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Michel Negroponte (producer/director) is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker with such directing credits as “Space Coast,” “Silver Valley,” “Jupiter's Wife” and “No Accident.” In 1995, “Jupiter's Wife” was awarded a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Grand Prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Vancouver Film Festival and the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Jupiter's Wife was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Documentary.

Generation5 knows him for the documentary he created about WISOR the robotic welder (see the review).

G5: What are your ideas about a robots position in society both in modern-day society and the future? Do you reckon they'll stay work robots, much like WISOR, or will expand to more social areas of society?

Expand. Everywhere! Of course I am greatly influenced by my older brother, Nicholas, who started the Media Lab at M.I.T.. For thirty years I've listened to Nicholas make wild projections about the future in terms of robotics and artificial intelligence. Given the current pace of technology, it's almost impossible to imagine what daily life may look and feel like a hundred years from now, but I suspect it will fulfill many of our best fantasies. That is, if we don't blow ourselves up first (which WISOR the robot also wonders about at the end of the film. WISOR is a bit of a pacifist, or a political skeptic - I think this is a quality he inherited from Marvin Minsky!).

G5: How do robots and AI figure into your visions of the future then?

I doubt I will ever meet (in my life time) an independent, self sufficient, thinking robot. But I suspect my grandchildren will. In the more immediate future I think the trend will be towards smart, interactive human helpers and appendages - for instance smart eye glasses, smart shoes, smart tooth brushes and even smart mini-doctors that will be tiny electronic devices that people plant on/in their bodies to give personalized health evaluations. Imagine a toothbrush that could "see" cavities and urge you to see your dentist ... I'd not only buy one, I need one!

G5: What did you find impressive about WISOR? What did you find dull/boring about WISOR?

WISOR is a robust machine. Not terribly bright or creative, but brave and fearless. We can't work or live in his environment, which is 300 degress F, pressurized, dark, and underground. So clearly WISOR was invented to go were humans can't. Being a first generation robo-welder, he does have a dull side. He should be able to remember where's he's been and even acquire some reasoning skills along the way. But as future generations of WISORs are developed, they will become more autonomous, more skillful, and smarter. I should add that what I find MOST impressive about WISOR is the team that made him/it. A smart, outspoken and entertaining group of young man representing many nationalities ... a very vibrant glimpse of what is most fascinating about the new New York.

G5: What was your reasoning behind the primarily black-and-white nature of "WISOR: The Robo-Welder"?

The story the film tells spans three centuries. It begins in the late 19th century when the vast steam system under the streets of NY was first proposed and ends in the 21st century with a robot coming to it's rescue. But the underlying theme of "faith in scientific invention'" remains constant throughout. So the choice of B&W gives the present day and archival images a common ground. I guess one could argue that to differentiate the images (ie: B&W equals old, color equals new) to stress the passage of time would also have been a very valid choice. But the B&W seemed appropriately timeless.

G5: In "WISOR: The Robo-Welder" the robot's 'personality' (voice-over) gains in complexity and frequency as the film progresses. Was this a conscious point — if so, why? Do you ever see robots becoming cognitive?

Yes, WISOR acquires language from the engineers during the course of the film and this was done very deliberately. It's a basic, simple premise: as the robot is assembled, he comes to life. More importantly, language and reasoning skills become increasingly sophisticated until he reaches a stage of actual "artificial" intelligence. To some degree, the choice was an effort to encapsulate the history of robotics. But more importantly the choice emphasizes that he story is a futuristic one. By the end of the film, we are being taken into the engineers' dreams of 21st century. And by engineers, I mean all of them: Charles Emery, Honeybee Robotics and WISOR the robot.

G5: So do you reckon future robots will be closely (emotionally?) tied to their creators/engineers?

I think it's more important that robots are closely linked to the users, but why not their creators too? I'm not a roboticist, but I do know that there are people who believe that future machines will be able to experience emotion. (Imagine a toothbrush that gets frustrated with you because it doesn't think you are brushing with enough dedication!). Of course the idea of emotional machines is almost impossible for most of us to believe. But maybe human emotional life isn't as abstract and fuzzy as we think. With machine evolution, maybe these human-like qualities will emerge as well. And who knows were the state of technology will be 200 years from now.

G5: Following Steven Spielburg's "A.I." there has been a lot of interest in AI. What do you think of Hollywood's perception of robotics and artificial intelligence?

I have not yet seen "A.I." because my 14 year old son warned me that it was "awful". (I will see it on DVD). Hollywood's perception of robotics and A.I. has been a very mixed bag, ranging from wonderful (2001 A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) to less than wonderful (Centennial Man).

Perhaps the problem is that Hollywood is more intrigued with special effects than storytelling. Furthermore, Hollywood seems more interested in exploring artificial intelligence and robotics as a device rather than subject matter.

G5: What do you mean when you say "a device"?

I mean as a prop, or a set, or as production design. Images of the future are slick and fun. But I think the real essence of artificial intelligence isn't Hollywood material. At least not yet.

Q&A with Michel Negroponte

Q: How did you get involved in this project?

MN: One day in the fall of 1995, Steve Gorevan, the Chairman of Honeybee Robotics, and I were sitting on a park bench at the local playground watching our kids play. We were discussing the topic of underground New York: I was telling Steve about a film project I had just finished called "No Accident" with the spoken word poet John Giorno. The project had been filmed on subway trains, platforms and stations. Steve told me about a new robot his company was designing that would some day attempt to repair the massive steam pipe system under the streets of Manhattan. The robot would be christened "“W.I.S.O.R.”", an acronym for welding and inspection steam operations robot. It sounded like science fiction and I was intrigued. I visited Honeybee Robotics a few days later.

Q: Tell me a little about Honeybee Robotics and what the place is like.

MN: Everything about Honeybee Robotics is unusual, including their location. The lab and offices are in Little Italy next to a muffin bakery, in a four-story building that was one of the city's first electric power stations. The building is rumored to have been designed by Thomas Edison himself.

There are about fifteen engineers, sometimes referred to as honey bees, employed by Steve Gorevan and his partner Chris Chapman. The place is a contemporary melting pot: a few Russians, one Romanian, some Asians, several Americans and an unusually large quota of expatriates from Guyana. The company has designed industrial robots for NASA, 3M, Coca-Cola and IBM. If there is a major theme to the work it's probably outer space. Honeybee has built a number of robotic instruments for the aerospace industry and they have the reputation of being very good at what they do. But neither Honeybee nor anyone else has ever built a robot that could work in such an inhospitable environment as the underground steam pipe system. It was clearly going to be an immense undertaking. For the next few months, I visited Honeybee regularly to attend design meetings and I brought with me a small portable digital camcorder.

Q: What were the early stages of the “W.I.S.O.R.” project like? What was the atmosphere like at Honeybee?

MN: Well, at first the design issues they were confronting with the W.I.S.O.R. appeared to be insurmountable. The steam grid is 103 miles of pipes with varying diameters. The steam is about 300 degrees F, pressurized and travels in excess of 100 MPH. To make things worse, the underground maps of the steam grid aren't very reliable. The robot they were designing, though semiautonomous, would need to travel through sections of the steam grid from separate excavation sites. It would have to first find and inspect a joint or seam in the pipe, then clean the seam to prepare for a weld - it's called milling. Then the robot would have to inflate a robust balloon to block the steam because water interferes with welding. Lastly, the robot would perform what's called a structural weld, which is quite complicated. In essence, the robot would be doing preventive maintenance, strengthening joints in order to reduce the possibility of steam leaks in the future.

Q: The historic material regarding the steam system, how did you learn about that?

MN: I knew some of the pipes in the steam grid were very old, but it wasn't until I discovered a book at the Con Edison library called "Fifty Years of New York Steam Service,” published in 1932, that I learned about it's remarkable history. (I had already been filming the design and fabrication of the robot for many months).

The principal engineer of the steam system was Charles Emery, and he was a contemporary of Edison's. They were inventing the city's infrastructure before the Brooklyn Bridge was built. In a sense, their ideas were similar, and both visionary. They wanted to provide centralized utilities and power plants for a fast growing population. Of course Edison was digging up the streets to lay down what he called electric "tubes" and Emery was digging up the streets to build steam mains. Apparently they often worked side by side at night and even wrote about each other's work in their diaries. They each felt the other’s project was more difficult.

As a utility, the New York Steam Corporation gained popularity slowly and was used primarily for commercial buildings - it still is. But you have to remember it was one of the first large-scale utility companies in the world and was very admired. Amazingly enough, the steam system also contributed to the feasibility of building skyscrapers because the space saved by avoiding the need for boilers and the simplified construction made skyscrapers affordable.

Q. How did you get the idea for making the W.I.S.O.R. a character in the film? Was it planned from the beginning?

MN: Not exactly. Like my other films, the project began in one place and ended up somewhere very different from what I anticipated. I allow the process of making the film to inspire many of the choices. I think about two years into the project, a very simple idea popped into my head - I'm telling a New York story that begins in the 19th century with the inventor Charles Emery, and it spans all the way into the 21st century with a robot named W.I.S.O.R. The breadth of the story was critical and the form and style of film needed to reflect that.

I decided to start the documentary with a formal tone, in the 19th century. Then gradually, as the W.I.S.O.R. was being built, I would allow the robot to take charge of the film and replace the conventional tone with a futuristic one. The storytelling, the editing, the photography and the music would follow the same transition. For instance, the structure of the latter third of the film is more like surfing the web than it is traditional film editing, as if traveling quickly and sometimes abruptly from one web site to the next. One moment, the robo-welder is boasting about his super intelligence and the next moment the engineers are arguing about whether a baseball travels over the plate or the diamond. I don't think the audience suspects that the film will make such dramatic shifts, but I like that.

Also, by the end of the film, the W.I.S.O.R. has appropriated the language and spirit of all the characters in the film. He borrows phrases from Charles Emery, Steve Gorevan and Roop. More importantly, he's taking into the future the idea that if technology is used wisely, it can be benevolent. Earlier in the film, the 19th century engineer, Emery, says the same thing. So the idea of faith in science and mankind is being passed from one generation to the next. The film really is about having faith.

Q: Did the people from Honeybee see the film and how did they react to it?

MN: I think they liked the film a lot, and their reaction says a great deal about them. They certainly don't fit the typical image of stuffy, up tight scientists. They're brassy, opinionated, inventive and original. I spent a great deal of time at Honeybee - I shot and edited over a period of four years. I like the honey bees a great deal and it was fun making the film. It was stressful too because there were huge delays and problems with the robot. I'm sure they feared they might never finish the project, and I feared I might never finish my project about their project.

But I think we all discovered that building a robot and making a film share common ground. There's a careful design phase, and then all hell breaks loose when you actually have to make the thing. As Charles Emery says, "Nothing ever works as planned". You need persistence and faith.

Q: What's happened to the robot? Is he at work?

MN: No, not yet. W.I.S.O.R., the 700-pound, eight-foot robo-welder is unemployed. There have been additional problems. The robot was delivered to Con Edison and the actual street tests have been delayed for a very long time. I think it's due in part to the fact that Con Edison is going through the ordeal of deregulation. In the last several years, everything has changed for utility companies nationwide. In the case of Con Ed, I don't think research and development projects like W.I.S.O.R. have top priority because they are restructuring their entire operation.

I think W.I.S.O.R. will go to work fairly soon, though at the moment he's back at Honeybee going through some modifications. One thing about making documentaries is that it's impossible to harness reality. I always envisioned W.I.S.O.R. being lowered into a real steam excavation and going off to work for the first time as being the last scene of the film. But finally one of the television companies involved in financing the project insisted I finish the film..

Interesting enough, Honeybee is working on a number of new, space-related projects. One very long-term project is designing a robotic geologist that will land on Mars a decade from now. The robot's mission will be to dig a half-mile or so under the Martian surface and analyze rocks and minerals. The robot looks very much like a smaller version of W.I.S.O.R. but instead of inching its way through pipes, it will be digging and inching its way through Mars. So W.I.S.O.R.'s predictions about the future are accurate. Pretty cool.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add about the making of the film?

MN: One of the reasons I make films is to pay homage to the past. While making “W.I.S.O.R.,” I consulted one of my favorite directors, Robert Bresson; in particular a movie of his called "A Man Condemned.” The Bresson film is about a resistance fighter imprisoned during the German occupation of France in World War II. Bresson shows us with utter care and exactness how the prisoner escapes from his tiny cell. The film is methodical, understated, and mesmerizing. The pace is studied and concentrated. Step by step, the audience watches the prisoner plan and execute his escape. The film is stark and very beautifully photographed. What's most striking is how you gradually enter into the character's state of mind simply through observation.

I wanted to blend the formal techniques I learned from watching Bresson’s films with contemporary experimentation. So I combined fact and fiction as well as playing with narrative expectations. Clearly, my film isn’t as focused and single-minded as “A Man Escaped”. It’s busy, there is a large ensemble cast, and new ideas get picked up and developed along the way. How the same film can contain a Victorian inventor and an artificially intelligent robot remains something of a mystery to me.

I think some people will celebrate the unorthodox spirit of the film and others will get distracted and lost. But maybe that's just the inherent risk in giving form and content equal weight. It's not that I don't appreciate good old-fashioned story telling. It's just that I felt this story begged for something more playful.