𝖗𝖚𝖗

Within the framework of the project, I researched the robot - human connection and implemented in a visual form the RUR in full R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, drama in three acts by Karel Čapek, published in 1920 and performed in 1921. My motivation was to research and understand more specifically the robot and human connection/relationship.
The main reason for my choice of this subject is the problem of contemporary man, who performs their duties with robots and this causes a fail in social and moral terms. The reason of decline and lack of living relationships in real space is the robotic world. Our relationships take place in a virtual space and our work is done by robots, our companions are humanoid robots and almost everything we use it has been digitised. I am thinking of music, fine arts, children's toys, household items, factories, various entertainment equipment. We became two-legged humanoid robots with not much effort and it’s consuming us. I was raised in a small town where there is no gap between man and nature. As I traveled the world I realised people are living half or completely in the virtual world. We have almost fully entrusted ourselves to a machine, we keep money virtually, we

do jobs virtually, above which we can play God. As an ostrich in the sand, we put our heads in the world of technology to distract ourselves from the real issues that we face in the real life. They do the job for us, and man becomes redundant, losing his true humanity. I find it interesting that in the 1920s a work was written that defined the themes of several genres for decades, and which Karel Čapek, who lived at that time, thought he had dreamed of an utopian world. That seems to happen now, same like George Orwell with 1994 and the CCTVs all around.

R.U.R was presented first in 1921 in Czechoslovakia and it ended up very quickly in the cinema and TV. The first “full length movie” was presented in 1935 in the Soviet Union, and then the English BBC produced a 35 minutes TV version, that became the very first science fiction movie ever made.

The RUR robot evolution history, character sketch, and materials used were preceded by long research work. I considered the anatomy of the man and some so-called robot anatomy, I am thinking of Charles M Berggren- anatomy of a Robot. By assessing what I saw and studying the appearance of humanoid robots and other robots in the world, I made my own robots so I can visually show their evolutions.

In the first act we get to know the history of the factory of Rossums brothers, a factory that is creating artificial humanoid robots. They are producing humanlike robots for two reasons: for bigger manpower and less investment. Because of the amount of robots they created they need to make a strict birth control. The conductors of the factory are wooded, greedy people. One day Helena arrives, originally as a robot rights activist who moves in the factory and she also brings some emotional line in the story. I’ve built a baby robot with some skin similarities to summarise the era of the beginning of robotic world.

The second chapter is happening 10years later. Helena and one of the director of the factory are already married. Even though their relationship turns into harmony, in the robot society fatal things starts to happen. Helena is also becoming wooded and fatigued. From the girl with lot of willpower and life energy, the only sentimental person from the first chapter becomes a protagonist. She starts to show fake emotions and becomes pity, completely assimilating in the old system. Meantime the whole world is falling apart around her. The society built on robots work system starts to fall apart and that kind of civilisation becomes a nightmare. A robot called Radius is an experiment who they developed to have feelings so this way Radius becames partially human. With his leadership the whole robot society starts a revolution and they starts to exercise the same pressure on human what they got reciprocal in the past. The robots consider humans weak because their emotions are controlling them. So the robots decided

they wont serve for a weaker power. I visualised this chapter in a form of a woman who still has some fancy jewellery symbolically for the past, and some humanoid parts but in meantime is falling apart and hanging from places or leaning.

The end of the story indicates a dilemma: the robots who destroy humanity, the ones who have real human emotions but still they cant reproduce and they cant take care of themselves so their devastation is certain: on other hand, the humanity who already

sentenced itself to death by the total reduction in the number of births, practically doesn’t exists anymore. To avoid the total damage and total tragedy, the writer twisted

the story in an interesting way: two robots, Primus, and Helena’s robotic prototype fall in love with each other and they head away to a brave new world. I tried to formulate the robotic love in my third piece. Half robot half human with a shiny heart inside which symbolises the beautiful new world which has to come. This piece overall has a lot of metaphors and in the same time has a very serious warning.