Category: Entertainment

Orifice the Awebot rolled down the sidewalk across from the Betsy Ross House last Friday, striking joy, confusion, and mild terror in those who unexpectedly encountered her — and nobody expects to encounter a two-foot-tall, pink, potato-shaped robot with a dangling tongue, blue eyes, and a shock of blond hair.

As I trailed behind the little bot, I could hear people whisper and scream.

“Oh that’s adorable!”

“What did I just see?”

“It’s terrifying!”

Tourists on top of a double decker bus pointed at her. Philadelphians who didn’t have time for whatever this nonsense was steered clear. But after the initial shock of seeing Orifice wore off, most people smiled and laughed, like Justin Lutz of California.

Lutz had already seen the Uber Eats robots on our sidewalks while visiting Philly and he immediately recognized that Orifice, despite being approximately the same size, was something quite different.

“I bet you Betsy Ross never thought a little robot would be scooting around in front of her house,” he said. “I love the personality and it’s super cool. We don’t even have these in California.”

I wanted to tell Lutz there’s a lot of great things we have in Philly they don’t have in California, like all four seasons and Gritty and the Phanatic, but I stopped short.

“Have a great time in our city,” I said, instead. “It’s just this weird here all the time!”

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‘Kind of like a dog’

I was invited to follow Orifice around Old City with some folks from the Ministry of Awe (MoA), the interactive and immersive art installation created by Philly muralist Meg Saligman that’s housed in a 19th-century Old City bank.

The “Awebot” was born out of one of MoA’s community Co-Creation Nights as people were bouncing around ideas and discussing the Uber Eats robots that have become ubiquitous in Philly since they descended upon our city in March.

“We thought what if [robots] didn’t just bring things, what if they were used for purposes other than just delivery and business and commerce. Would that somehow let us reflect in a different way?” Saligman said.

Artist Madison Polidoro (aka 10 Ton Fetus), a sculptor and metal fabricator whose human-animal-hybrid creatures like “Skin Horse” inhabit the bathrooms at MoA, brought Orifice to life. She’s affectionately known as the robot’s “mommy.”

“What I find interesting about the Uber Eats robots is that they do create this kind of horror, this dystopian feeling in a lot of people,” Polidoro said. “So I was excited about the idea of making my own robot creature to sort of do an opposite thing where it could inspire something lighthearted and silly and fun and kind of magical.”

Polidoro fabricated Orifice’s base out of aluminum and left an empty vessel in the center, so it can carry things. She made the skin out of weatherproof urethane rubber and included an orifice on the robot’s rear end, which is where it gets its name.

Orifice is driven via a wireless remote but the range of the controller is quite far (at least half a city block), so the driver can remain pretty inconspicuous. The Awebot’s large blue eyes blink independently at intervals, but they can also be controlled by the operator. The dangling tongue, however, remains permanently out.

“She’s a sweetie pie who’s curious and likes to explore and try new things. And she loves attention. She’s kind of like a dog,” Polidoro said of her creation.

‘They’re gonna fight!’

As a team of folks from MoA, including Saligman and Polidoro, set out with Orifice in Old City last Friday, they didn’t even get a few hundred feet down the block before people stopped to pet the Awebot and ask questions.

“Is this a good hair day or a bad day for it?” a man in an Eagles jersey asked.

“Does it poop?” another guy wondered.

He was assured it did not.

As Orifice rolled down the sidewalk, she scared a few dogs, people pulled over their cars to see her, and others ran across the street to take her picture.

An Xfinity van driver sitting in his vehicle looked stunned as we passed. Then we made eye contact, he shook his head, I shrugged my shoulders, and were shared an “only in Philly” laugh.

At one point, Saligman spotted an Uber Eats robot down the sidewalk and ran to stand in front of it and stop it so Orifice could meet it face-to-face.

“They’re gonna fight!” Polidoro said.

Alas, the meeting did not result in a new kind of BattleBots, but it was clear that at one point, a human must have taken control of the Uber Eats robot, because it skillfully maneuvered its way around Orifice and Saligman. I can only imagine what the person on the other end of that camera thought.

All the while, MoA staffer Jordan Rampulla — who served as Orifice’s “conduit to humanity” — encouraged people to interact with the robot, handed them fliers for the MoA, and told them to click a QR code on an MoA flag attached to the robot, which leads to a landing page about the creation on the MoA website.

Orifice is not just MoA’s creative response to the dystopian Uber Eats robots, it’s also a inventive marketing tactic. While some people we met had heard of MoA, others had not, and they seemed interested in learning more about the experience after meeting its Awebot ambassador.

‘Bringing delight and surprise’

As the little pink robot passed by the little pink Tarte’s Pastry Shop on Arch Street near Second, owner Teresa Wall popped outside of her business, stunned by what she saw.

“It’s hysterical! We need more of that. I love it,” Wall said. “Any of this in today’s climate is great, any joy and laughter, we need it more.”

When Stephanie Gentle, who was out walking her French bulldog, Frank, first saw Orifice, she worried it might be a new kind of delivery bot. She was relieved to learn it was a creation of the MoA.

“I would much rather have this on the streets than an Uber Eats robot. It’s much less scary and much less evil,” Gentle said. “I’m so happy I ran into this. This made my day.”

I too would rather have Orifice wandering around Philly than those Uber Eats robots any day. She’s the rare kind of robot that connects humans with each other and illustrates the creativity of humanity in a unique way.

“When people see a lot of my creatures they intuitively connect with them through these anchoring points of the eyes and the skin and the hair and the orifices. Those are things that sort of force you to engage with another person when you look at them and meet them,” Polidoro said.

“They also force you to engage with my work in a very specific way, and I think that that’s something that I’ve really been leaning into and enjoying lately in a time of food-delivery-robot-dystopian-level technology that’s sort of separating us all from those very basic, but fundamental, important human connections.”

Polidoro and Saligman have big dreams for Orifice’s future. They’d like to take her to an Eagles tailgate and maybe out to lunch at Parc one day. If it doesn’t rain this Friday, they’re planning on bringing her to Elfreth’s Alley for the 11th anniversary celebration of the destruction of hitchBOT.

Orifice will make special appearances at MoA and her upcoming public appearances around the city will be announced on MoA’s social media channels, though she could pop up anywhere, unannounced, any day.

“She’s part of our bringing delight and surprise and letting it ripple through the city,” Saligman said.