“In her essay 'The Spam of the Earth,' Hito Steyerl describes the sheer bewilderment that alien intelligences will face when they attempt to parse our interstellar transmissions. Michael Robinson’s mesmeric exhibition 'Mad Ladders' appeared to enact the efforts of such an extraterrestrial interpreter, for whom our cultural imagery would hold indeterminate meanings and could be recoded into new systems of signification.
Bearing names like 'Hard Disk Neolithix', 'Obsidian Superstar' and 'Historic Future Error', Robinson’s paper-and-rubber cement collages combine drawings of prehistoric tools, computer-generated graphics, circuit-board diagrams, and black-and-white photographs of entropic geological ruins reminiscent of Robert Smithson’s work. Crisp cutouts of human figures hunched in labor occasionally appear; their schematic rendering recalls the aluminum plaques that Carl Sagan launched into space."
— Mishinka Firunts, Art in America
