The next challenge: Wilder had never built a robot. ^{resourcefulness of a natural world that can produce}
_{He checked out every book on robotics and Lego} something as wondrous as a carnivorous plant, he says
his goal was to “make a sublime machine.”

from the public library and spent his evenings reading.

There were many more challenges to overcome:

“Can I get Lego to do ¹/10 of a degree rotation? back and forth, the rotation module rotates a flower Can I get a Lego car to drive ¹/10 of a millimeter? pot, and the cable release module pushes the trig-Will the Lego microcomputer tolerate being on 24 ger on a camera remote to take the actual pictures. hours a day for two weeks? For a year? Will my Wilder composited the alternating left- and right-eye camera?” Lighting was also a problem: plants (and images into a single movie using a piece of Japanese the insects they may eat) need light to grow, but it freeware that adjusts the colors to use classic red-may not necessarily be good light for cinema. and-blue 3D glasses.

His consultations with experts were not encour- After 18 months of filming, scripting, animating, aging. “I had a guy who ^{had a Ph.D. in physics} tell me, ‘You’re insane. “I had a guy who had a Ph.D. in physics ^{Even if you had a real} robot, it would be really tell me, ‘You’re an idiot if you think you ^{hard to pull this off.} There’s no room for can do that with Lego.’” error. If the two camera positions are A and B, it always has to be A and B because you’re trying to and editing, Wilder produced a 20-minute DVD create the illusion that a 3D camera is on a tripod. It called The Carnivorous Syndrome in 3D. Although needs to be A and B every single time. You’re an subtitled “Our curious universe, science adventure idiot if you think you can do that with Lego.’” no. 5,” it’s not a parody, but an earnest attempt at

Wilder was determined to prove the naysayers updating the genre. The soundtrack to the piece wrong. “I don’t care if this is an impossible movie. I consists of ambient electronica, and the graphics don’t care if the physicist says it can’t be done. IMAX have the cool detachment of a minimal techno CD. has not dared to do it, or the BBC. I’ll do it. And I’ll The Carnivorous Syndrome in 3D is available as a do it with Lego because that will be beautiful.” He DVD directly from Wilder’s website, 3dsyndrome.com. succeeded. The robot’s name is Jasper.

Controlled by a single Lego Mindstorms RCX brick, Jasper consists of three parts: the juxtaposition module moves his Nikon Coolpix 4500 camera

Mike Kuniavsky is a San Francisco- and Portland-based ubiquitous computing and user-experience consultant and writer who blogs at orangecone.com.