DORK

BOT

Warehouse of wild, weird, and wonderful projects. By David Pescovitz

Photography by (clockwise from top): Saul Albert, Douglas Repetto, courtesy of Karen Marcelo, courtesy of Karen Marcelo, Douglas Repetto, Douglas Repetto, Douglas Repetto, courtesy of Karen Marcelo, Douglas Repetto

“I feel like I should watch out for attacking robots, explosions, or giant electrical sparks,” said a waiter at a small San Francisco café called Farley’s as he approached a group of coffeehouse patrons I was chatting with. It may sound like an odd comment, until you consider the company I was keeping.

I had visited the joint to interview Karen Marcelo, a computer programmer and member of Survival Research Laboratories, the robotic art performance group. Karen runs Dorkbot-SF, a semi-monthly confab where engineers, artists, and designers informally present their work, critique each other’s efforts, share technical tips, and drink lots of beer. The motto of Dorkbot-SF, a spin-off of the original Dorkbot-NY, is “people doing strange things with electricity.”

“Dorkbot is like informal peer review,” Marcelo says. “The work you present doesn’t have to be finished. It might even just be an idea that you want feedback on.”

By the time Marcelo and I arrived at Farley’s, Eric Paulos, another Survival Research Laboratories veteran and machine-art provocateur, was typing away at a scientific paper based on his “urban computing” work at Intel Research. Tesla-coil maestro Greg Leyh, who had just knocked off from his day job designing power converters at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, was reminiscing with Paulos about their victory at the recent Power Tool Drag Races, an annual event where “chopped chainsaws and supercharged speed wrenches go head-to-head down 50 feet of drag strip.”

Maker

Karen Marcelo

Make: 47