Hi. Today, I'm going to take you through glimpses of about eight of my projects, done in collaboration with Danish artist Soren Pors. We call ourselves Pors and Rao, and we live and work in India.
Hai. Hari ini saya ingin mengajak Anda melihat sejenak delapan proyek saya, hasil kolaborasi dengan seniman Denmark, Soren Pors. Kami menyebut diri kami Pors dan Rao, dan kami tinggal dan bekerja di India.
I'd like to begin with my very first object, which I call "The Uncle Phone." And it was inspired by my uncle's peculiar habit of constantly asking me to do things for him, almost like I were an extension of his body -- to turn on the lights or to bring him a glass of water, a pack of cigarettes. And as I grew up, it became worse and worse, And I started to think of it as a form of control. But of course, I could never say anything, because the uncle is a respected figure in the Indian family. And the situation that irked me and mystified me the most was his use of a landline telephone. He would hold on to the receiver and expect me to dial a number for him. And so as a response and as a gift to my uncle, I made him "The Uncle Phone." It's so long that it requires two people to use it. It's exactly the way my uncle uses a phone that's designed for one person.
Saya ingin memulai dengan obyek pertama yang berjudul "Telepon Paman." Ini terinspirasi oleh kebiasaan aneh paman saya yang selalu meminta saya melakukan sesuatu untuknya, seakan-akan saya adalah perpanjangan dari badannya -- menyalakan lampu atau membawakan minum untuknya, sebungkus rokok. Dan semakin besar saya, semakin buruk kelakuannya, dan saya mulai melihatnya sebagai bentuk kontrol. Tentu saja, saya tak bisa bilang apa-apa, karena paman adalah figur terhormat dalam keluarga India. Dan situasi yang paling membuat saya kesal dan pusing adalah caranya menggunakan telepon. Ia akan memegang gagang telepon dan berharap saya yang memutar nomornya. Jadi, sebagai jawaban dan hadiah untuk paman, saya membuatkannya "Telepon Paman." Telepon ini sangat panjang dan butuh dua orang untuk menggunakannya. Ini cocok dengan cara paman saya memakai telepon yang bisa dioperasikan satu orang.
But the problem is that, when I left home and went to college, I started missing his commands. And so I made him a golden typewriter through which he could dispense his commands to nephews and nieces around the world as an email. So what he had to do was take a piece of paper, roll it into the carriage, type his email or command and pull the paper out. This device would automatically send the intended person the letter as an email. So here you can see, we embedded a lot of electronics that understands all of the mechanical actions and converts it to digital. So my uncle is only dealing with a mechanical interface. And of course, the object had to be very grand and have a sense of ritualism, the way my uncle likes it.
Tapi masalahnya, ketika saya mulai kuliah dan keluar dari rumah, saya jadi merindukan perintahnya. Jadi saya membuatkannya mesin ketik keemasan, yang bisa dipakai untuk memberi perintah ke keponakannya di seluruh dunia melalui email. Jadi ia tinggal mengambil kertas, memasukkannya ke mesin tik, menuliskan email atau perintahnya dan menarik kertasnya keluar. Alat ini akan mengirimkan surat secara otomatis ke penerimanya dalam bentuk email. Dapat dilihat di sini, kami memasang banyak alat elektronik yang dapat membaca aksi mekanik dan mengubahnya ke digital. Jadi paman hanya perlu berhubungan dengan tampilan mekaniknya saja. Dan tentu saja, obyeknya harus besar dan memiliki karakter ritual sesuai dengan selera paman saya.
The next work is a sound-sensitive installation that we affectionately call "The Pygmies." And we wanted to work with a notion of being surrounded by a tribe of very shy, sensitive and sweet creatures. So how it works is we have these panels, which we have on the wall, and behind them, we have these little creatures which hide. And as soon as it's silent, they sort of creep out. And if it's even more silent, they stretch their necks out. And at the slightest sound, they hide back again.
Karya berikutnya adalah instalasi yang sensitif terhadap suara yang kami sebut "Si Kerdil." Kami ingin bekerja dengan gagasan dikelilingi oleh suku yang pemalu, sensitif, dan lucu. Jadi kami memasang panel ini di dinding dan makhluk-makhluk kecil ini bersembunyi di belakangnya. Dan setelah sunyi, mereka seperti merayap keluar. Dan bila sepi sekali, mereka memanjangkan leher mereka. Dan saat ada suara, mereka langsung sembunyi lagi.
So we had these panels on three walls of a room. And we had over 500 of these little pygmies hiding behind them. So this is how it works. This is a video prototype. So when it's quiet, it's sort of coming out from behind the panels. And they hear like humans do, or real creatures do. So they get immune to sounds that scare them after awhile. And they don't react to background sounds. You'll hear a train in moment that they don't react to. (Noise) But they react to foreground sounds. You'll hear that in a second. (Whistling) So we worked very hard to make them as lifelike as possible. So each pygmy has its own behavior, psyche, mood swings, personalities and so on. So this is a very early prototype. Of course, it got much better after that. And we made them react to people, but we found that people were being quite playful and childlike with them.
Jadi kami memasang panel ini di tiga dinding di satu ruangan. Dan ada lebih dari 500 orang-orangan kerdil di baliknya. Jadi begini cara kerjanya. Ini prototipe video. Ketika sunyi, mereka akan keluar dari belakang panel. Mereka mendengar seperti halnya manusia atau makhluk hidup. Jadi, setelah beberapa saat, suara yang akrab tidak lagi menakutkan. Mereka tidak bereaksi terhadap suara di latar belakang. Ini suara kereta api dan mereka tidak bereaksi. (Suara bising) Tapi mereka bereaksi terhadap suara langsung. (Siulan) Kami bekerja keras untuk membuat mereka tampak hidup. Setiap makhluk kerdil ini punya sifat sendiri, perasaan, perasaan yang berubah-ubah, karakter dan sebagainya. Ini prototipe awal. Tentunya, setelahnya jadi makin baik. Kami membuat mereka bereaksi terhadap orang, tapi orang-orang justru senang bermain dan bersikap kekanakan dengan mereka.
This is a video installation called "The Missing Person." And we were quite intrigued with playing with the notion of invisibility. How would it be possible to experience a sense of invisibility? So we worked with a company that specializes in camera surveillance, and we asked them to develop a piece of software with us, using a camera that could look at people in the room, track them and replace one person with the background, rendering them invisible.
Ini instalasi video yang berjudul "Orang Hilang." Di sini kami tertarik untuk bermain dengan konsep kasat mata. Bagaimana kita bisa mengalami perasaan tak terlihat? Kami bekerja sama dengan satu perusahaan spesialis dalam kamera pengintaian, dan kami meminta mereka mengembangkan perangkat lunak bersama kami, menggunakan kamera yang dapat mengambil gambar orang, melacaknya dan menghilangkan gambar satu orang, membuat orang ini tak terlihat.
So I'm just going to show you a very early prototype. On the right side you can see my colleague Soren, who's actually in the space. And on the left side, you'll see the processed video where the camera has made him invisible. Soren enters the room. Pop! He goes invisible. And you can see that the camera is tracking him and erasing. It's a very early video, so we haven't yet dealt with the overlap and all of that, but that got refined pretty soon, later. So how we used it was in a room where we had a camera looking into the space, and we had one monitor, one on each wall. And as people walked into the room, they would see themselves in the monitor, except with one difference: one person was constantly invisible wherever they moved in the room.
Saya akan memperlihatkan Anda satu prototipe awal. Di sisi kanan Anda dapat melihat rekan saya, Soren, yang ada di ruangan. Dan di sisi kiri, Anda melihat video yang diproses di mana kamera membuatnya tak terlihat. Soren masuk ke ruangan. Dan pop! Dia tak terlihat. Dan Anda dapat melihat kamera melacaknya dan menghapus gambarnya. Ini masih video awal jadi kami belum menangani masalah tumpang tindih dan semacamnya, tapi kami memperhalusnya belakangan. Jadi kami menggunakannya di ruangan yang dipasangi kamera, dan kami punya monitor, satu di setiap dinding. Ketika orang masuk ke ruangan, mereka melihat dirinya di monitor, kecuali dengan satu perbedaan: ada satu orang yang tak terlihat kemana pun dia bergerak di ruangan itu.
So this is a work called "The Sun Shadow." And it was almost like a sheet of paper, like a cutout of a childlike drawing of an oil spill or a sun. And from the front, this object appeared to be very strong and robust, and from the side, it almost seemed very weak. So people would walking into the room and they'd almost ignore it, thinking it was some crap laying around. But as soon as they passed by, it would start to climb up the wall in jerky fashion. And it would get exhausted, and it would collapse every time.
Karya yang ini kami namakan "Bayangan Matahari." Dan ini hampir seperti selembar kertas, seperti potongan gambar anak-anak menyerupai tumpahan minyak atau matahari. Dari depan, obyek ini terlihat amat kuat dan gagah, dan dari samping, ia kelihatan amat lemah. Jadi orang masuk ke ruangan dan mengacuhkannya, berpikir itu cuma tumpahan sesuatu saja. Namun segera setelah mereka lewat, obyek ini mulai memanjat dinding dengan gaya yang khas. Dan ia akan capek dan melorot kembali.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
So this work is a caricature of an upside-down man. His head is so heavy, full of heavy thoughts, that it's sort of fallen into his hat, and his body's grown out of him almost like a plant. Well what he does is he moves around in a very drunken fashion on his head in a very unpredictable and extremely slow movement. And it's kind of constrained by that circle. Because if that circle weren't there, and the floor was very even, it would start to wander about in the space. And there's no wires. So I'll just show you an instance -- so when people enter the room, it activates this object. And it very slowly, over a few minutes, sort of painfully goes up, and then it gains momentum and it looks like it's almost about to fall. And this is an important moment, because we wanted to instill in the viewer an instinct to almost go and help, or save the subject. But it doesn't really need it, because it, again, sort of manages to pull itself up.
Karya yang ini adalah karikatur orang yang berdiri terbalik. Kepalanya sangat berat, penuh pikiran, yang sepertinya jatuh ke dalam topinya dan tubuhnya tampak seperti tanaman. Ia akan terus berputar seperti mabuk, menggunakan kepalanya dalam gerakan yang tak dapat ditebak dan sangat pelan. Dan ia tertahan di dalam lingkaran itu. Karena kalau tak ada lingkaran itu, lantainya sangat datar dan ia bisa berguling di ruangan. Dan tak ada kawat. Jadi, saya akan tunjukkan -- saat orang memasuki ruangan, obyek ini akan bergerak. Sangat pelan,mungkin dalam beberapa menit, ia naik perlahan, dan lalu mendapatkan momentum dan kelihatan seperti akan jatuh. Dan momen ini penting karena kami mau mendorong naluri penonton untuk bergerak menolong, menyelamatkan obyek ini. Tapi ia tak perlu ditolong karena benda ini bisa bangkit dengan sendirinya.
So this work was a real technical challenge for us, and we worked very hard, like most of our works, over years to get the mechanics right and the equilibrium and the dynamics. And it was very important for us to establish the exact moment that it would fall, because if we made it in a way that it would topple over, then it would damage itself, and if it didn't fall enough, it wouldn't instill that fatalism, or that sense of wanting to go and help it. So I'm going to show you a very quick video where we are doing a test scenario -- it's much faster. That's my colleague. He's let it go. Now he's getting nervous, so he's going to go catch it. But he doesn't need to, because it manages to lift itself up on its own.
Karya ini cukup menantang secara teknik bagi kami dan kami bekerja keras bertahun-tahun, sama halnya seperti karya lainnya, untuk mendapatkan mekanika dan ekuilibrium dan dinamik yang tepat. Dan sangat penting bagi kami untuk menetapkan momen di saat dia mau jatuh, karena kami membuatnya seperti dia mau jatuh dan akan merusakkan dirinya dan bila tidak cukup miring, tidak akan terasa fatal sehingga keinginan orang untuk menolong tidak muncul. Saya akan tunjukkan video singkat saat kami melakukan uji skenario -- ini dipercepat. Ini rekan saya. Ia melepaskannya. Sekarang dia gugup dan ingin menangkapnya. Tapi itu tak perlu dilakukan karena benda ini bisa mengangkat dirinya sendiri.
So this is a work that we were very intrigued with, working with the aesthetic of fur embedded with thousands of tiny different sizes of fiber optics, which twinkle like the night sky. And it's at the scale of the night sky. So we wrapped this around a blob-like form, which is in the shape of a teddy bear, which was hanging from the ceiling. And the idea was to sort of contrast something very cold and distant and abstract like the universe into the familiar form of a teddy bear, which is very comforting and intimate. And the idea was that at some point you would stop looking at the form of a teddy bear and you would almost perceive it to be a hole in the space, and as if you were looking out into the twinkling night sky.
Ini karya yang sangat menantang, kami bekerja dengan estetika kulit yang di atasnya melekat ribuan fiber optik kecil dalam berbagai ukuran, berkelap-kelip seperti langit malam. Dan ini skala langit malamnya. Jadi kami membentuknya seperti gumpalan, membentuk boneka beruang yang digantungkan di langit-langit. Idenya adalah mengkontraskan sesuatu yang dingin dan jauh dan abstrak seperti alam semesta ke dalam bentuk yang akrab yaitu boneka beruang, yang nyaman dan hangat. Pada suatu waktu kami berharap Anda tak lagi melihat bentuk boneka beruang dan melihatnya seperti lubang di langit-langit seakan-akan Anda melihat langsung ke langit malam yang penuh bintang.
So this is the last work, and a work in progress, and it's called "Space Filler." Well imagine a small cube that's about this big standing in front of you in the middle of the room, and as you approached it, it tried to intimidate you by growing into a cube that's twice its height and [eight] times its volume. And so this object is constantly expanding and contracting to create a dynamic with people moving around it -- almost like it were trying to conceal a secret within its seams or something.
Ini karya yang terakhir dan masih dalam proses yang kami sebut "Pengisi Ruang." Bayangkan sebuah kubus kecil sebesar ini berada di hadapan Anda di tengah ruangan, dan saat Anda mendekatinya, kubus ini berusaha mengintimidasi dengan tumbuh menjadi kubus yang dua kali lebih tinggi dan [delapan] kali lebih besar. Jadi obyek ini terus membesar dan mengecil menciptakan dinamika dengan orang yang bergerak di sekelilingnya -- seakan-akan dia ingin membuka rahasia yang disembunyikan di dalamnya.
So we work with a lot of technology, but we don't really love technology, because it gives us a lot of pain in our work over years and years. But we use it because we're interested in the way that it can help us to express the emotions and behavioral patterns in these creatures that we create. And once a creature pops into our minds, it's almost like the process of creation is to discover the way this creature really wants to exist and what form it wants to take and what way it wants to move.
Jadi kami banyak menggunakan teknologi tapi kami tidak terlalu suka teknologi karena teknologi menyulitkan kami dalam berkarya selama bertahun-tahun Tapi kami menggunakannya karena kami tertarik dengan caranya menolong kami mengekspresikan emosi dan pola tingkah laku benda-benda yang kami ciptakan. Dan ketika satu gagasan muncul di benak kami, rasanya proses penciptaan jadi seperti mencari cara untuk menemukan bagaimana benda ini ingin diciptakan, seperti apa bentuknya dan bagaimana ia bergerak.
Thank you.
Terima kasih.
(Applause)
(Tepuk tangan)