An image is worth more than a thousand words, so I'm going to start my talk by stop talking and show you a few images that I recently captured.
Slika vredi više od hiljadu reči pa ću svoj govor početi tako što ću prestati da pričam i pokazati vam nekoliko slika koje sam skoro napravio.
So by now, my talk is already 6,000 words long, and I feel like I should stop here.
Moj govor do sada već ima 6000 reči i mislim da bi ovde trebalo da stanem.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
At the same time, I probably owe you some explanation about the images that you just saw. What I am trying to do as a photographer, as an artist, is to bring the world of art and science together. Whether it is an image of a soap bubble captured at the very moment where it's bursting, as you can see in this image, whether it's a universe made of tiny little beads of oil paint, strange liquids that behave in very peculiar ways, or paint that is modeled by centrifugal forces, I'm always trying to link those two fields together.
U isto vreme, verovatno vam dugujem objašnjenje u vezi sa slikama koje ste upravo videli. Ono što pokušavam da uradim kao fotograf, kao umetnik, je da spojim svet umetnosti i nauke. Bez obzira da li je to slika mehurića sapuna nastala istog trenutka kada on puca, kao što možete videti na ovoj slici, bez obzira da li je to univerzum napravljen od sićušnih perli uljane boje, čudnih tečnosti koje se ponašaju na specifične načine, ili boje koja je oblikovana centrifugalnim silama, uvek pokušavam da povežem ove dve oblasti.
What I find very intriguing about those two is that they both look at the same thing: They are a response to their surroundings. And yet, they do it in a very different way. If you look at science on one hand, science is a very rational approach to its surroundings, whereas art on the other hand is usually an emotional approach to its surroundings. What I am trying to do is I'm trying to bring those two views into one so that my images both speak to the viewer's heart but also to the viewer's brain. Let me demonstrate this based on three projects.
Ono što mi je interesantno u vezi sa ovim oblastima je to da gledaju na istu stvar: one su odgovori na svoju okolinu. Ipak, to rade na veoma različite načine. Ako sa jedne strane pogledate nauku, ona ima veoma racionalan pristup svom okruženju, dok je sa druge strane umetnost obično emocionalni pristup svom okruženju. Ono što pokušavam je da ova dva pogleda spojim u jedan tako da moje slike govore srcu gledaoca, ali i njegovom mozgu. Dozvolite da demonstriram ovo na tri projekta.
The first one has to do with making sound visible. Now as you may know, sound travels in waves, so if you have a speaker, a speaker actually does nothing else than taking the audio signal, transform it into a vibration, which is then transported through the air, is captured by our ear, and transformed into an audio signal again. Now I was thinking, how can I make those sound waves visible? So I came up with the following setup. I took a speaker, I placed a thin foil of plastic on top of that speaker, and then I added tiny little crystals on top of that speaker. And now, if I would play a sound through that speaker, it would cause the crystals to move up and down. Now this happens very fast, in the blink of an eye, so, together with LG, we captured this motion with a camera that is able to capture more than 3,000 frames per second. Let me show you what this looks like.
Kod prvog se radi o tome da zvuk postane vidljiv. Kao što možda znate, zvuk putuje preko talasa, tako da ako imate zvučnik, zvučnik zapravo ne radi ništa drugo osim što uzima zvučni signal, pretvara ga u vibraciju koja se onda prenosi kroz vazduh, nju čuje naše uho, i onda se opet pretvara u zvučni signal. Ja sam razmišljao kako da te zvučne talase učinim vidljivim? Smislio sam sledeće rešenje. Uzeo sam zvučnik i stavio tanku plastičnu foliju na vrh tog zvučnika i onda sam dodao sićušne kristale na vrh tog zvučnika. Sada, kada bih preko tog zvučnika pustio neki zvuk, kristali bi se pomerali gore-dole. Ovo se dešava jako brzo, u deliću sekunde, pa smo zajedno sa LG-em uhvatili ovaj pokret fotoaparatom koji može da snimi više od 3000 kadrova po sekundi. Da vam pokažem kako ovo izgleda.
(Music: "Teardrop" by Massive Attack)
(Muzika: "Teardrop" izvođača Massive Attack)
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
Thank you very much. I agree, it looks pretty amazing.
Hvala vam mnogo. Slažem se, izgleda neverovatno.
But I have to tell you a funny story. I got an indoor sunburn doing this while shooting in Los Angeles. Now in Los Angeles, you could get a decent sunburn just on any of the beaches, but I got mine indoors, and what happened is that, if you're shooting at 3,000 frames per second, you need to have a silly amount of light, lots of lights. So we had this speaker set up, and we had the camera facing it, and lots of lights pointing at the speaker, and I would set up the speaker, put the tiny little crystals on top of that speaker, and we would do this over and over again, and it was until midday that I realized that I had a completely red face because of the lights pointing at the speaker. What was so funny about it was that the speaker was only coming from the right side, so the right side of my face was completely red and I looked like the Phantom of the Opera for the rest of the week.
Ali moram da vam ispričam jednu smešnu priču. Radeći ovo, dobio sam opekotine u zatvorenom prostoru dok sam snimao u Los Anđelesu. U Los Anđelesu možete dobro izgoreti na bilo kojoj plaži, ali ja sam izgoreo unutra, a desilo se sledeće: ako snimate na 3000 kadrova po sekundi, morate da imate neverovatnu količinu svetla. Podesili smo ovaj zvučnik i ka njemu okrenuli fotoaparat, i dosta svetla je bilo upereno na zvučnik, ja bih zvučnik podesio, stavio bih na njega sićušne kristale i ovo bismo stalno ponavljali i tek oko podneva sam shvatio da mi je lice bilo potpuno crveno zbog svetala uperenih ka zvučniku. Ono što je smešno je da je zvučnik bio okrenut samo na desnu stranu tako da je desna strana mog lica bila potpuno crvena i ostatak nedelje sam izgledao kao Fantom iz opere.
Let me now turn to another project which involves less harmful substances. Has anyone of you heard of ferrofluid? Ah, some of you have. Excellent. Should I skip that part?
Hajde da pogledamo drugi projekat sa manje opasnim supstancama. Da li je neko od vas čuo za feromagnetne tečnosti? Neki jesu. Odlično. Da li treba da preskočim taj deo?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Ferrofluid has a very strange behavior. It's a liquid that is completely black. It's got an oily consistency. And it's got tiny little particles of metal in it, which makes it magnetic. So if I now put this liquid into a magnetic field, it would change its appearance.
Feromagnetna tečnost se ponaša veoma čudno. To je potpuno crna tečnost. Ima gustinu poput ulja. U sebi ima sitne čestice metala, zbog čega je namagnetisana. Ako ovu tečnost stavim u magnetno polje, ona će promeniti izgled.
Now I've got a live demonstration over here to show this to you. So I've got a camera pointing down at this plate, and underneath that plate, there is a magnet. Now I'm going to add some of that ferrofluid to that magnet.
Sada ću vam demonstrirati ovo uživo. Fotoaparat je uperen na ovu ploču, a ispod nje se nalazi magnet. Sada ću na magnet dodati malo te tečnosti.
Let's just slightly move it to the right and maybe focus it a little bit more. Excellent.
Da ga samo malo pomerimo nadesno i možda da još malo fokusiramo. Odlično.
So what you can see now is that the ferrofluid has formed spikes. This is due to the attraction and the repulsion of the individual particles inside the liquid. Now this looks already quite interesting, but let me now add some watercolors to it. Those are just standard watercolors that you would paint with. You wouldn't paint with syringes, but it works just the same. So what happened now is, when the watercolor was flowing into the structure, the watercolors do not mix with the ferrofluid. That's because the ferrofluid itself is hydrophobic. That means it doesn't mix with the water. And at the same time, it tries to maintain its position above the magnet, and therefore, it creates those amazing-looking structures of channels and tiny little ponds of colorful water paint. So that was the second project.
Sada možete videti da je tečnost oformila bodlje. Ovo se dešava zbog privlačenja i odbijanja pojedinačnih čestica unutar tečnosti. Ovo već sada izgleda prilično zanimljivo, ali hajde da dodamo malo vodenih boja u ovo. Ovo su samo obične vodene boje sa kojima biste i slikali. Ne biste slikali špricevima, ali princip je isti. Ono što se desilo je sledeće: kada se vodena boja ulila u strukturu, boje se nisu pomešale sa feromagnetnom tečnošću. To je zbog toga što je sama tečnost hidrofobna. To znači da se ne meša sa vodom. U isto vreme pokušava da održi svoj položaj iznad magneta i tako stvara te neverovatne strukture kanala i barice šarenih vodenih boja. To je bio drugi projekat.
Let me now turn to the last project, which involves the national beverage of Scotland. (Laughter)
Hajde sada da se osvrnemo na poslednji projekat, koji uključuje nacionalno piće Škotske. (Smeh)
This image, and also this one, were made using whiskey. Now you might ask yourself, how did he do that? Did he drink half a bottle of whiskey and then draw the hallucination he got from being drunk onto paper? I can assure you I was fully conscious while I was taking those pictures.
Ova slika, a takođe i ova, napravljene su pomoću viskija. Možda ćete se zapitati, kako je to uradio? Da li je popio pola boce viskija i onda naslikao na papiru svoju pijanu halucinaciju? Uveravam vas da sam bio potpuno svestan dok sam fotografisao ovo.
Now, whiskey contains 40 percent of alcohol, and alcohol has got some very interesting properties. Maybe you have experienced some of those properties before, but I am talking about the physical properties, not the other ones. So when I open the bottle, the alcohol molecules would spread in the air, and that's because alcohol is a very volatile substance. And at the same time, alcohol is highly flammable. And it was with those two properties that I was able to create the images that you're seeing right now.
Viski sadrži 40% alkohola, a alkohol ima neka veoma zanimljiva svojstva. Možda ste već iskusili neka od tih svojstava, ali ja pričam o fizičkim svojstvima, a ne o onim drugim. Kada otvorim flašu, molekuli alkohola se šire vazduhom zato što je alkohol veoma nestalna supstanca. I u isto vreme, veoma je zapaljiv. Koristeći ta dva svojstva mogao sam da stvorim slike koje sada gledate.
Let me demonstrate this over here. And what I have here is an empty glass vessel. It's got nothing in it. And now I'm going to fill it with oxygen and whiskey. Add some more. Now we just wait for a few seconds for the molecules to spread inside the bottle. And now, let's set that on fire.
Dozvolite da to demonstriram ovde. Ovde imam prazan stakleni sud. U njemu nema ničega. Sada ću ga napuniti kiseonikom i viskijem. I još malo. Sada samo čekamo nekoliko sekundi da se molekuli rašire unutar flaše. Hajde da to sada zapalimo.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So that's all that happens. It goes really fast, and it's not that impressive. I could do it again to show it one more time, but some would argue that this is a complete waste of the whiskey, and that I should rather drink it.
To je sve što se dešava. Kreće se veoma brzo i nije tako impresivno. Mogao bih da to uradim opet da pokažem ovo još jednom, ali neki bi rekli da je to apsolutno traćenje viskija i da bi bolje bilo da ga popijem.
But let me show you a slow motion in a completely darkened room of what I just showed you in this live demonstration. So what happened is that the flame traveled through the glass vessel from top to bottom, burning the mix of the air molecules and the alcohol. So the images that you saw at the beginning, they are actually a flame stopped in time while it is traveling through the bottle, and you have to imagine it was flipped around 180 degrees. So that's how those images were made.
Ali hajde da vam pokažem usporeni snimak ovoga što sam vam pokazao uživo, u potpuno zatamnjenoj prostoriji. Desilo se to da je plamen prošao kroz stakleni sud od vrha nadole, paleći mešavinu molekula vazduha i alkohola. Slike koje ste videli na početku, zapravo su plamen zaustavljen u vremenu dok putuje kroz bocu i morate zamisliti da je zaokrenut za 180 stepeni. Tako su nastale te slike.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
So, I have now showed you three projects, and you might ask yourself, what is it good for? What's the idea behind it? Is it just a waste of whiskey? Is it just some strange materials? Those three projects, they're based on very simple scientific phenomena, such as magnetism, the sound waves, or over here, the physical properties of a substance, and what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to use these phenomena and show them in a poetic and unseen way, and therefore invite the viewer to pause for a moment and think about all the beauty that is constantly surrounding us.
Sada sam vam pokazao tri projekta i možda ćete se zapitati, čemu služi sve ovo? Koja je ideja iza toga? Da li je to samo bacanje viskija? Da li su to samo neki čudni materijali? Ta tri projekta zasnovana su na veoma jednostavnim naučnim pojavama poput magnetizma, zvučnih talasa, ili u ovom slučaju fizičkih svojstava supstance, i ono što pokušavam da uradim je da iskoristim ove pojave i da ih prikažem na poetski i do sada neviđen način i tako apelujem na gledaoca da zastane na trenutak i pomisli na svu lepotu koja nas stalno okružuje.
Thank you very much.
Hvala vam mnogo.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)