Maggie West Made a Sexbot to Make a Point About Media Sensationalism

Published in

realitybytespod

4 min readJan 4, 2018

I just think it makes for a very clicky article to be like, “Because of technology, everyone’s bad.” — Maggie West

On the latest episode of the Reality Bytes podcast, we talk with Maggie about the sexbot she created for her Museum of Sex installation, on display now through February 15th. If you’re in NYC, stop by and take a peek!

Maggie West is an L.A.-based artist specializing in experimental lighting that results in colorful, surreal photographs. Her work frequently explores the spectrum of gender and sexuality, including KISS, 23, FLUID, and 98.

The first time I met her was when I did a portrait sitting for the STAND series she shot in support of Planned Parenthood, and I’ve been a fan ever since — which is why this episode makes her our first three-peat guest on the podcast.

Enjoy our convo on smartphones as a breeding ground for casual coitus (or not), Luci’s little black book, how pretty much everyone is sprung on the idea of robot sex, and much more.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed.

SHOW NOTES

Courtney and Steve catch up. [1:00]
Gif of drunk Santa falling over, as promised. [3:55]

Courtney and Wade on Christmas Eve.

Maggie West welcome. [11:07]
Luci 6000 introduces herself. [12:02]

Hi, I’m Luci. I’m an alien sexbot, and I’ve come to Earth to help millennial reconnect. According to the Internet, you all are incapable of forming meaningful connections and don’t even like having sex anymore. Sad. I come to Earth from the planet Xeron. I want to seduce you all and remind you how awesome sex can be.

How Luci came to be. (Thanks for allowing Maggie to explore her range, LELO.) [13:00]
How much does Luci weigh? *gasp* [15:19]
How to build a (non-AI) robot. [16:00]

Luci is a collection of a couple different mannequins. On was an articulated mannequin, which means the joints bend and stuff. The other mannequin was just really hot.

Luci’s installation at the Museum of Sex. [17:00]
Luci’s little black book of lovers. [18:11]
Maggie goes to Art Basel. [19:15]
How people are responding to sexting with Luci on Twitter. [22:05]
Give Steve a week of guilt-free robot sex. [23:55]
Millennial sex state of the union. [25:03]

My personal theory about this is that just the way that we all think about sex has changed a lot over, say, the last 10 years, and people are more fine with all sorts of different types of sexuality that they were in. People are more comfortable being open about homosexual curiosities, or just being gay, or being trans, or being whatever. I think that because in some ways we are living in a society that is way more open to different types of sexuality I don’t feel like maybe young people feel the need to front as much as they used to.

Separating fact from media click-bait. [26:50]
Technological advances: older generations just don’t understand. [28:50]