This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Madison Polidoro, a fine artist and fabricator based in Philadelphia. She collaborated with the art collective Ministry of Awe to create a remote-controlled robot in response to the delivery robots on the streets of her city. It has been edited for length and clarity.
The first time I saw a food delivery robot, I stopped dead in my tracks.
I didn’t know what this thing was. I still don’t fully understand it. All I knew was that it seemed to be looking at me and following me down the street, and it freaked me out.
So it was really exciting to think about making something I could put out on the street to rival them. I’m a maker who makes everything by hand — no AI, not even 3D modeling — mostly pen and paper.
The result is a moving artwork I named Orifice, which then became known as the Awebot. My sculpture loves people, but she’s born to be a menace to the delivery robot ecosystem.
I wanted to bring my world of creatures into the street
I’ve been a sculptor since childhood and a fabricator for a little over a decade. I’m constantly adding to my little world of creatures.
Around 2020, I started working with Ministry of Awe, an art collective creating an immersive installation. Through their commissions, I’ve been able to execute more ambitious ideas, work on a larger scale, and integrate more expensive features.
They asked me to make something mobile that they could take into the streets. Originally, we were thinking big, perhaps some kind of float. We wanted to bring the art to the people.
Around that same time, I started seeing food delivery robots in Philadelphia. Then they became a more regular occurrence, especially around the collective.
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At our Tuesday co-creation nights, we agreed it would make more sense to shrink the sculpture into something resembling those robots. They were this freaky, weird thing on everyone’s mind.
As an artist and fabricator, I feel the pressure to work faster and faster. The advancements in tech and AI come with these weird, uncanny feelings that intensify everything, and not in a good way. My art already plays on emotional discomfort, so it was perfectly aligned.
I YouTubed my way through building her
This was my first tech-integrated project. I’m not tech-savvy by any means, so I really just YouTubed my way through it.
We ordered the robotic base, including the wheels and motor. On top of that, I built an aluminum frame to house the internal parts and create a cavity for the functional butthole component. You could theoretically use it for food delivery, although that isn’t the intention. You could put anything in there.
I built another frame for the skin layer, added wood and foam, carved the foam down, and sculpted onto it. Then I coated and painted it, creating this weather-resistant, plasticky, rubbery creature.
There are silicone components, including the tongue and orifice. I also put my friend Nina’s hair in there. All the hair in my art is real. Friends give it to me, or people who follow me on Instagram mail it to me.
For me, it’s a ritual to breathe life and humanness into them.
She’s a predator, but people seem to love her
Awebot’s eyes and wheels are operated by remote control. The collective has an employee who takes her out and drives her around.
It’s a really fun improv experience. What happens depends on the public. Some people have a whole interaction with her. Kids come up to her. Dogs come up to her. People take photos.
Sometimes we see delivery robots and have them face off. That has happened a couple of times. To me, they seem to treat her as an obstacle and as a threat, trying very hard to dodge her and get away.
I wanted to take this recognizable piece of technology and make something approachable that people would want to interact with. Something curious, fun, and silly.
The collective’s concept is a bank where human emotion and imagination are the currency. Everything is handmade. You can see it and feel it. I think this sculpture captures that: taking ideas from this increasingly capitalized world and dialing them back into our humanity and creative needs.
I designed her with plans to continue the project. She may soon see siblings.