Tag Archives: robots

The Robot Book is the latest creation from Brooklyn-based artist and photographer Thomas Jackson (previously). It’s actually the culmination of a larger photo project he completed last year which follows dreamlike story of a lone robot in a post-apocalyptic future, carrying on the day-to-day menial tasks of life. The book is constructed from sheet metal, salvaged wood, and is embedded with an antenna (!) and other electrical components. It contains 24 giclée-printed photographs and 7 giclée-printed illustrations by Jackson.

When I began this project three years ago, I didn’t know I was making a book. The plan was to create a series of staged photographs addressing a set of themes that interested me, among them our culture’s obsession with hard work and our less-than-harmonious relationship with the natural world. Composed in narrative form, in the manner of a medieval tapestry or altarpiece, the pictures would tell the story of a solitary robot’s last days in a post-apocalyptic place. But when I completed the images in late 2010, the project felt unfinished. The story seemed to need one last narrative twist. The answer, I came to realize, was a book. A book that was itself an artifact from the world I’d created in the pictures. A combination of organic, manufactured and mechanical components, it would be the sort of thing the robot himself might have made. The result is a mixed media mash-up that’s part sculpture, part graphic novel, part photo book and part gadget—an inscrutable relic long lost in an apocryphal future.

If you’re interested in obtaining a copy (a limited edition of 11) you can contact the artist directly via his web site.