Solar crawlers are simple, small, off-grid robots made from recycled electronic parts and wood. They are activated or charged by sunlight and release their energy in the form of mechanical movement. Despite their quirky appearance, they are resilient and move slowly forward. They are an experiment in developing a post-capitalist, solar-punk aesthetic and promoting a scarcity-oriented working methodology.

The crawlers are inspired by Gijs Gieske's wandering branch-like creations.1 While Gieske's creatures are visually unique due to the use of found wood, they all have the same uniform circuit board made from new electronic parts, which can be assembled in one of Gieske's workshops to construct them. I wanted to take this even further out of the maker's comfort zone: I limited myself to using only electronic waste that I had found in my surroundings. In this way, each crawler has a different circuit and therefore behaves in new ways in response to the sun or its absence: one moves when its battery is already charged in the sun and stops charging in the shade; another only moves in the sun, etc.

“All functioning technologies are the same. All defective technologies are defective in their own way.”