Boston Dynamics' SPOT surveillance robot reconstructed from e-waste and salvaged materials, painted death-white, embodying Paraguayan myth of Luisón—the cursed seventh son who transforms every Friday into a pale death-creature corrupting souls through contact.
Wooden legs with steel rod feet. Laser-cut head housing vintage amperage gauges as eyes. Body layered with hard drives, circuit boards, RAM—technological corpses visible beneath mythological skin. Montana Shock White unifies salvaged materials whilst maintaining component legibility. Shock Red accents signal dormant transformation capacity.
Stands intentionally tilted 5° from perpendicular, triggering uncanny valley discomfort. Friday isn't here, but Friday comes weekly. The curse waits in daylight, visible but not activated.
WHAT WATCHES ALSO CORRUPTS
August 2025: Watching Boston Dynamics engineers kick SPOT in testing videos—striking robot to test recovery systems. I felt genuine empathy for this thing caught between states: not animal, not machine, neither alive nor dead. Exposed circuitry like wounds.
Arsenio surfaced immediately. The older Ayoreo man who taught environmental navigation through Guaraní mythology at my family's ranch in Paraguay. His teachings weren't superstition but pattern recognition—odd tree shapes indicated mala visión (bad omens), whistling sounds meant Pombero presence, night howling was Luisón. Navigation tools developed over centuries for understanding corruption, transformation, what spreads through contact.
Luisón doesn't just kill—"hace imposible la vida del más allá" (makes the afterlife impossible). What watches also corrupts. What touches also spreads.
Arsenio's teachings weren't folklore awaiting modern relevance—they were precise descriptions of surveillance patterns articulated generations before McLuhan formulated them theoretically. Downloaded SPOT schematics without plan, started cutting wooden leg shapes. The pattern emerged through making: observation mechanisms operate identically whether wrapped in mythology or technology.
SPOT patrolling city streets performs same function as Luisón myths patrolling behavioural boundaries. Same mechanism, different scales. What changes is opacity: algorithmic surveillance achieves total awareness Luisón myths could only approximate through fear. Contemporary surveillance operates through not-knowing—you never know if observation is active, if data is collected, if someone is watching.
"Luisón itself is social control mechanism. Pre-colonial Paraguayan communities used this myth to enforce behavioural boundaries through observation anxiety. Pattern appears universal: every culture creates mechanisms of observation and control, then wraps them in mythology or technology."
THE 5° TILT
During construction, week three of stability work, sculpture settled naturally at 5° lean through weight distribution. I could have forced geometric perfection, but the wrongness felt truthful. Something caught between states shouldn't stand in perfect alignment.
The 5° tilt makes viewers uncomfortable without knowing why—not broken, just wrong.
Head attachment solved through garage sale find: rotating head mount from land surveying tripod—the component enabling theodolites to pan, scan, measure territory. Only after building did I research its original function: territorial measurement and control. That a surveying tool would become the anatomical connection enabling Luisón's gaze feels synchronistically perfect. The observation instrument became the neck joint.
Dormancy maps to surveillance infrastructure's uncertainty principle. Like SPOT in peripheral vision, like Ring cameras on neighbours' porches—present, watching, corrupting through the fact of observation itself.
The work measures epistemological powerlessness—the curse of seeing patterns without capacity to intervene.
Vintage amperage gauges as eyes—needle displays reading simultaneously as sensor arrays and organic eyes. Intentionally dormant, tilted, watching
Top-down view revealing body construction. Circuit boards, RAM modules, PC case components visible through white coating. Shock Red cylinder and head mechanism. What watches also corrupts. What touches also spreads. Friday comes weekly
Side profile showing technological corpses beneath mythological skin. Hard drives drilled and screwed into wooden frame, motherboards layered as external skin. Wooden legs with steel rod feet. Hybrid skeleton—not animal, not machine, caught between states."
Death-white SPOT reconstruction. Boston Dynamics surveillance robot rebuilt from e-waste and salvaged materials. Montana Shock White coating over hard drives, circuit boards, RAM. Shock Red accents signal dormant Friday transformation. Stands 5° from perpendicular—not broken, just wrong.
Materials: Salvaged wood, steel rods, e-waste (hard drives, circuit boards, RAM), vintage electrical amperage gauges, surveying tripod head mount, Montana Shock White and Shock Red spray paint
Dimensions: Quadruped stance, 5° lean from perpendicular
Primary Structure: Wooden box body as central chassis. Upper legs scroll-sawed from wood, lower legs from steel rods creating hybrid skeleton. Hard drives drilled and screwed into wooden frame with liquid nail adhesive. Motherboards and RAM modules layered onto body creating technological skin over wooden armature.
Head Assembly: Laser-cut wooden box housing vintage electrical amperage gauges as eyes—needle displays reading simultaneously as sensor arrays and organic eyes. PC case components creating technological skull structure.
Neck Joint (Synchronicity): Rotating head mount from land surveying tripod—the component enabling theodolites to pan, scan, measure territory. Only after building did I research its original function: territorial measurement and control. That a surveying tool would become the anatomical connection enabling Luisón's gaze feels synchronistically perfect. The observation instrument became the neck joint.
Colour Treatment: Montana Shock White unifying all components whilst maintaining material transparency—circuit board traces, hard drive labels visible through white coating. Shock Red accents on mechanical components signalling dormant transformation capacity. Death-pallor mythology whilst maintaining honest material truth showing e-waste corpses beneath.
The 5° Lean: Emerged naturally through weight distribution during week three of stability work. Could have forced geometric perfection, but the wrongness felt truthful. Something that should be machine-precise but isn't triggers uncanny valley response—Friday's transformation leaves traces even when dormant.
Status: Intentionally dormant. Stands in workshop, tilted, watching. Not broken, just wrong. The observation persists. Infrastructure prepared for perpetual territorial documentation. Friday comes weekly.
Context in Series
Eighth piece (#8 of 12), Powerlessness phase nadir. Following Eternal Recurrence Link's pattern recognition, shifts from cyclical violence to observation itself as corruption mechanism.
Arsenio's Guaraní teachings articulated surveillance patterns generations before McLuhan's theoretical formulation. What Western theory treats as contemporary insight, indigenous knowledge systems have documented for centuries. But the work doesn't romanticise—Luisón itself is social control mechanism. Pattern appears universal across cultural implementations.
SPOT's 5° lean triggers uncanny valley discomfort—something caught between states shouldn't stand in perfect alignment. Friday comes weekly. Dormancy maps to surveillance infrastructure's uncertainty principle. The curse of seeing without capacity to intervene reaches maximum intensity here before arc shifts toward continuation strategies with Signal Seeker (#9).