Master/Slave
Czech writer Karel Čapek introduced the word “robot” to the world in his 1920 play R.U.R. (often subtitled Rossum’s Universal Robots). In the public imagination, the robot was a surrogate body that could perform menial tasks, liberating the human to pursue more important endeavors. Yet, as Čapek warned, the dystopian flip side of this fantasy suggested that free-willed, intelligent robots would eventually rebel, inverting the master-slave relationship. The dream, and threat, of technological mastery guides the strategy for Master/Slave, an installation displaying the collection of toy robots amassed by Rolf Fehlbaum, former chairman of the Vitra furniture company. Many of the children’s tin wind-up toys on display were produced in Japan between 1937 and 1973.
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