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.
大家好 今天我带大家了解一下 我的八个艺术作品 我和丹麦艺术家索伦・普尔兹一起创作的作品 我们的组合叫普尔兹和饶 我们在印度居住和工作
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.
第一个作品 叫做“叔叔电话” 这个作品是从我叔叔的一个 总爱使唤我做事的习惯中获得灵感 我就像他身体的延伸部分- 帮他开灯或者倒水 买包烟 我长大后就被使唤得更厉害了 我开始觉得这是种控制 但是我不能怎么样 因为在印度家庭里 叔叔是很受尊敬的 最烦我而又让我不解的是 他用座机打电话的方式 他拿着听筒然后让我给他拨号码 作为一个给他的回应和礼物 我给他做了这个“叔叔电话” 这个长到要两个人才能使用的电话 正是我叔叔使用明明一个人也能用的电话的方式
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.
但问题是当我离家上大学后 我开始怀念他的使唤 于是我给他做了一个金色的打字机 这样他能通过电子邮件 使唤他四散在世界各地的侄子侄女们 他只要拿张纸放进纸夹 打印出电子邮件或他的命令然后抽出纸 这个设备就能自动把这封信作为电子邮件 寄送个收件人 你看 我们把许多能检测机械动作 并将其转化为数字信号的 很多电子配件组装起来 这样我叔叔只需使用这个机器外端设备 当然这个机器得是很漂亮并带有形式主义的感觉 就象我叔叔喜欢的那样
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.
下面一个作品是感声的装置 我们亲切地称之为“俾格米人”(非洲小矮人) 这个作品的概念是围绕着我们的 一群很害羞,敏感而又可爱的部落 这些挂在墙上的板的后面 藏着这些小人 只要很安静的环境下,他们就悄悄探出头来 如果更佳安静,他们就一直会伸出脖子来 稍稍有动静,他们就立马藏进去
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.
这儿一个屋子的三面墙上装着这些板子 板子后藏着五百多个这些小俾格米人 看看它是怎样的 这是一段视频 当很安静的时候,他们就从板子后探出脑袋来 就象人或者活物一样 过了一会儿他们慢慢熟悉了吓到他们的声音 就对背景声音不再反应 一会儿你能听到火车声音但他们没有反应 (噪声) 但他们对前景声音仍然敏感 你马上能听到 (口哨) 我们为了 令其栩栩如生费了很大劲 每一个俾格米人有其各自的行为特征,心理 情绪波动和人格特征 这是个很早起的样板 当然现在的改进了很多 我们让其和人们互动 我们发现人们此时会变得象孩子一样很爱玩
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.
这是一个叫“失踪者”的摄影装置 我们被隐身这个概念 启发 如果能体验隐身会是什么样的? 我们就一家 专业从事摄像监视的公司合作 请他们为我们设计了一个软件 通过一台摄像机 能够监视屋子里的人,跟踪他们 然后以背景替代影像使其得以隐身
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.
这儿看一下早期的视频样板 右边你能看到是我的同伴索伦 他确实在那儿 左边你看到处理过的视频 摄像机帮他隐身了 索伦进了屋子 唰 他就不见了 你能看到摄像机在跟踪他并删除其影像 这是个很好的视频 还没有处理好影像重叠等问题 但是这个很快改进了 一个屋子里有一个摄像机监视着 然后每个墙上都有一个显示器 当人们走进屋子 他们能在显示器上看到自己 但是总有一个人不论在屋子里怎么移动 他都是隐身的
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.
这个作品叫做“太阳的影子” 它看上去就象张纸而已 像是个孩子涂鸦出的 一个油渍或者太阳 正面看这个物体看上去很有活力 但是从侧面则看起来很虚弱 当人们走进这个屋子 他们基本都没有注意到 以为这只是地上垃圾之类 但是一旦他们经过旁边 它就开始一抽一抽地往上爬 接着就精疲力尽 掉了下去
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
这个作品 是个一个倒立的人的漫画形象 他的头非常重,充满了沉重的想法 所以他是倒立的帽子着地 他的身体象长出来的植物一样 他会像醉酒的人一样 用一种混乱又极慢的动作 移动着 但是限制在这个圆内移动 因为要是没有这个圆,地板不是很平 他就会开始在整个房间乱转 他身上没有一根电线 给你们展示一下- 当人们进屋的时候 就启动了这个装置 几分钟内他就很缓慢的 痛苦地倒立起来 动量聚集到一定程度 他就看上去快要倒下去的样子 这是个关键时刻 因为我们希望激发起观看者的 本能去扶起他拯救他 但是并不真正需要 因为他能再次把自己拉起来
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.
这个作品对我们来说是个真正的技术挑战 我们努力的几年 才把机器装配好 调整好他的平衡和动态运动 确定他倒下去的精确时间 对我们来说是非常重要的 因为如果我们让其倒下去 他可能就伤到自己 但是如果倒得不够 又不能产生破坏感 让人有拯救他的欲望 这儿我给你们看一段间断的视频 我们正在测试-动作很快 那是我的同伴 他放开装置 他变得紧张 要去抓住他 但是没有必要 装置能自己站起来
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.
这个作品我们将 具有审美感的皮毛上 嵌入上千个不同大小的 能在夜里发光的光纤 背景设置有如真正夜空般大小 我们把它裹在一个类似流体态物体上 它是个泰迪熊的外形 挂在天花板上 这个作品的概念是要把 象宇宙一样广漠抽象的东西 和一个泰迪熊一样熟悉的物体对比 而泰迪熊的感觉是舒适亲密的 这个作品是想让你 能够在某一刻忘记它泰迪熊的形态 几乎觉得它只是屋子里的一个洞 而你能通过它看到星光点点的夜空
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.
这个是最后一个作品,目前还在制作中 它叫做空间填充器 试想一下屋子中间 有一个立方体 当你靠近它 它就会 变成两倍高度四倍体积大小 来和你互动 这个作品就会在有人在周围移动的时候 通过扩大和缩小来产生动态效果 就好像它试着 在结构里藏着什么秘密似的
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.
我们得用上很多科技 但是我们并不很热衷科技 因为这让我们的工作长久以来费神费力 但是我们应用科技因为 它能帮我们 通过这些作品表达 感情和行为特征 一旦一个作品的想法出现 这个创造的过程 就是发现这个物体是要和何种方式存在 拥有什么形态和什么方式移动
Thank you.
谢谢
(Applause)
(掌声)