Obsolete Obsolescence

_This project is heavily inspired by the fiction cartoon "Wall-E" and my personal interest in collecting used electronics._

I was hunting for some cool "e-waste" at the UW Surplus, the official resale point for all unwanted items from the UW department, and quickly intrigued by one of the "CD players" in a pile of large and old audio & video equipment. That machine, covered by a satin lavender finish and touch of rose gold in its front panel, stands different from the rest equipment. I took it up from the shelf, lifted up the tray cover and clearly the thing is not in a working shape: huge empty space under the hood with visible cables wring in between, there is also a leaning wheel looking that the powering gear out of place. "Its like earthquake inside" I thought, "but perfect for my art piece". With over 3 dollars, I took it to my workplace.

I showed my machine to the instructors, and when I referred the machine as "CD Player", he was startled, checked the machine for a while and asked "Are you sure this is a CD Player, not a VHS Machine?"

"VHS Machine?"

"What is a VHS, is it the other name of 'video cassette'?"

Questions popping up from my mind. The machine, now connected with a totally unfamiliar and unexpected name, emits an undeniable force, pulling me toward another world, a world that ceased to exist before I was born, a world that is bulky and dated, static noise and snowflake in my memory, a world that capsuled all colorful, joyful, and wonderful memories in video tapes.

My project path changed from the moment, I started to explore the iteration of machines and technologies and what happened when they were abandoned. I did research on what VHS tape is, how it is developed, adopted, and discarded. I watched videos and read posts about the giant industry of tape renting behind it: similar to the streaming service we have now, but also more humanized and connected to community. Many say that they remember the friendly salesperson in the tape shop, but no one will say they miss that one customer service representative from Netflix. The VHS machine and the world behind it consists many interesting stories and people's memories, but they irreversibly get lost in the advance of technology.

I learned the concept "sentient robot" from the instructor. Which are machines that can think and feel like a human. It is exactly what I'm trying to achieve - turning the VHS machine into a humanized robot, that is abandoned by the world but still has its last hope of keeping up.

From the moment I saw how the tape tray in VHS machine moves, I thought about Wall-E. The little waste management machine who is doing works that nobody cares, and in a place where human already left. Now I discovered that the VHS machine is in the exact same situation, where the world it belongs to has already been left over, and its function is not needed by people anymore.

I built the machine around the concept of "obsolete", "sentient", and "hope". I coded the robot so that it does some pointless routine works when nobody is nearby; and when someone is close, it waves at you and makes noise to catch your attention. Then it presents you something it determined as advanced, hoping that it can still serve a purpose after abandoned by the world. I set the "something" to be a CD disc, which not only represents that I misidentified it as a CD player, but also adds a conflict by the fact that what is considered as advanced is also obsoleted for many years. This double layer of obsolescence is also where I come up with the name of this project. After installed, the iridescent light beams of the CD disc add another bright stroke to the aesthetic of the project.

Just before I finished my build, I decided to try and add some audio feedback to the machine. With just over 20 minutes (including 10 minutes trying to find a proper speaker), I managed to make it buzz when doing its routine job and do a "ta-da" opening sound when it want to present the CD to someone. And this turned out to be the best 20 minutes I spent. The buzzing sound makes the robot so much lively and the "ta-da" sound strongly emphasized its excitement when presenting the CD. Also, in a gallery setting where lighting condition is complex, adding some audio cue can help grab the audiences' attention and remind them what is going on with the project.