. The don't have social media on any other platform with the same username. They have a websitethat, allegedly, will let you buy a cat pen holder or a telescopic rod. The contact email on their site does not deliver emails because the domain can't be found. The website is owned by a company without its own contact page. But @hmg….4 is so obviously not creating for fame, which is something their fans find charming.
Howard Lo, a 21-year-old follower of @hmg….4, likes their videos because they are "solving a non problem," Lo told Mashable.
"That, I think it’s hilarious," Lo said. "The problem that [their] invention was trying to solve is usually a problem that has been solved or not a problem [that] needs to be solved at all. So as an audience, I would expect this video to end up being absurd and funny."
There's no reason not to assume @hmg….4's work is art — it seems to be poking fun at our insane societal needs to find solutions that already exist to problems we don't actually have. They have similar energy to Simone Giertz, the "Queen of Shitty Robots," who created a Wake-Up Machinethat slapped her with a rubber hand to wake her up and a Breakfast Machinethat poured cereal and milk into a bowl, but very poorly.
"People think it's about the robot uprising, or a commentary on people being so lazy that they can't even make themselves breakfast," Giertz told Wired in 2016. "Electronics are getting more and more accessible now — you don't have to be an engineer to start building things. I really want to spur [on] that democratization of technology."
Geirtz has since shifted her work slightly away from creating things purely as jokes or commentary, and towards some pretty useful tools, like this chair for needy dogs.
"Creating is creating the end of the day and there's an art to all forms of creation, I think," Jay Voger, a 30-year-old artist and creator out of Toronto, Canada, told Mashable. "When you're creating a robot that smacks you in the face with the dish cloth, it's just funny. It's someone's interpretation of something that would be funny, maybe."
Voger, or @jbvcreative on TikTok, quit his full time job to explore creation in June, but he's been making gadgets for over a decade. His work is different from Giertz and @hmg….4 in that he isn't making "shitty robots." He's making art that moves, or can be moved, and can be funny, or can be beautiful. But like Giertz and @hmg….4, most of his work comes from a place of humor or joy.
"I like the freedom of not having like that commercial purpose for what I'm building. Like I worked in a couple of different corporate jobs and it's all like, 'Oh, we can't do that really cool thing because of costs,'" Voger said. "And so this kind of gives you like the full freedom to do whatever I want and make it as complicated as I want and make it as ridiculous as I want."
He makes robots that raise their hands up and down, or a hand machine that censors your middle finger, or a Bother Botthat pokes you while you work. You can buy some of his kits to make these on your own or, if you have your own 3D printer, you can buy the plans.
@jbvcreative When your mom watches your feed... #haters #hatersgonnahate #GamingLife #3dprinting #3dprinted
♬ original sound - JayBV
"My main motivation is to create art because when I create art, I have this underlying freedom to make whatever the heck I want," Voger said.
For instance, he has this light switchin his office with two switches. One of the switches turns the lights on, and the other switch does nothing.
"How can I make this really complicated for fun?" Voger wondered, and decided to 3D print a series of gears to expand the light switch that does work into a larger light switch. "And it's purely just for fun, but it's also really cool."
Work that is "purely just for fun" but "also really cool" can describe pretty much any of Voger and @hmg....4's work. These two creators aren't making anything that actually changes the way you live your day-to-day life — they're just making it more fun. And TikTok is the ideal space for exploring that intersection of shitposting and genuinely beautiful works of art.