Watch: This short film shows robots working endlessly, stuck in a vicious cycle. Or is it us?
Maybe it’s the story of our lives, not the machines’.
Your job may not feel as boring or predictable as the work that assembly-line robots perform, but Michael Marczewski’s animated short film Vicious Cycle will make you think again.
Be warned, though, the film gets progressively darker, even if with humorous notes, as tasks such as chopping wood or even playing baseball are broken down to reveal their monotonous essence.
“I’ve always been intrigued by intricate mechanisms,” Marczewski said. “And I began to play around and make some in Cinema 4D. Then the idea of connecting them to helpless robots came, and it evolved from there. My initial idea was to make a fake instructional video with the robots acting out various tasks to demonstrate how to do them, but then everything starts to go wrong. I think the malfunctioning allows for a lot of comedic moments in the film.”
The robots are pushed to work harder and faster, stuck in vicious cycles, until they eventually buckle under pressure and suffer a massive breakdown. Sounds familiar?
