Credit: Video by Kacie Kinzer / Music by Toy.

Kacie Kinzer: Tweenbots (2009)

Since it’s Sunday, here’s a project to put a smile on your face. Tweenbots are interactive artist-designer Kacie Kinzer’s super-cute creation: human-dependent cardboard robots that navigate cities with the help of pedestrians. She came up with the idea in 2008 while observing New Yorkers walking around like ‘automatons’. “I wanted to change the way that people were engaging with the world around them — if only for a moment — so that I could show the thing that I felt was just below the surface if this vast network of streets and bodies: our humanity,” Kinzer says (in her FAQ). “I did this with robots.”

Postscript: Tweenbots have a home in the MoMA’s permanent collection via Talk to Me.