I love some of the art that people are making with bots. This one, called Coke Is It, finds a hexapod walker traipsing around a gallery sucking up puddles of Coca-Cola that it finds on the floor. It then sprays the corrosive sugar-water all over itself. Over time, the Coke eats through the “skin” of the various components and into its sensitive circuitry, and then it’s lights out for little Johnny-5, or in this case, C3 (a reference to C2, Coke’s new low-carb can of caramel sugar-water).
This slow-mo destruction of circuitry through liquid reminds me of one of the more amazing stories from WWII. Legend has it that Polish slave labor, put to work by the Nazis at Peenemünde to build V-2 rockets, would pee on the control electronics they were working on when their guards weren’t looking. By the time the rockets had been assembled and sent to the launch pads, the urine had corroded the innards and many of the rockets malfunctioned. I don’t know if this is an apocryphal story or not, but this kind of ingenuity (and bravery and selflessness) is always inspiring.
[Via we-make-money-not-art]
