Boxie, the story gathering robot

boxie.media.mit.edu

40 points·DanBC··6 comments

As a former journalist, I found the camera to be a constant source of problems, immediately inhibiting my subjects from opening up.

I had never appreciated the power of anthropomorphizing the capture device to help people interact directly with it.

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris' (creepy) solution to the camera problem is his (patent pending) Interrotron. Something like a cross between a teleprompter and a two-way mirror, the Interrotron lets the interviewee watch the interviewer's face while talking into the camera.

http://www.errolmorris.com/content/eyecontact/interrotron.ht...

Diagram: http://www.whiterabbitdesigncompany.com/Miscellaneous/images...

Quite some time ago I went through Morris' first person interview series. Very interesting stuff but also very odd characters. Especially the Murray Richman episode stuck with me as one of the very view interviews that I still can remember years after watching it.

"Untitled document" as title... way to go. :/

Still a cute robot collects stories... unbelieveably cool!

> "Untitled document" as title... way to go. :/

It's an artistic statement! ;)

It's really interesting to see people engage with an inanimate object as if it were a person. I think it's the adorable voice and the "face" (such as it is) which does it.

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