Boston Dynamics' SPOT robot rebuilt from e-waste and salvaged parts and painted death white. It's the Luisón from Paraguay, the cursed seventh son who turns into a pale death creature every Friday. If he touches you, you're gone, even in the afterlife.
Wooden legs with steel rod feet. A laser cut head with old amp gauges for eyes. The body is covered in hard drives, circuit boards and RAM, dead tech under the paint. Everything is sprayed Montana Shock White so it all looks like one creature, and you can still see what each part was. A few bits of Shock Red, for what it turns into.
It leans 5 degrees off straight, and that makes people uneasy without knowing why. It isn't Friday yet, but Friday comes every week. In daylight it just stands there and waits.
WHAT WATCHES ALSO CORRUPTS
August 2025. I was watching the Boston Dynamics videos where the engineers kick SPOT to see if it gets back up. I was vegan at the time and I felt sorry for it, this thing that isn't an animal and isn't just a machine, not alive and not dead, with its wires showing like wounds.
Straight away I thought of Arsenio, an older Ayoreo man on my family's ranch in Paraguay. He taught me to read the land through Guaraní stories. Odd tree shapes were mala visión, bad omens. Whistling meant the Pombero was near. Howling at night was the Luisón. These were tools people had built up over hundreds of years for knowing what's out there and what spreads when it touches you.
The Luisón doesn't just kill you. "Hace imposible la vida del más allá", he makes the afterlife impossible. What watches also corrupts. What touches also spreads.
Arsenio was describing being watched long before McLuhan wrote about it. I downloaded SPOT drawings with no real plan and started cutting legs out of wood, and it came together while I built: being watched works the same way, whether it's a story or a robot.
A SPOT walking down a city street does the job the Luisón story did in the village. The difference is you can't see it. An algorithm watches everyone in a way the Luisón could only do with fear. You never know if it's on, if it's recording, if someone's watching.
“The Luisón kept people in line. Behave, or something's watching. Every culture does this. It used to be a story, now it's a robot.”
THE 5° TILT
Three weeks in, it started leaning 5 degrees on its own from the weight. I could have fixed it. I left it, because the wrong angle felt right. Something caught between two worlds shouldn't stand straight.
People feel it's off without knowing why. It's not broken, just a bit wrong.
The neck came from a garage sale: a head mount off a land surveying tripod, the bit that lets the instrument turn and scan the land. Only after I'd built it did I look up what it was for, measuring and controlling land. A surveying tool became the neck the Luisón looks around with. I couldn't have planned that.
It just sits there, like a SPOT at the edge of your vision or the Ring camera on your neighbour's porch. You don't know if it's on. It changes how you act anyway.
That's what this piece is about: seeing what's going on and not being able to do anything about it.
Old amp gauges for eyes. They look like sensors and like real eyes at the same time. Switched off, tilted, watching.
Side view. Circuit boards, RAM and old PC case parts showing through the white paint, with the Shock Red cylinder and the head mount. What watches also corrupts. Friday comes every week.
From the side. Hard drives drilled and screwed onto a wooden frame, motherboards layered on like skin, wooden legs with steel rod feet. Not an animal, not a machine, stuck somewhere in between.
SPOT in death white, rebuilt from e-waste. Montana Shock White over hard drives, circuit boards and RAM, with a bit of Shock Red for when Friday comes. It leans 5 degrees. Not broken, just a bit wrong.
Materials: Salvaged wood, steel rods, e-waste (hard drives, circuit boards, RAM), old amp gauges, a surveying tripod head mount, Montana Shock White and Shock Red spray paint
Stance: Four legs, leaning 5 degrees off straight
Body: A wooden box for the body. Upper legs cut from wood on the scroll saw, lower legs are steel rods. Hard drives drilled, screwed and glued onto the frame with Liquid Nails. Motherboards and RAM layered on top like skin.
Head: A laser cut wooden box with old amp gauges for eyes. Old PC case parts make the skull.
Neck: The head mount off a land surveying tripod, found at a garage sale. Only after did I look up what it was for: measuring land.
Paint: Montana Shock White over everything, thin enough that you can still see the circuit traces and hard drive labels. Shock Red on some of the mechanical parts.
The lean: It started leaning on its own from the weight in week three. I left it.
Status: Standing in the workshop, tilted, watching. Friday comes every week.
Context in Series
#8 of 12, the lowest point of the series. The grenades were about violence going round and round. This one is about being watched.
Arsenio knew how being watched works long before McLuhan wrote it down. I'm not making it romantic though. The Luisón was also a way to keep people in line. Every culture does it, with a story or with a robot.
It leans 5 degrees and makes people uneasy. Friday comes every week, and you never know when it's switched on. This is where seeing it all and not being able to do anything hits hardest. After this, Signal Seeker starts to turn things around.