On a low-lying hill, near the southern tip of South Ronaldsay, lies a small stone byre. From the door there’s a breath-taking view across the Pentland Firth, with its islands, lighthouses, and great ships pushing against the tide, Atlantic-bound.
It’s a calm day and the flooding waters set a low rumble against the cry of oystercatcher and the sound of tractor and plough a mile or two up the road.
It feels like an unlikely place to be confronted by an army of robots.
But inside the building, his breath condensating against the cold air, Robert Andrews is hard at work, surrounded by his metal legions. The man behind Robomofos (the 'mofo’ stands for ‘made of found objects’, for those of you who may be wondering...), Robert scours scrapyards, charity shops, and online auctions to secure the components needed to create his robots.
Around the workshop lie boxes of ‘body parts’; kettles, soda dispensers, salt and pepper shakers, bicycle lamps, opera glasses. From all this, and more, the tinpot dictator builds his army.
“I’ve always made things,” explains Robert. “I really am no engineer, but I’ve always had a curiosity about what I can do with my hands and a bit of imagination. People often assume that I do lots of welding and technical stuff like that,” he laughs. “But really they’re mainly based around threaded rods." That idea of using metal rods to create a ‘skeleton’ on which the components are threaded might be part of the reason why Robert’s robots seem so lifelike.
“Bad posture is definitely part of it. Some of my early attempts were maybe too straight," he says. "A lot of human character comes from our imperfections, and I think they maybe need a touch of that to bring them alive."
"They might slouch or puff their chest out in an attempt to impose themselves. It's just a question of getting them to have a certain undefinable, unpredictable quality, of having a kind of a personality that comes with something that I'm not fully in control of. Kids are fascinated by them, of course, though occasionally one will ask when they're going to start moving!"
But the robots have also proved popular with a more mature clientele. There’s a real sense of nostalgia which clearly comes through both the retro materials – brightly-coloured soda dispensers, tin teapots, brake levers off old bikes – but also the design aesthetic.
“I’m definitely more Wallace and Gromit than Walt Disney in that regard,” says Robert. “And people seem to really respond to them. I’ve had a few exhibitions now, in Orkney and further afield, and they’ve proved really popular. There’s always a percentage of people who come up and say ‘I absolutely love them, but I can’t imagine where I’d put one!’, to others who see one, fall in love with it, and just have to take it home.”
You can see why. They do have an undoubted charm. It’s easy to imagine them, like the great stones of the Ring of Brodgar, coming alive on a certain night of the year to traipse around the Orkney landscape causing mischief.
And while the islands may be better known for their jewellery and textile creations, the Robomofos look like they’re making themselves quite at home in their stronghold, overlooking the shifting waters of the Pentland Firth.
Find out more about Robomofos via the official website, and follow Robert's work on Instagram.