Husqvarna‘s remote-controlled demolition robots remind me of the machine art performances that Survival Research Laboratories has staged since 1977.
Husqvarna bills its machines as “remote workmates ready to tackle your heaviest, most challenging jobs.”
Compare that to what Survival Research Laboratories founder Mark Pauline told me in a 1993 interview:
“The real message of machines isn’t that they’re helpful workmates,” Pauline said. “Like any extension of the human psyche, machines are scary things,” he says. When you take the scary human psyche and magnify it hundreds or thousands of times with technology, it’s really nightmarish.”
(via Uncrate)