alongside the Turk. In 2002, Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye introduced the world to his "Cloaca Machine", a mechanical art work that actually digests food and turns it into excrement, fulfilling Vaucanson's wish for a working digestive automation. Many iterations of the Cloaca Machine have since been produced; the latest iteration sits vertically, mimicking the human digestive system. The excrement produced by the machine is vacuum-sealed in Cloaca-branded bags and sold to art collectors and dealers; every series of excrements produced has sold out. See also Cloaca, digestive machine and art installation that turns food into feces Gastrobot, modern digestion-fuelled robots Reductionism References Sources Wood, Gaby (2003). Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. London: Faber. Further reading Heudin, Jean-Claude (2008). Les créatures artificielles: des automates aux mondes virtuels. Paris: Editions Odile Jacob. Riskin, Jessica. "The defecating duck, or, the ambiguous origins of artificial life", Critical Inquiry 29, no. 4 (2003): 599–633. External links Canard Digérateur de Vaucanson - Vaucanson's Digesting Duck Living Dolls: A Magical History Of The Quest For Mechanical Life by Gaby Wood Guardian Unlimited Books, Extracts, Saturday 16 February 2002 "A Zenith" by Sara Roberts I'm Afraid I Can't Do That by Simon Norfolk, an article discussing the Digesting Duck's impact on the philosophical definition of life. BBC film featuring the modern automata of David Secrett in 1979 Automata (mechanical) Robotic animals Historical robots 18th-century robots 1739 introductions Robots of France Ducks Biorobotics