Paperback Art


Book cover, 1950 and Movie Poster, 1956

Book cover, 1950 and Movie Poster, 1956


Cover art: E. Gorinstein


Expedition_to_earth.BallantineEdition 1953, Cover Art Richard Powers


Illustrator Richard Powers



Case of Conscience, 1958. Cover Art by Richard Powers

Starship Troopers, 1959. Cover art Paul Lehr





Cover art Paul Lehr


Cover Art by Bob Pepper




Illustrator Bob Pepper


Album Cover Art by Bob Pepper



Cover art: Richard Powers

The Life & Death of Robots


RUR dick

Left: Robots revolt in RUR. Right: Signet edition of Dick's novel with cover art by Bob Pepper..

The word “robot” was introduced in Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots),1921, derived from the Czech word robota, meaning forced labour. The Webster dictionary also notes the Old Bulgarian word rabu, meaning servant. The robot was first conceived as a mechanical slave or appliance with some human resemblance. In the George Lucas film Star Wars, 1977, the lovable robots R2D2 and C3P0 are comic foils to the main action—they are garrulous servants from a tradition of comic theatre, characters who see all and yet have limited power or influence. In the play R.U.R., the robots become dissatisfied with their role as servants and stage a violent rebellion, during which all humans are killed except one. The one surviving human is then asked to make more robots, but he does not know how. The robots become conscious of their own inevitable demise. This consciousness of death, and the fear that accompanies it, elevates the robots to a human-like condition.

Karel Čapek.self-caricature

Karel Čapek. Self-portrait.

R.U.R. could be read as a Golem-like story of an artificial being, (The Golem, a silent horror film set in Prague starring Paul Wegener, was released in 1920). The Golem is a would-be protector and saviour who turns against the community it was designed to help. R.U.R. adds to this basic scenario a vision of a terrible genocide. The play exists historically between Henry Ford’s assembly-line automation process (unlike the Golem, the robots in R.U.R. are mass produced) and Hitler’s mad notions of eugenics. Capek died of double pneumonia in 1938, a few months before the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Unaware of Capek’s death, the Nazi secret police made a futile effort to arrest him. Unfortunately, the Nazis did capture Capek’s brother Joseph, a cubist artist, who died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. The robot in literature reflects ambivalent attitudes toward technology at this time.

Actress Sean Young plays android Rachael Rosen in Blade Runner, 1982 (dir: Ridley Scott)


The film Blade Runner, 1982, inspired by the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 1968 by Philip K. Dick, advances the idea of robot mortality and self-consciousness from R.U.R. The name of one of the androids in the film is Rachael Rosen, which may be a reference to the Rossum in Rossum’s Universal Robots. Rossum, the inventor of the robot in R.U.R., derives his name from the Czech word rozum, meaning reason, intellect. In Blade Runner, the androids are so human-like, and have such vivid in-built memories, that it is almost impossible for them to believe they are not human. As a safety measure, the android’s creator Tyrel has programmed the androids to a four-year life span. In this story the androids rebel not so much at their harsh treatment by humans as at the cruel brevity of the life that they do have. However painful and difficult the android existence is, they want more of it.


Low Tech Robots


Theo Jansen. Animaris Rhinoceros

Theo Jansen. Animaris Rhinoceros

How fitting that in Holland, land of windmills, an artist has created large wind-powered robots! Dutch kinetic sculptor, Theo Jansen combines a vivid artistic imagination with a background in science to create fantastic mobile creations. Made of plastic ribs, flexible pneumatic tubes, sails and sensors, Jansen uses computer simulations to perfect his designs before taking them for trial runs on the beaches of Holland. As the artworks lumber into motion, one sees slow-gaited giants, looking like extraterrestrial visitors, moving in herd-like unison. The artist refers to them simply as Strandbeesten, beach-animals. His ultimate aim, stated at a TED conference in 2007, is to make the organisms independent so that they can survive on the beach for long periods without the artist’s assistance. “A good advantage of the animals is they don’t have to eat–they eat the wind,” Jansen says. “That’s why they might have a chance on the beaches: There’s a lot of wind, not much food.” This is robotics without motors or computer chips, living not in outer space, not in factories or labs, but in an unsupervised ocean wilderness. The world of Philip K. Dick has arrived! In 1968 (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Dick predicted that with the mass extinction of mammals from our planet, people would turn to robotic pets and virtual animals for comfort. Thanks Kate for bringing this artist to my attention.

To contrast this wind-powered artwork with another, here’s a work by New York artist Joshua Allen Harris, Polar Bears.

I find it telling that the above two videos feature artists in the context of ads; one promotes BMW cars and the other promotes public transport. Both artworks seem to be inspired by the rapid extinction of animals from our planet; both artworks explore the relationship between an artwork and the environment it is placed in, using wind power to bring inanimate structures to life. Both use common materials. Jansen’s work suggests the limitless possibilities of ingenious engineering. Harris’s work combines humour with pathos, using the onrushing wind from an unseen subway train to suggest a momentary breath of life. His mother bear and cub make a modest and fleeting appearance, and their loss of air and slow collapse reminds the viewer of the fragility of all life forms.