Introduction by George Kupczak of the AT&T Archives and History Center.

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 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…