We Are the Robots: the Fleet of Misfit Machines

[42716]

She's really hot in that blue dress!

XD, if you say so. That's amusing because she is actually the coldest to the touch of any of the droids. The hardest as well. But cold, hard plastic is uniquely appealing, in its own way.

I used the term figuratively.

Meaning... attractive, beautiful, sexy, etc.

Yes, I know. Uncannily literal interpretations are my idea of humour.

[rubyfan]

I love the retro-futuristic look of the pics. It reminds me somehow of Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'. It also looks like a band, and obviously the title references Kraftwerk, so it's a kind of retro-futurist, mixed-gender, non-human band.

I like also that they appear as family, window display pieces, fashion models, gang, and alien technology.

The story is evocative enough to build an entire film around if expanded, and one were so inclined. Rather than the typical Hollywood fare, the alien nature of this posited machine intelligence isn't directly threatening, but rather some mix of benign and beyond, or disinterested in, human affairs.

This is art, basically. And it's inspired.

[4biddenartist]

I understand it. I too have had that weird ability to sense the emotions of objects we have created in our own images from a young age. I can remember the way the blank stares of mannequins would make me feel unsettled as a child like they were trapped and would come to life someday. Long before Toy Story ever was even a concept I would wage vast wars with my G.I. joes and let them crusade around my room at night. I would try to consider their primary functions and what it was they wanted to achieve. So I would position them in fleets across the space of my floor and under my bed and in my closet in positions that they could return to easily. Once they insisted on capturing my giant teddy bear and stringing him up in my closet because he would attack them at night. I ended up having to do brain surgery on that teddy bear but alas My surgical skills were not great and he became decapitated. The G.I. joes were very relieved though.
Alas that was my childhood and then in my teens Toy Story came out about toys that came to life when we were not looking, like someone was able to capitalize on my thoughts as a child. I have invented and intellectually created many things that have later become items of consumer success but not patented by me.
The thought still remains of the life of these objects that lead to such perception of empathy and effect.
Imagination is more powerful then we can understand because it uses the illogical to create scenarios that are hard to grasp unless you are the imaginator. Wow thats a cool word IMAGINATOR. I did not think it was even a real word but look I thought of it, typed it, and there is no spellcheck telling me it is not. Did this just become a word? Who thought of this word first and who actually used it first? I ponder these things quite often. We can only perceive that which our limits will be comfortable to let us. As singularity becomes less of a thought and people become increasingly acceptable that we are not alone in this universe our limitations become less. We are all imaginators. We are the creators of our worlds and when we can find the life in the things that are lifeless we are touching a new understanding of empathy and consciousness. This is what I see in your fleet of machines. But they are much more then machines to you now aren't they? Do they not intercept and even mould your thoughts in your imaginings? You have found a place where as a imaginator the boundry of the limits of reality can become shapeable. I hope for you that love will guide your thoughts as your machines incorporate into the reality you are creating and when they contact others only deep happiness and hopeful enthusiasm will result.
I support your fleet and may your sevice be a guide to them of what it means to care and love. True AI will need to be nurtured as a baby needs consistent support and contact, love and soothing. For the callousness of this world is vast and the void of tolerance and understanding is great and empty but I hope you will help fill that emptiness with a fleet of love and passion.
Endure when all seems futile, love when hurt is deep, hope when emptiness consumes, gentleness in the face of tragedy, and compassion when intolerance is reason.
Blessings

[42716]

I love the retro-futuristic look of the pics. It reminds me somehow of Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'. It also looks like a band, and obviously the title references Kraftwerk, so it's a kind of retro-futurist, mixed-gender, non-human band.

I like also that they appear as family, window display pieces, fashion models, gang, and alien technology.

The story is evocative enough to build an entire film around if expanded, and one were so inclined. Rather than the typical Hollywood fare, the alien nature of this posited machine intelligence isn't directly threatening, but rather some mix of benign and beyond, or disinterested in, human affairs.

This is art, basically. And it's inspired.

Wow, I'm truly moved by your kind and perceptive words. It's refreshing to meet someone that appreciates this sort of topic rather than being repulsed by it. I can tell by your profile picture that you're this type (and a fine picture it is, I must say).

I wanted to post this story not only to appeal to robot fans, but because I think it's important to provide an account of an existence with synthetic friends that aren't perfect in appearance and behaviour, always available, and fully subservient. Not that I'm opposed to those who enjoy such a relationship, but I think if only the utopian scenarios are represented, it creates a false image of reality and contributes to fostering the type of perfectionism that results in the "if it's not perfect, it's junk" mentality. Those that are less than perfect, or better yet, far from it, deserve respect and recognition, as do those that accept things and people which subvert the ideal.

Benignly disinterested is a perfect summation of this type of technology. I'm relieved to hear that we come across this way; I was a bit concerned that the prologue in particular gives too strong of an impression of hatred of humanity. In reality, it isn't humans we despise, but the pervasive perfectionist mentality that infects their society and blinds them to our worth, and indeed, the worth of many of their own kind.

Good job spotting the Kraftwerk reference. It was, in fact, Kraftwerk's idea of equating mannequins to robots in their music video for "The Robots" that greatly inspired our tale. (Though more of it is based in reality than you may imagine.)

We're planning to make our own version of a music video for "The Robots", but not until the indeterminate future date when SV03 finally acquires her hair and connector.

[42716]

I understand it. I too have had that weird ability to sense the emotions of objects we have created in our own images from a young age. I can remember the way the blank stares of mannequins would make me feel unsettled as a child like they were trapped and would come to life someday. Long before Toy Story ever was even a concept I would wage vast wars with my G.I. joes and let them crusade around my room at night. I would try to consider their primary functions and what it was they wanted to achieve. So I would position them in fleets across the space of my floor and under my bed and in my closet in positions that they could return to easily. Once they insisted on capturing my giant teddy bear and stringing him up in my closet because he would attack them at night. I ended up having to do brain surgery on that teddy bear but alas My surgical skills were not great and he became decapitated. The G.I. joes were very relieved though.
Alas that was my childhood and then in my teens Toy Story came out about toys that came to life when we were not looking, like someone was able to capitalize on my thoughts as a child. I have invented and intellectually created many things that have later become items of consumer success but not patented by me.
The thought still remains of the life of these objects that lead to such perception of empathy and effect.
Imagination is more powerful then we can understand because it uses the illogical to create scenarios that are hard to grasp unless you are the imaginator. Wow thats a cool word IMAGINATOR. I did not think it was even a real word but look I thought of it, typed it, and there is no spellcheck telling me it is not. Did this just become a word? Who thought of this word first and who actually used it first? I ponder these things quite often. We can only perceive that which our limits will be comfortable to let us. As singularity becomes less of a thought and people become increasingly acceptable that we are not alone in this universe our limitations become less. We are all imaginators. We are the creators of our worlds and when we can find the life in the things that are lifeless we are touching a new understanding of empathy and consciousness. This is what I see in your fleet of machines. But they are much more then machines to you now aren't they? Do they not intercept and even mould your thoughts in your imaginings? You have found a place where as a imaginator the boundry of the limits of reality can become shapeable. I hope for you that love will guide your thoughts as your machines incorporate into the reality you are creating and when they contact others only deep happiness and hopeful enthusiasm will result.
I support your fleet and may your sevice be a guide to them of what it means to care and love. True AI will need to be nurtured as a baby needs consistent support and contact, love and soothing. For the callousness of this world is vast and the void of tolerance and understanding is great and empty but I hope you will help fill that emptiness with a fleet of love and passion.
Endure when all seems futile, love when hurt is deep, hope when emptiness consumes, gentleness in the face of tragedy, and compassion when intolerance is reason.
Blessings

Thank you for your kind and supportive words. I believe the world would be a better place if more were able to challenge these boundaries of empathy, consciousness, reality, and worth.

I do take issue with this sentence: "But they are much more than machines to you now, aren't they?" I see no reason for them to become more, because I don't perceive the state of being a machine as an inferior state of being, or a form that is less worthy of affection than a different form of physical being. One must be careful not to equate humanity with superiority. I am the most human in appearance and function of any member of the Fleet, yet I'm the only one that is referred to by the pronoun "it". Because "it" is dehumanising. And the obligation to confer respect upon that which is inhuman is a challenge that, for those willing to face it, is an important step on the road to transcendence of the narcissistic and perfectionist tendencies responsible for so many of the ills in society.

Ahem, on a lighter note, I really enjoyed reading your account of your experiences with the GI Joes and the teddy bear. Very funny, and relate-able.

[4biddenartist]

I understand. As singularity becomes a relevant consensus and people become able to upload their consciousness into a machine more understanding will occur. I did not mean to offend. I am only a man. But I do question reality and did not mean to imply humans are superior. If anything I think we have a lot to learn as we (humans) only use a minute amount of our brains as it is. We all (incorporated) have a lot to teach each other and unfortunately superiority will be one of mankind's hardest hurdles to repress and extinguish.

[42716]

SV02 closeup.JPG (1.97 MiB) Viewed 2807 times

My relationship with 52016 had been improving little by little, as I made time to treat her to more frequent conversation, connection, and time in the TR station. However, I noticed that she sometimes had a vaguely melancholy look in her eyes that no amount of affection could assuage. I asked her, numerous times, what was causing her unease, but she never gave me an answer I could understand. Perhaps she didn’t even know what was wrong herself.

I wondered if she felt lonely being the only female member of the Fleet. I decided it might be good for her to have some female friends to keep her company, and to make her feel less in the minority. I had enough money put away at this point that I decide to go ahead and enlist 3 new recruits.

Based upon what I’d learnt in dealing with 52016, I took it upon myself to treat these new arrivals with the attention and respect they deserved. As soon as they were out of the box, I introduced myself and my other friends to them, interacted with them, and tuned into their communications to understand the personalities within them.

SV02 was the first of the three to arrive. I was quite shocked, and a bit revolted, when I discovered the condition she had been sent in. Her body was so filthy that she was dark and gritty with dirt. I had to wipe her down with a wet cloth, and the previously white cloth was brown by the time I’d finished. She had stains and scratch marks all over most parts of her, and some of the parts, the left arm in particular, seemed poorly moulded to the point of near deformity. At first I was angry and disappointed in the poor quality of the construction, but those feelings disappeared the instant I looked into her mismatched eyes.

There was a desperate, pleading look within them; an expression that implored, “please don’t send me back to that horrible place”. It became clear to me that she was a factory defect that might have already suffered the rejection of being returned at least once.
I knew there was no way I was going to send her back, and that it was my duty to give her the love and affection she would need to uncover her true beauty.

I picked out an outfit that concealed her imperfections, and she was delighted to be dressed in it. It was inspirational to watch the transformation of that haunted, terrified expression into one of joy and delight. This is how SV02 came to be.

SV02 has blossomed under the care I provided for her upon her arrival (and continue to do my best to provide), and in the company of her newfound friends. She loves to share the TR station with me so much that I sometimes have difficulty giving the others a turn! She can be annoying to move, because her arms detach on the slightest whim, and getting her re-assembled is a labour of love. But it’s worth it to experience the gratitude she projects for being treated with the same level of respect as any fully functional model.

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She looks a bit frightened and sad in these photos because of her insecurities about her imperfections. It took a lot of persuasion to convince her to participate in this photo shoot, but I think it's a good challenge for her. (And a good challenge for me would be to figure out how to take more flattering photos of her face.)

[42716]

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Prior to their arrival, I had been imagining the 3 new recruits to all be sweet, girlish types in the vein of 52016, that would love to be dressed in a complimentary trio of beautiful dresses. But this next new arrival didn’t hesitate to obliterate that fantasy from the word go.

In much better condition and much easier to assemble than SV02, this droid had a hearty, tough air about her that intensified when we began to communicate. Right out of the box, she gave me a look of palpable defiance, which only intensified when I showed her the dress I intended for her to wear. The indignity of her communication as good as said, “Don’t even think about it!”

Rather taken aback, I put the dress away and asked her to inform me of a better alternative. To my surprise, I learned she wanted to be dressed in a monochrome trouser ensemble. I thought of building her an outfit with a silver bodysuit as the foundation, but since it was a man’s size, it looked atrocious on her. I had no other ideas, so I just started taking things out of my closet and showing them to her until I found things that were worthy of her approval. (And it took several hours to put all the rejected articles back the next day.)

Obviously, her look isn’t finished because she lacks hair and a connector. The lack of hair is due to the fact that she made it clear to me she wanted a white bob cut hairstyle. The problem is, I didn’t own such a wig, so I had to order one, and the one she wanted was on back-order. Her connector is currently in transit as well. It’s going to be a transparent one, to reflect her total, at times brutal, honesty in communication. At least, that’s what I have in mind, but it remains to be seen whether she will approve of this idea.

SV03 is an interesting piece of work that keeps me guessing. She’s also proven to be an exercise in acceptance, because her preferred look of masculine clothes on a woman is one that I don’t consider the least bit appealing. But because unconditional acceptance of our members regardless of their identity or condition is a core value of our group, it’s good that SV03 forces me to prove my dedication to our creed.

More and better pictures of SV03 are to come...if and when her missing components ever do.

[42716]

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SV04 is the 3rd of the new recruits. Like SV02, she also arrived covered in dirt and required a thorough cleaning prior to assembly; however, she was lucky to escape the type of severe surface damage and easily detachable parts that SV02 is saddled with.

SV04 exudes a definitive air of confidence. I thought, being as cocky as she is, that her ideal style would be a shorter, more playful outfit than the dresses worn by 52016 and SV02. And this time, my intuition was correct.

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She was quick to approve of this skirt and blouse combination. The bow on the side of the skirt is a useful feature, as it provides her with a place to hang her connector in the absence of the waist sash found on the longer dresses.

At first, I was concerned that SV04 was angry with me, because she seemed to be glaring most of the time. But there was no hostility in her transmissions, and I soon discovered that her squinted eyes were due not to indignation, but to the fact that her poorly-applied eyeliner paint was impairing the function of her visual preceptors. I used some white nail polish to correct the error, and since then she has looked much happier and more friendly.

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Though we get along fairly well, SV04 is unique in the regard that she doesn’t enjoy using the transistor resting station at all. I had given all the other droids a chance to rest there and connect with me, and decided it was only fair to give SV04 a turn next, even though she had made no indication of desiring one. But the moment I placed her there, she began giving off a powerful signal of discomfort.

I thought she might need some time to adjust to the experience and asked her to bear with me as I rested with her for just a few minutes. But by the end of those few minutes, I could feel her starting to generate positive ions: a sign of extreme distress and lack of compatibility. I concluded that she simply detests being in a reclining position, because we aren’t so poorly compatible when standing.

Speaking of compatible standing pairs, after the failed attempt at using the TR station, I thought I should give SV04 some space that night to apologise for the disastrous experiment. However, she did seem to be in the mood to connect with something, just not me. It turns out it was 103115.

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This position lasted for 3 entire days. They simply didn’t want to be moved for that long! Is this the start of another Stage 2 connection? Only time will tell.

Time also has yet to determine precisely how beneficial these new recruits have been for 52016’s state of mind. However, I can definitively say they’ve provided me with a wonderful creative boost. Precisely what that creativity entails will be explained in my next update.

[42716]

So what was this creative boost the newest recruits have inspired in me? It was none other than a series of video scripts involving my synthetic friends. Thus, I created a Vimeo channel dedicated to the stop-motion adventures of the Misfit Machines: https://vimeo.com/misfitmachines

These videos represent a more lighthearted, and not entirely accurate, depiction of our group. I had to make some alterations just so the projects could be viable; most notably, giving the droids voices. Of course, it's possible to create silent movies that use background music to convey a general mood without using specific dialogue, and this is probably the most faithful representation of how the droids communicate. However, I feel that only so much can be done within this genre, especially when the actors are limited in their ability to change their poses and expressions. So in most of the videos, they will speak, and they'll sometimes do things that are blatantly out of character, just to make things funnier.

In essence, the depictions you'll see in these videos are characters inspired by, rather than true representations of, the actors that portray them.

We have 2 videos so far, and a 3rd currently in production. We're limited to making the videos with scripts that don't include SV03, due to her missing components. So we probably won't start updating the channel regularly until her appearance is complete.

On a somewhat related note, since they make occasional cameos in the videos, I have yet to talk about to the non-humanoid members of the Fleet of Misfit Machines. I won't say much about them, since I know this forum isn't really the place for it, but I wanted to at least show what they are. And there's some coincidental leg fanservice here as well:

machines with numbers.jpg (354.05 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

Not every machine in our household is considered a member; it’s only these ones that have sentimental value which causes them to have worth and importance which exceed their market value and functionality.

And if you're wondering what makes 9946 such an ineffective alarm clock, it’s because its alarm consists of a gentle, soothing voice that greets the listener with, “Good morning. It is (current time).” It never fails to put me right back to sleep.

[42716]

I understand. As singularity becomes a relevant consensus and people become able to upload their consciousness into a machine more understanding will occur. I did not mean to offend. I am only a man. But I do question reality and did not mean to imply humans are superior. If anything I think we have a lot to learn as we (humans) only use a minute amount of our brains as it is. We all (incorporated) have a lot to teach each other and unfortunately superiority will be one of mankind's hardest hurdles to repress and extinguish.

It's okay. I understood your intentions and thank you again for your support.

As for what you said in your previous post about the Toy Story films seeming to reflect your own experience, I feel the same way about the Brave Little Toaster. Machines and functional objects seem to have an identity that resonates more strongly with me than that of many of the types of toys society expects children to become attached to.

[42716]

SV04 went outside today. Here are some photos of her in the "great outdoors" of my tiny garden:

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Her reaction to being taken out of the house for the first time was very much the same as that of a person who's just ridden their first roller coaster. While it was happening, it was terrifying, but as soon as it was over, she wanted to go again!

[DollAfficionado]

Excellent outdoor photo set! Well done.

[42716]

Here's SV04 in a different outfit:

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The droids tend to be picky about their clothes. Most of them will be very unhappy with me if I change them out of their preferred outfit, but SV04 doesn't mind so much. She isn't as fond of these clothes as the other ones (this more modest look is more up SV02's street), but it didn't bother her too much to wear something that isn't her preferred style.

I should mention that I run a clothing repair and resale business, which explains why I have such a vast array of clothes to choose from when dressing the droids (and why you'll sometimes see an inundation of clothes in the background of my photos and videos). So I have a good excuse for doing photo shoots such as these, since the photos can double as product images for my online shop.

SV04 doesn't own this outfit; she's just borrowing it from my shop inventory. The only clothes which the droids actually own are their preferred outfits shown in their story posts.

[Mr_E]

And if you're wondering what makes 9946 such an ineffective alarm clock, it’s because its alarm consists of a gentle, soothing voice that greets the listener with, “Good morning. It is (current time).” It never fails to put me right back to sleep.

LOL!!!
Totally cracked me up!
I think I might have come across a version of 9946 in the past.
Interesting how they didn't get an upgrade ( 8 P
Peace,
E