About four years ago, the New Yorker published an article about a cache of dodo bones that was found in a pit on the island of Mauritius. Now, the island of Mauritius is a small island off the east coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, and it is the place where the dodo bird was discovered and extinguished, all within about 150 years. Everyone was very excited about this archaeological find, because it meant that they might finally be able to assemble a single dodo skeleton.
Prije četiri godine New Yorker je objavio članak o kostima ptice dodo pronađenim u jami na otoku Mauricijusu. Mauricijus je malen otok istočno od Madagaskara u Indijskom oceanu. Na njemu je ptica dodo otkrivena i istrijebljena, a sve to u 150 godina. To arheološko otkriće uzbudilo je mnoge jer je značilo da se napokon može sastaviti jedinstveni kostur dodoa.
See, while museums all over the world have dodo skeletons in their collection, nobody -- not even the actual Natural History Museum on the island of Mauritius -- has a skeleton that's made from the bones of a single dodo. Well, this isn't exactly true. The fact is, is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century -- it was actually mummified, skin and all -- but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire. If you go look at their website today, they'll actually list these specimens, saying, the rest was lost in a fire.
Razni muzeji po svijetu imaju kosture dodoa u zbirkama, ali nijedan, pa čak ni Prirodoslovni muzej na Mauricijusu, nema kostur sastavljen od kostiju jednog jedinog dodoa. Ustvari, to nije istina. Britanski muzej je zapravo posjedovao čitavog dodoa u svojoj zbirci sve do 18. stoljeća. Bio je mumificiran, s kožom i svim, ali kako im je bilo jako važno uštedjeti na prostoru, tadašnji su djelatnici dodou odrezali glavu i noge, a ostatak spalili u krijesu. Danas na njihovoj internetskoj stranici postoji popis ovih primjeraka, uz napomenu da je ostatak "izgorio u požaru".
Not quite the whole truth. Anyway. The frontispiece of this article was this photo, and I'm one of the people that thinks that Tina Brown was great for bringing photos to the New Yorker, because this photo completely rocked my world. I became obsessed with the object -- not just the beautiful photograph itself, and the color, the shallow depth of field, the detail that's visible, the wire you can see on the beak there that the conservator used to put this skeleton together -- there's an entire story here. And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great if I had my own dodo skeleton? (Laughter)
To baš i nije cijela priča. Uglavnom... Ovo je glavna fotografija tog članka. Ja sam jedan od onih koji misle da je Tina Brown sjajna jer je uvela fotografije u New Yorker. I to zato jer je ova fotografija uzdrmala moj svijet. Postao sam opsjednut tim predmetom, i to ne samo zbog ljepote same fotografije, boje, male dubljine polja, detalja, ili žice koja se vidi na kljunu, koju je konzervator koristio pri sastavljanju kostura. Iza ovog leži cijela priča. Pomislio sam: ne bi li bilo sjajno imati vlastiti kostur dodoa? (Smijeh)
I want to point out here at this point that I've spent my life obsessed by objects and the stories that they tell, and this was the very latest one. So I began looking around for -- to see if anyone sold a kit, some kind of model that I could get, and I found lots of reference material, lots of lovely pictures. No dice: no dodo skeleton for me. But the damage had been done. I had saved a few hundred photos of dodo skeletons into my "Creative Projects" folder -- it's a repository for my brain, everything that I could possibly be interested in. Any time I have an internet connection, there's a sluice of stuff moving into there, everything from beautiful rings to cockpit photos. The key that the Marquis du Lafayette sent to George Washington to celebrate the storming of the Bastille. Russian nuclear launch key: The one on the top is the picture of the one I found on eBay; the one on the bottom is the one I made for myself, because I couldn't afford the one on eBay. Storm trooper costumes. Maps of Middle Earth -- that's one I hand-drew myself. There's the dodo skeleton folder. This folder has 17,000 photos -- over 20 gigabytes of information -- and it's growing constantly. And one day, a couple of weeks later, it might have been maybe a year later, I was in the art store with my kids, and I was buying some clay tools -- we were going to have a craft day. I bought some Super Sculpeys, some armature wire, some various materials. And I looked down at this Sculpey, and I thought, maybe, yeah, maybe I could make my own dodo skull.
Moram vam sada priznati da sam cijeli život opsjednut predmetima i njihovim pričama, a ovo je bila najnovija opsesija. Tako sam počeo tražiti nekoga tko prodaje pribor za izrađivanje ili nekakav model te ptice. I našao sam puno referenci, mnogo lijepih slika, ali nažalost, nijednog kostura. No, povratka nije bilo. Sačuvao sam nekoliko stotina slika kostura dodoa u svoju mapu za "Kreativne projekte". To je riznica za moj mozak, sve što me zanima. Kad god sam na internetu u tu mapu spremam slike svega i svačega, od prekrasnih prstenova do pilotskih kabina. Ključ kojeg je markiz od Lafayettea poslao Georgeu Washingtonu povodom pada Bastille. Ruski ključ za nuklearno lansiranje. Na vrhu je ključ kojeg sam našao na eBayu, a ovog na dnu sam napravio za sebe jer si nisam mogao priuštiti onog s eBaya. Kostimi imperijalnih jurišnika, karte Međuzemlja. Ovu sam nacrtao sam. Tu je i mapa s kosturima dodoa. Ova mapa ima 17 000 fotografija i preko 20 gigabajta podataka, a stalno se povećava. Jednog dana, nakon par tjedana ili možda godine dana, bio sam s djecom u dućanu i kupovao glinu za modeliranje. Imali smo Kreativni dan. Kupio sam glinu Super Sculpeys, alu-žicu i slično. Pogledao sam ovu kutiju Sculpey gline i pomislio: možda, možda bih mogao napraviti vlastiti kostur dodoa.
I should point out at this time -- I'm not a sculptor; I'm a hard-edged model maker. You give me a drawing, you give me a prop to replicate, you give me a crane, scaffolding, parts from "Star Wars" -- especially parts from "Star Wars" -- I can do this stuff all day long. It's exactly how I made my living for 15 years. But you give me something like this -- my friend Mike Murnane sculpted this; it's a maquette for "Star Wars, Episode Two" -- this is not my thing -- this is something other people do -- dragons, soft things.
Moram vam reći da ja nisam kipar, ali sam stručnjak za izrađivanje modela. Dajte mi crtež, rekvizit koji mogu kopirati, dizalicu, skelu, dijelove iz Ratova zvijezda. Posebno dijelove iz Ratova zvijezda. Mogao bih to raditi cijeli dan. Upravo sam tako zarađivao za život 15 godina. Ali dajte mi nešto poput ovoga... Moj prijatelj Mike Murnane je oblikovao ovu lutku za Ratove zvijezda II. To nije moje područje. Tim se bave drugi - zmajevima i mekanim oblicima.
However, I felt like I had looked at enough photos of dodo skulls to actually be able to understand the topology and perhaps replicate it -- I mean, it couldn't be that difficult. So, I started looking at the best photos I could find. I grabbed all the reference, and I found this lovely piece of reference. This is someone selling this on eBay; it was clearly a woman’s hand, hopefully a woman's hand. Assuming it was roughly the size of my wife's hand, I made some measurements of her thumb, and I scaled them out to the size of the skull. I blew it up to the actual size, and I began using that, along with all the other reference that I had, comparing it to it as size reference for figuring out exactly how big the beak should be, exactly how long, etc.
No, pogledao sam dovoljno slika tog kostura i mislio sam da razumijem topologiju lika i da ga mogu kopirati. Koliko to može biti teško? Počeo sam tražiti najbolje fotografije. Uzeo sam sve prikupljene reference i našao ovu prekrasnu fotografiju. Netko je ovo prodavao na eBayu. To je očito ženska ruka. Barem se nadam. Vjerojatno je iste veličine kao i od moje žene. Izmjerio sam njen palac i usporedio sve s veličinom lubanje. Povećao sam sliku do prirodne veličine i to koristio, uz ostale reference. Sve sam uspoređivao kako bih odredio koliko velik treba biti kljun, koliko dugačak, i slično.
And over a few hours, I eventually achieved what was actually a pretty reasonable dodo skull. And I didn't mean to continue, I -- it's kind of like, you know, you can only clean a super messy room by picking up one thing at a time; you can't think about the totality. I wasn't thinking about a dodo skeleton; I just noticed that as I finished this skull, the armature wire that I had been used to holding it up was sticking out of the back just where a spine would be. And one of the other things I'd been interested in and obsessed with over the years is spines and skeletons, having collected a couple of hundred. I actually understood the mechanics of vertebrae enough to kind of start to imitate them. And so button by button, vertebrae by vertebrae, I built my way down. And actually, by the end of the day, I had a reasonable skull, a moderately good vertebrae and half of a pelvis.
Nakon par sati sam uspio napraviti prilično dobru lubanju dodoa. Nisam namjeravao nastaviti. Ali, kao i kod čišćenja jako neuredne sobe, uspjet ćete samo ako radite stvar po stvar, a ne odjednom. Nisam mislio o cijelom kosturu. Ali kad sam dovršio lubanju vidio sam da žica koja ju je pridržavala viri iz njenog kraja točno poput kralježnice. Godinama su me zanimali i fascinirali kosturi i kralježnice. Skupio sam ih na stotine. Dovoljno sam poznavao svojstva kralježaka i mogao sam ih imitirati. Tako sam gumb po gumb, kralježak po kralježak, nastavio raditi. Do kraja dana imao sam lubanju, prilično dobre kralješke i pola zdjelice.
And again, I kept on going, looking for more reference, every bit of reference I could find -- drawings, beautiful photos. This guy -- I love this guy! He put a dodo leg bones on a scanner with a ruler. This is the kind of accuracy that I wanted, and I replicated every last bone and put it in. And after about six weeks, I finished, painted, mounted my own dodo skeleton. You can see that I even made a museum label for it that includes a brief history of the dodo. And TAP Plastics made me -- although I didn't photograph it -- a museum vitrine. I don't have the room for this in my house, but I had to finish what I had started.
Nastavio sam tražiti materijale, sve što se moglo naći - crteže, prekrasne fotografije. Ovaj tip - obožavam ga! Skenirao je nogu dodoa zajedno s ravnalom. Takvu sam preciznost tražio, te sam jednostavno napravio kopije svih kostiju i sastavio ih. Nakon otprilike šest tjedana dovršio sam, obojao i postavio vlastitog kostura ptice dodo. Čak sam napravio natpis kao u muzeju s kratkom poviješću ptice. Nemam fotografiju, no tvrtka TAP Plastics mi je izradila i muzejsku vitrinu. U mojoj kući nema mjesta za ovo, ali morao sam dovršiti započeto.
And this actually represented kind of a sea change to me. Again, like I said, my life has been about being fascinated by objects and the stories that they tell, and also making them for myself, obtaining them, appreciating them and diving into them. And in this folder, "Creative Projects," there are tons of projects that I'm currently working on, projects that I've already worked on, things that I might want to work on some day, and things that I may just want to find and buy and have and look at and touch. But now there was potentially this new category of things that I could sculpt that was different, that I -- you know, I have my own R2D2, but that's -- honestly, relative to sculpting, to me, that's easy.
Ovo je za mene bila značajna promjena. Moj se život sastojao od fascinacije predmetima i njihovim pričama, te njihovom izradom. Želio sam ih imati, cijeniti i dati im da me obuzmu. U ovoj mapi "Kreativni projekti" su projekti na kojima sada radim, oni koje sam napravio, ili koje namjeravam raditi, i stvari koje mislim pronaći, kupiti, imati, gledati ih i dodirivati. No sada se pojavila nova kategorija - skulpture, stvari koje mogu oblikovati, a to je drukčije, znate. Imam vlastitog R2D2, ali to je lako, u usporedbi s izradom skulpture.
And so I went back and looked through my "Creative Projects" folder, and I happened across the Maltese Falcon. Now, this is funny for me: to fall in love with an object from a Hammett novel, because if it's true that the world is divided into two types of people, Chandler people and Hammett people, I am absolutely a Chandler person. But in this case, it's not about the author, it's not about the book or the movie or the story, it's about the object in and of itself. And in this case, this object is -- plays on a host of levels.
Opet sam pogledao svoju mapu "Kreativni projekti i naišao sam na Malteškog sokola. Ovo je meni smiješno: zaljubiti se u predmet iz Hammettovog romana, jer ako se svijet dijeli na dvije vrste ljudi, one koji vole Hammetta i one koji vole Chandlera, ja sam za Chandlera. No, ovdje se ne radi o autoru, knjizi, filmu ili priči. Tu je važan sam predmet i njegova bit. U ovom slučaju, predmet postoji na više razina.
First of all, there's the object in the world. This is the "Kniphausen Hawk." It is a ceremonial pouring vessel made around 1700 for a Swedish Count, and it is very likely the object from which Hammett drew his inspiration for the Maltese Falcon. Then there is the fictional bird, the one that Hammett created for the book. Built out of words, it is the engine that drives the plot of his book and also the movie, in which another object is created: a prop that has to represent the thing that Hammett created out of words, inspired by the Kniphausen Hawk, and this represents the falcon in the movie. And then there is this fourth level, which is a whole new object in the world: the prop made for the movie, the representative of the thing, becomes, in its own right, a whole other thing, a whole new object of desire.
Prvo, on je predmet u stvarnom svijetu. Ovo je kniphausenški sokol, to je obredna posuda izrađena oko 1700. za jednog švedskog grofa. To je predmet koji je vjerojatno inspirirao Hametta da stvori Malteškog sokola. Zatim je tu ptica koju je Hammet stvorio za roman. Napravljena je od riječi i ona pokreće radnju. Tu je i film, u kojem je stvoren još jedan predmet: rekvizit koji predstavlja Hammettovog lika od riječi, koji je inspiriran kniphauserškim sokolom. Zatim imamo četvrtu razinu, a nju čini potpuno novi predmet u stvarnosti: rekvizit za film, koji predstavlja originalni predmet, postaje na svoj način jedna potpuno nova stvar. Novi predmet čežnje.
And so now it was time to do some research. I actually had done some research a few years before -- it's why the folder was there. I'd bought a replica, a really crappy replica, of the Maltese Falcon on eBay, and had downloaded enough pictures to actually have some reasonable reference. But I discovered, in researching further, really wanting precise reference, that one of the original lead birds had been sold at Christie's in 1994, and so I contacted an antiquarian bookseller who had the original Christie's catalogue, and in it I found this magnificent picture, which included a size reference. I was able to scan the picture, blow it up to exactly full size.
Uslijedilo je novo istraživanje, iako me to već i prije par godina zanimalo. Zato sam imao i mapu s tim. Kupio sam stvarno lošu kopiju Malteškog sokola na eBayu, te sačuvao dovoljno fotografija kako bih imao dobre reference. No, otkrio sam dalje istražujući u potrazi sa boljim referencama, da je jednu od originalnih olovnih ptica prodao Christie's 1994. Kontaktirao sam antikvarijat koji je imao originalni katalog Christie'sa i u njemu našao ovu sjajnu fotografiju zajedno s mjerama. Skenirao sam ju i povećao do prirodne veličine.
I found other reference. Avi [Ara] Chekmayan, a New Jersey editor, actually found this resin Maltese Falcon at a flea market in 1991, although it took him five years to authenticate this bird to the auctioneers' specifications, because there was a lot of controversy about it. It was made out of resin, which wasn't a common material for movie props about the time the movie was made. It's funny to me that it took a while to authenticate it, because I can see it compared to this thing, and I can tell you -- it's real, it's the real thing, it's made from the exact same mold that this one is. In this one, because the auction was actually so controversial, Profiles in History, the auction house that sold this -- I think in 1995 for about 100,000 dollars -- they actually included -- you can see here on the bottom -- not just a front elevation, but also a side, rear and other side elevation.
Našao sam još materijala. Avi (Ara) Chekmayan, urednik iz New Jerseyja, pronašao je ovog Malteškog sokola od smole na buvljaku 1991. No, trebalo mu je pet godina da dobije potvrdu autentičnosti prema specifikacijama aukcijske kuće, jer je predmet pratila kontroverza. Izrađena je od smole koja se nije koristila za filmske rekvizite u vrijeme snimanja tog filma. Smiješno je da je potvrda autentičnosti trajala dugo jer je u usporedbi s originalom meni očito, da je to prava stvar. Izrađena je iz istog kalupa kao i ova. Aukcija je bila toliko kontroverzna da je aukcijska kuća Profiles in History, koja ju je 1995. prodala za 100 000 dolara, navela, vidite ovdje na dnu, ne samo prednju stranu sokola, već i obje strane i pozadinu.
So now, I had all the topology I needed to replicate the Maltese Falcon. What do they do, how do you start something like that? I really don't know. So what I did was, again, like I did with the dodo skull, I blew all my reference up to full size, and then I began cutting out the negatives and using those templates as shape references. So I took Sculpey, and I built a big block of it, and I passed it through until, you know, I got the right profiles. And then slowly, feather by feather, detail by detail, I worked out and achieved -- working in front of the television and Super Sculpey -- here's me sitting next to my wife -- it's the only picture I took of the entire process. As I moved through, I achieved a very reasonable facsimile of the Maltese Falcon. But again, I am not a sculptor,
Imao sam svu topologiju potrebnu za izradu kopije Malteškog sokola. Kako uopće započeti nešto takvo? Nemam pojma. Ponovno sam, kao i s kosturom dodoa, sve slike povećao na prirodnu veličinu i izrezao negative, te ih poput šablona koristio za određivanje oblika ptice. Uzeo sam glinu Sculpey i napravio veliku gromadu, te ju polako oblikovao, dok nisam dobio prave mjere. Zatim sam polako, pero po pero, detalj po detalj, radio i uspio. Radio sam pred televizijom. Tu je Super Sculpey i ja kraj svoje žene. To je jedina fotografija cijelog procesa. Postupno sam uspio napraviti poštenu kopiju Malteškog sokola. No, ja inače ne izrađujem skulpture
and so I don't know a lot of the tricks, like, I don't know how my friend Mike gets beautiful, shiny surfaces with his Sculpey; I certainly wasn't able to get it. So, I went down to my shop, and I molded it and I cast it in resin, because in the resin, then, I could absolutely get the glass smooth finished. Now there's a lot of ways to fill and get yourself a nice smooth finish. My preference is about 70 coats of this -- matte black auto primer. I spray it on for about three or four days, it drips to hell, but it allows me a really, really nice gentle sanding surface and I can get it glass-smooth. Oh, finishing up with triple-zero steel wool. Now, the great thing about getting it to this point was that because in the movie, when they finally bring out the bird at the end, and they place it on the table, they actually spin it. So I was able to actually screen-shot and freeze-frame to make sure. And I'm following all the light kicks on this thing and making sure that as I'm holding the light in the same position, I'm getting the same type of reflection on it -- that's the level of detail I'm going into this thing. I ended up with this: my Maltese Falcon. And it's beautiful. And I can state with authority at this point in time, when I'd finished it, of all of the replicas out there -- and there is a few -- this is by far the most accurate representation of the original Maltese Falcon than anyone has sculpted. Now the original one, I should tell you,
pa ne znam puno trikova. Ne znam kako moj prijatelj Mike dobije glatke, sjajne površine. Meni sigurno nije uspjelo. Zato sam otišao u svoju radionicu i napravio odljev od smole, jer sa smolom mogu dobiti glatki sjaj poput stakla. Postoji više načina kako postići taj fini glatki sjaj. Osobno volim staviti oko 70 slojeva ove crne mat boje za auto. Nanosim je tri do četiri dana, kapa kao sam vrag, ali na kraju imam finu površinu za brušenje koju ispoliram da bude glatka poput stakla. Na kraju ju obradim čeličnom vunom. Pravo zadovoljstvo je uslijedilo kad sam bio skoro gotov. Na kraju filma, kad napokon donesu pticu i stave je na stol, zavrte ju. Zato sam mogao zaustaviti svaki kadar kako bih bio siguran da je sve dobro. Pratio sam svaki odsjaj svjetla i pazio da držim kip na istom mjestu kako bi svjetlo isto padalo. Toliko sam pazio na sve detalje. I na kraju sam imao ovo: svog vlastitog Malteškog sokola. Prekrasan je. I tvrdim da je u trenutku kada sam dovršio sokola, od mnogobrojnih kopija upravo moja najtočnija replika originalnog Malteškog sokola. Originalnog sokola je izradio
is sculpted by a guy named Fred Sexton. This is where it gets weird. Fred Sexton was a friend of this guy, George Hodel. Terrifying guy -- agreed by many to be the killer of the Black Dahlia. Now, James Ellroy believes that Fred Sexton, the sculptor of the Maltese Falcon, killed James Elroy's mother. I'll go you one stranger than that: In 1974, during the production of a weird comedy sequel to "The Maltese Falcon," called "The Black Bird," starring George Segal, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had a plaster original of the Maltese Falcon -- one of the original six plasters, I think, made for the movie -- stolen out of the museum. A lot of people thought it was a publicity stunt for the movie. John's Grill, which actually is seen briefly in "The Maltese Falcon," is still a viable San Francisco eatery, counted amongst its regular customers Elisha Cook, who played Wilmer Cook in the movie, and he gave them one of his original plasters of the Maltese Falcon. And they had it in their cabinet for about 15 years, until it got stolen in January of 2007. It would seem that the object of desire only comes into its own by disappearing repeatedly.
tip koji se zvao Fred Sexton. Tu stvari postaju čudne. Fred Sexton je bio prijatelj Georgea Hodela. Zastrašujući tip kojeg većina smatra ubojicom Crne Dalije. James Ellroy vjeruje da je Fred Sexton, koji je izradio Malteškog sokola, ubio majku Jamesa Elroya. Postaje još čudnije. To se dogodilo 1974. tijekom snimanja nastavka "Malteškog sokola", čudne komedije zvane "Crna ptica", u kojoj je glumio George Segal. Muzej umjetnosti Los Angelesa imao je gipsani original Malteškog sokola. Za film ih je napravljeno šest. Tog su sokola ukrali iz muzeja. Mnogi su mislili da je to marketinški trik za film. John's Grill je zalogajnica koja se može na kratko vidjeti u "Malteškom sokolu", i koja još uvijek nudi poštenu hranu. U nju je često dolazio Elisha Cook koji glumi Wilmera Cooka u filmu. On im je darovao jedan od originalnih Malteških sokola. Imali su ga 15 godina u vitrini dok nije ukraden u siječnju 2007. Čini se da predmet čežnje postaje ono što jest samo kroz neprestano nestajanje.
So here I had this Falcon, and it was lovely. It looked really great, the light worked on it really well, it was better than anything that I could achieve or obtain out in the world. But there was a problem. And the problem was that: I wanted the entirety of the object, I wanted the weight behind the object. This thing was made of resin and it was too light. There's this group online that I frequent. It's a group of prop crazies just like me called the Replica Props Forum, and it's people who trade, make and travel in information about movie props. And it turned out that one of the guys there, a friend of mine that I never actually met, but befriended through some prop deals, was the manager of a local foundry. He took my master Falcon pattern, he actually did lost wax casting in bronze for me, and this is the bronze I got back. And this is, after some acid etching, the one that I ended up with.
I tako sam imao ovog sokola i bio je divan. Izgledao je sjajno. Svjetlo je na njega padalo savršeno i nisam mogao boljeg napraviti ili nabaviti nigdje drugdje. Ali, postojao je problem: želio sam taj predmet u njegovoj potpunosti, želio sam težinu koju je imao original. Kopija od smole bila je prelagana. Na internetu često posjećujem grupu koju čine zaljubljenici u rekvizite poput mene. Zove se Forum rekvizita i na njemu ljudi nude i traže informacije o filmskim rekvizitima. Ispostavilo sa da je jedan od članova moj prijatelj, kojeg nisam osobno poznavao, ali smo razmjenjivali rekvizite. On je bio vlasnik ljevaonice. Uzeo je moj glavni primjerak sokola i napravio odljev u vosku, a zatim u bronci za mene. Ovo je bronca koju sam dobio. A ovo je, nakon bakroreza, konačni proizvod.
And this thing, it's deeply, deeply satisfying to me. Here, I'm going to put it out there, later on tonight, and I want you to pick it up and handle it. You want to know how obsessed I am. This project's only for me, and yet I went so far as to buy on eBay a 1941 Chinese San Francisco-based newspaper, in order so that the bird could properly be wrapped ... like it is in the movie. (Laughter) Yeah, I know! (Laughter) (Applause) There you can see, it's weighing in at 27 and a half pounds. That's half the weight of my dog, Huxley.
Ova me stvar duboko ispunjava. Evo, stavit ću je ovdje da je kasnije možete pogledati izbliza. Želim da ju uzmete i promotrite. Želite li znati koliko sam opsjednut? Ovaj je projekt samo za mene, ali sam ipak otišao na eBay i kupio kineske novine tiskane u San Francisu 1941., samo kako bi ptica mogla biti u njih umotana... baš kao u filmu. (Smijeh) Da, znam! (Smijeh) (Pljesak) Sokol teži 12 i pol kilograma. To je pola težine mog psa Huxleyja.
But there's a problem. Now, here's the most recent progression of Falcons. On the far left is a piece of crap -- a replica I bought on eBay. There's my somewhat ruined Sculpey Falcon, because I had to get it back out of the mold. There's my first casting, there's my master and there's my bronze. There's a thing that happens when you mold and cast things, which is that every time you throw it into silicone and cast it in resin, you lose a little bit of volume, you lose a little bit of size. And when I held my bronze one up against my Sculpey one, it was shorter by three-quarters of an inch. Yeah, no, really, this was like aah -- why didn't I remember this? Why didn't I start and make it bigger? So what do I do? I figure I have two options. One, I can fire a freaking laser at it, which I have already done, to do a 3D scan -- there's a 3D scan of this Falcon. I had figured out the exact amount of shrinkage I achieved going from a wax master to a bronze master and blown this up big enough to make a 3D lithography master of this, which I will polish, then I will send to the mold maker and then I will have it done in bronze. Or:
No, postoji problem. Ovdje vidite sve moje sokole. Lijevo je loša kopija s eBaya. Zatim moj sokol od gline Sculpey, oštećen od vađenja iz kalupa. Tu je moj prvi odljev, moj glavni sokol i na kraju, odljev u bronci. Kad radite odljev ili gipsate nešto događa se to da svaki put kad napravite odljev u smoli gubite malo volumena, veličina se smanjuje. Kada sam usporedio sokola od gline i od bronce vidio sam da je brončani sokol manji dva centimetra. Ne, ozbiljno, bio sam šokiran. Zašto se nisam toga sjetio? Zašto ga nisam od početka napravio većeg? Što sad? Imao sam dvije opcije. Prvo, mogao sam naciljati laser u njega. To sam već napravio, kako bih ga skenirao u 3D. Evo ga ovdje. Izračunao sam koliko se smanjio dok je bio odljevan u vosku, a onda u bronci. Povećao sam ga i napravio 3D litografiju originala koju sam htio ispolirati i poslati na odljev kako bih je mogao imati u bronci. Ili...
There are several people who own originals, and I have been attempting to contact them and reach them, hoping that they will let me spend a few minutes in the presence of one of the real birds, maybe to take a picture, or even to pull out the hand-held laser scanner that I happen to own that fits inside a cereal box, and could maybe, without even touching their bird, I swear, get a perfect 3D scan. And I'm even willing to sign pages saying that I'll never let anyone else have it, except for me in my office, I promise. I'll give them one if they want it. And then, maybe, then I'll achieve the end of this exercise. But really, if we're all going to be honest with ourselves, I have to admit that achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with, was it. Thank you.
Postoje ljudi koji posjeduju originalne sokole. Pokušao sam doći do njih u nadi da će mi dopustiti par trenutaka s originalnom pticom. Možda bih ju mogao fotografirati, ili čak izvući ručni skener koji posjedujem, a stane u kutiju pahuljica. Možda bih mogao, bez diranja ptice, obećajem, dobiti savršenu 3D sliku. Voljan sam potpisati ugovor da pticu neće vidjeti nitko osim mene, u mom uredu. Čak ću im i dati jednu kopiju ako žele. Tada ću možda napokon ovo privesti kraju. No, budimo sada iskreni. Moram priznati da privesti kraju ovo putovanje nikad nije bila njegova svrha, zar ne? Hvala vam.