MOVIE

W.I.S.O.R.

2001 · 75 min · Documentary

The Robo-Welder

In a lab somewhere on the Lower East Side, a team of scientists and engineers are designing a robot named W.I.S.O.R.; a futuristic, subterranean robo welder that, being able to withstand temperatures of 300 degrees and navigate through the snaking, hundred-mile long world of buried steam pipes beneath Manhattan, will repair the rapidly decaying century-old system. New York's little known or understood underground steam pipes provide the necessary heat and hot water for everything from Chinese laundries and Turkish baths to the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. A thousand engineering hours behind a schedule and way over budget, Honeybee Robotics, W.I.S.O.R.'s creators, are worried. They argue, discuss God, baseball, and technology and ultimately lead us into a futuristic world originally thought impossible in this eerie, stranger than fiction tale set in the city beneath the city.