AT&T Archives: The Hello Machine

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Directed by Carroll Ballard (Never Cry Wolf, The Black Stallion), The Hello Machine is a short, wordless film-poem, in which he chronicles the building of an entire ESS Mainframe. It's one of the best films in the AT&T Archives, a poetic musing on the connections between handwork and the act of communicating. In the film, he chronicles the act of making and building the mainframe with human hands so carefully that it becomes a handcraft, like weaving or sewing. As he elevates the frameworker to the status of craftperson, the mainframe itself becomes an artistic masterpiece, then brought to life by electricity. Ballard's stance is that it takes humans to connect humans, not machines.

There's a little irony in the title: "The Hello Machine" used to be a nickname for the telephone, but Alexander Graham Bell, the machine's inventor, always thought that "Ahoy" would be a better greeting for a phone call than "Hello". "Hello" was more of Thomas Edison's idea, and is, of course, the one that stuck. In fact, the word wasn't quite as popular as a greeting in English UNTIL the telephone became widely used.

Richard Rosmini's superb soundtrack drives Ballard's points home, with a composition heavy on the strings (like wires!)--old-timey-sounding 12-string guitar and banjo mixed with electronics.

Produced and Directed by Carroll Ballard
Music by Richard Rosmini

Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

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