“The Helpless Robot” by Norman T. White, an interactive sculpture, will be located in a public place seeking interaction with spectators through polite requests for human cooperation. Depending on the response of the passer-by, the robot will come up with more conversation and movements.
In its final form, the piece “The Helpless Robot” will be a freestanding electronically-controlled kinetic sculpture, with an overall height of about 5 feet, and a diameter of 3 to 4 feet at the base. It will taper inward toward the top, in a bi-symmetrical, yet somewhat irregular, organic way.
It will have a relatively smooth exterior, composed primarily of curved metal plates attached to an underlying frame. Here and there will be transparent acrylic panels allowing onlookers to get glimpses of the electronic equipment inside. There will be handle-like protrusions at a few key points. Although this platform will be stationary, the sculpture will be free to rotate upon its base. Such rotation will not be generated from within. Instead, likethe traditional “mobile”, the work will be essentially passive, depending on external forces for its motion. However, whereas traditional mobiles harness wind, water, or other prime force of nature, this one will have to enlist the muscles of human beings. This it will do with its one critical mode of output: its electronically-synthesized voice.
At present, the piece exists in a prototype form, comprised of three task-sharing microcomputer-based “modules” The first, custom-built by myself, has the job of tracking the angular position of the rotating section, and detecting the presence of onlookers via an ultrasonic range-finding sensor. The second module, also custom-built, takes the raw data generated by the first module, and preprocesses it for use by the third module. It also contains the speech synthesizer, and obeys speech-related commands from the third module. The third module is responsible for making sense of the filtered sense data in the context of past events, and formulating appropriate speech responses.
I see the work behaving as the classic “bustler” For instance, it might initially enlist human cooperation with a polite ”Excuse me ... have you got a moment?,“ or any one of a stock of such unimposing phrases. It might then ask to be rotated: ”Could you please turn me just a bit to the right ... No! Not that way ... theother way!“ In such a way, as it senses cooperation, it tends to become evermore demanding, becoming in the end, if its human collaborators let it, dictatorial. Such a subtle shift from entertainer to tyrant hopefully does not go unnoticed. Ultimately, my purpose behind the work is not to exploit, but to instruct. (Norman T. White)

Norman T. White (USA), born in 1938,Texas, USA. I spent most of my early childhood in and around Boston, Massachusetts. My early interests included drawing, fishing, and experimenting with my chemistry set. I also liked devising and breaking codes.
From 1955 to 1959, I attended Harvard College, majoring in biology, with the intention of becoming a fisheries biologist. By graduation, however, it was clear that I was better suited to the challenges of art than those of science. After a few years of assorted jobs and experimenting with various painting styles, I moved to San Francisco, and happened to find work as an electrician's helper at the Hunter's Point Shipyard. Wiring up telephone switchboards proved to be as satisfying as painting, though I was yet to think of that activity in the context of art. A year of travelling in the Middle East (1964-65) brought me into contact with Islamic art and architecture. The logical/biological sensibility contained therein struck a resonant chord and upon settling in London, England, I began painting in a careful and strongly “logical” style, drawing upon my shipyard electrician experiences for visual references. The following year, I abandoned my oil-paints altogether in favor of the electrical components themselves, excited by the prospect of expressing “the aesthetics of logic” in a direct, kinetic way.
In 1967, I moved to Toronto, drawn there by the greater accessibility of technical materials, and embarked upon an intense self-education in electronics. In 1969, I exhibited my first major electronic work, “First Tighten Up on the Drums”, at an Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) exhibition in New York entitled “Some Beginnings” The work used some three hundred early-vintage digital integrated circuits. In the early 70s, I created a dozen or so machines which manifest their internal logic by generating changing patterns on grids of light bulbs. This era of “light machines” ended in 1975, with a large light mural “Splash Splash Two” commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Since then, I've focused my attention upon interactive, pseudo-organic machines which express themselves primarily through motion. Since 1978, I have taught in the Photo-Electrical New Media Department at the Ontario College of Art.