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.
一张图片往往比一千个字来的有价值 所以我先不说什么 而是先给大家看几张 我最近拍摄的照片
So by now, my talk is already 6,000 words long, and I feel like I should stop here.
好,到目前为止,我已经说了有6000字了 我觉得是时候停下来了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
与此同时,我想我应该 解释一下 这些你刚看到的图片。 作为一个摄影师和一个艺术家, 我想要做的是把艺术和科学 相结合的世界带给大家。 无论是一张在即将破裂的时刻拍摄的 肥皂泡的照片, 就是你看到的这张, 还是一个由微小油漆珠子 组成的世界, 拥有古怪行为方式的奇怪液体, 又或者是由离心力绘制成的一幅画, 我总是想着把这两个领域联系起来。
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.
关于这两个领域,最让我痴迷的是 它们有一个共同点: 它们都是对其周围环境的反应。 然而,通过的是两种不同的方式。 让我们先来看一下科学, 科学是对其周围环境的一种 非常理性的表达, 而艺术是对周围环境的 一种情绪化的诠释。 我想做的是 把这两种方式结合起来 使我的作品不但能够打动观众的内心 也能启发观众的大脑。 我将用我的三个项目来阐明这点。
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.
第一个项目是关于如何使声音变得可见。 你可能知道, 声音是通过音波来传输的, 如果你有个音箱, 音箱不会干别的 只会在获得音频信号后, 将其转化为振动, 再通过空气, 传到我们的耳朵里, 再重新转化为音频信号。 我曾经想过, 如何才能使声波变得可见? 由此我做了以下工作。 我拿一个音箱,在它的顶部 放上一层塑料薄膜, 然后在上面放上一些 细小的晶体。 那么现在,如果我播放这个音箱的话 就会造成这些小晶体的上下跳动。 这一过程非常迅速, 也就在眨眼之间, 通过与LG合作,我们通过一台 能够每秒拍摄3000帧的相机 捕捉到了这一运动。 让我来展示一下这是什么样的。
(Music: "Teardrop" by Massive Attack)
(音乐:“Teardrop"来自于Massive Attack乐队)
(Applause)
(掌声)
Thank you very much. I agree, it looks pretty amazing.
非常谢谢 我同意,这看上去非常惊艳。
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.
但我得告诉你们一个好玩的故事。 就在洛杉矶拍摄这些的时候 我居然在室内被晒伤了。 在洛杉矶,你可以在 任何一个沙滩上被晒伤, 但我是在室内被晒伤的。 当时是这样的, 如果你需要每秒钟拍摄3000帧, 那么你需要非常强的光线,非常多的光。 我们把音箱放好, 把相机对着它, 然后用强光源对着它, 然后我负责的是 把细小晶体放到音箱的上面, 我们需要一遍又一遍地重复这一工作, 半天之后我发现 我的脸完全红了 就是因为那个对着音箱的光源。 好笑的是 音箱只被放在我的右边 所以我的右脸完全红透了 在这周余下的几天里我看起来 就像是歌剧魅影。
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?
让我进入下一个 更安全些的项目。 有没有人听说过铁磁流体? 哈,有一些听过,很好。 那我是不是该跳过这一部分?
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
铁磁流体的行为非常奇怪。 它是一种全黑的液体。 它有着油腻的质感。 同时它其中又包含了微小的金属粒子, 使其变得拥有磁性。 如果我把这种液体置于磁场之中, 它的外观就会改变。
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.
我给大家在这里做一个 现场的演示 用一个照相机向下对着这个盘子, 在盘子的下面,有一块磁铁。 好现在我将在磁铁上放上一些 铁磁流体。
Let's just slightly move it to the right and maybe focus it a little bit more. Excellent.
向右移一点 调整一下焦点,很好。
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.
你现在看到的 铁磁流体形变成了钉尖状 这是由于液体里粒子的 相吸与相斥。 这已经看起来很有趣了, 不过我现在要加点水彩进去。 这些就是普通水彩 你用来画画的那种 你不会用注射器来画画 可工作原理是一样的。 现在发生了是, 当水彩流入到这个结构里去, 水彩没有和铁磁流体混合在一起。 这是由于铁磁流体具有 疏水性。 也就是说不会和水混合。 同时,它又会努力保持住 在磁铁上的位置, 所以就构成了这一由条纹和 微小彩色水池组成的 不可思议的结构。 这就是我的第二个项目。
Let me now turn to the last project, which involves the national beverage of Scotland. (Laughter)
让我们进入最后一个项目, 是和 苏格兰国民饮料有关的。 (笑声)
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.
这幅画面,还有这个, 是由威士忌做成的。 你可能会问你自己, 他是怎么做到的? 他是不是喝了半瓶威士忌 然后把他酒醉后看到的 幻像给画了下来? 我保证我在拍摄这些照片时 是清醒的。
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.
威士忌的酒精含量是40%, 同时酒精具有一些非常有趣的特性。 你可能亲身体验过 其中一些特性, 不过我这里要说的是物理特性, 不是其它那些。 当我打开酒瓶的时候,酒精分子 会散播到空气中, 因为酒精是非常易挥发的物质 同时,酒精又是极易燃的。 是这两种酒精的特性 我才能完成你们 看到的这幅照片。
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.
我来向大家演示一下。 我这里有一个空的玻璃容器。 里面什么也没有。 现在我要把它装满氧气 和威士忌。 再加一点。 我们只需要等上几秒钟 让分子充分挥发到瓶子里 现在,把它点燃。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
就是这样 它发生得非常快,也不怎么厉害。 我可以再重新演示一遍, 不过肯定有人会反对 这完全是浪费威士忌,还不如喝掉。
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.
让我来给你们看一下慢动作 在一个完全黑暗的环境下拍摄到的 就是刚才你们看到的那一幕。 那些火焰 从瓶口向下燃烧到瓶底 烧掉了空气和酒精分子的 混合物。 你们一开始看到的那些照片, 其实是在瓶中燃烧 刚刚及时停下的火焰, 你同时要想象一下 它被翻转了180度 那些照片就是这样被做出来的。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
Thank you.
谢谢.
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.
我给大家了展示我的三个项目, 你可能在问自己,这些有什么用呢? 这背后是什么想法呢? 仅仅是浪费威士忌吗? 或者只是一些奇怪的材料? 这三个项目,是基于非常简单的 科学现象, 比如磁场,声波, 或者是物质的物理性质, 我想做的是 我想通过这些现象 展现一条诗意的没人见过的方式, 因此我希望观众们能够 静静地停下一会儿 仔细想想这些我们身边的 我们身边的美丽事物。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)