Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Abdroids

An abdroid is a person who, however frazzled, goes through the motions of daily life robotically in order to cope. Occasionally abdroids get upset. The "ab" in abdroids derives from the "ab" in the name of the artist collective the Abzurbs, of which Cliff Eyland is a member.

The term abdroid has other meanings, including one that is very often compatible with these drawings. As Roger Warren Evans explains:
The sci-fi term ‘droid’ was devised by authors to describe a slave mechanism, a robot devoid of reasoning powers, wholly subordinate to the beck and call of natural persons, or human beings. An ‘abdroid’ is merely an abstract droid, a corporation, a company, an abstraction, a figment of the legal imagination, a non-physical entity, a concept, a nothing.

Click here for a link to Evans's essay Rise of the Abdroids
These images are digitally manipulated scans of drawings from the project Losers by Cliff Eyland and Christina Ritchie. Losers are mixed media works on 5"x3" paper file cards that Eyland makes and Ritchie "loses." The abdroids, which began to be made in 2008, have yet to be exhibited and exist so far only as digital files.

Staring at these works long enough should induce a trance-like state in a viewer.

Click here for Cliff Eyland's website.

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