TRAHCies Talk

Robots invaded Spring Lake Park (in Texarkana, Texas) yesterday, as you can see. This project has been months in the making, and we had a variety of responses and reactions. But let’s start from the beginning.

The TRAHCies wanted to create a project that we prepared in secret and didn’t publicize - we wanted it to simply appear one day, unannounced. The director of parks for the city had mentioned to me that it would be great if we could do a project in the park, so this summer we decided robots would invade Spring Lake Park.

How would people react to seeing robots in the park? Would they interact with them? Would they move or manipulate them, or remove any of their parts? Would they walk by them without noticing them whatsoever? 

Well, we learned a lot. First, check out our bots.

For the past few months, we met and built.

We used all sorts of materials for the bots, but mostly things we would’ve thrown away. Cardboard boxes, old electronics parts. 

We had a box of knobs and dials that once lived on washers, dryers and ovens. We used tons of aluminum foil and duct tape.

We made huge messes. Of our workspace and ourselves ;). 

The bots came together nicely. This was after the second marathon workday. And soon, they were ready for deployment.

There is no dignified way for Gigantor to travel.

October 30 - Halloween Eve - was a gorgeous day. The perfect day to deploy our robots. We met in the park at 4:30 a.m. so we could get them installed before the morning walkers and joggers arrived. We asked the parks director to let the police know so we wouldn’t get arrested or questioned for carrying around large shiny objects in the park at 4:30 a.m., but nobody drove by… at all. No wonder. It was 4:30.

And here are the bots.

Spongebot and his dog played fetch. Please note that his dog is not on a leash. You just can’t trust a robot. From what we gather, these two met a rather unfortunate fate. More about that later.

After installing them in darkness, we had breakfast and then went back after the sun rose to photograph our handiwork. The goose bot was located on the island, but we saw a group of people approach the island with giant cameras for a photo shoot. Goose bot was tossed on his side behind a tree, so we saved him and gave him a new home elsewhere in the park.

One person pulled up and sat in her car right in front of Spongebot and his unleashed dog. We never saw her get out of the car. She was on her cell phone and looking at him accusingly, so we’re afraid she may have reported him for not leashing his dog at the park.

We left, interested to see what would happen.

At about 10 a.m., a photographer friend of ours went to the park to take photos of the bots that will probably end up being way better than the photos in this post. But I digress. He sent me a text that said there were cops all over the park. Uh oh. But we’d gotten permission from the parks director and asked him to let the police know, so I figured it was either unrelated to us or a child had managed to hurt himself playing with a robot somehow.

Nope. A few minutes later, I got a call from the photographer. The sergeant wanted to talk to me about the project. They saw the photographer taking pics of the bots and figured he knew what was going on.

I quickly learned that:

• The police said they didn’t know we were going to be there, and
• They were very close to calling a bomb squad in to investigate.

Great! Our friendly robots were now scaring people into thinking terrorists wanted to blow up Spring Lake Park. Unfortunately the police had already carted a couple of our poor bots off before the photographer intervened. I believe that’s what happened to Spongebot and his dog, judging by pictures other folks took later. Maybe more. 

Unfortunately we picked a great time to install the bots - the day after an attempted terrorist attack, where the suspicious packages involved had components that vaguely resembled some of our robots. If we had paid attention to the news Friday, we would have thought a little harder about this. The wires sticking out of our robots scared the police (and whoever called them). And they found the map we’d created to plan out where we were going to install the bots, which also alarmed them.

I told the sergeant that we had permission to do the project, the robots were all in fun, and they would not be exploding. The police did not return the bots they had already taken away, but they did disperse. 

And the robots were left for public viewing. We weren’t able to hang out in the park all day, but we got reports from several friends who visited the bots. They took pictures.

Some of the bots moved. The huge one who sat on a bench overlooking the park ended up lounging on the grass. The leaning bot and her little friend ended up sitting on the ground together. A couple of bots lost their eyes, their propellors, and other various parts. One lost his eyes, which reappeared in a later photo. Our informants told us some people walked past without batting an eye, others gawked, and others approached apprehensively but then enjoyed them. I was happy to hear that nobody appeared frightened or terrified of them.

We’re going back today to bring the bots - or what’s left of them - home. We’ll try to get photographs of the state they’re in when we find them and report back.

We had permission, so I’m not sure if the term guerrilla applies to our art, but this experience did teach us a few things about subversive art. There are so many things that can affect a project that you don’t think to factor in when you’re in the planning stages, such as folks thinking you’re terrorists who are trying to blow up a park. It never occurred to us that our robots would look like bombs or frighten anyone, but unfortunately there’s always that potential, and it’s something we need to consider when we’re planning future unannounced public art projects. 

We hope you enjoyed our robots. Have a happy Halloween!