Hello! My name is Golan Levin. I'm an artist and an engineer, which is, increasingly, a more common kind of hybrid. But I still fall into this weird crack where people don't seem to understand me. And I was looking around and I found this wonderful picture. It's a letter from "Artforum" in 1967 saying "We can't imagine ever doing a special issue on electronics or computers in art." And they still haven't. And lest you think that you all, as the digerati, are more enlightened, I went to the Apple iPhone app store the other day. Where's art? I got productivity. I got sports. And somehow the idea that one would want to make art for the iPhone, which my friends and I are doing now, is still not reflected in our understanding of what computers are for.
大家好,我是戈兰•莱文。 我是个艺术家,也是工程师。 也是越来越常见的跨界混血儿。 尽管如此我还是会陷入尴尬的境地, 就是当人们看起来不明白我做的是什么的时候。 于是我就四处找找,并找到了这幅好图。 这是《 艺术论坛》杂志 (Artforum) 1967年的一封信。 上面说 “我们无法想像,何时出版专刊 谈电子或电脑艺术。” 他们至今也还没有做到。 你也许认为,作为数字精英,你们大家更先知先觉, 有一天我去了苹果 iPhone 的应用程序专营店, 艺术在哪儿呢?它有各色产品,有体育方面的等等。 不知何故,为 iPhone 创做艺术的想法, 当然这也是我和我伙伴们在做的东西, 依然没有得到充分的理解和认知, 尤其是对于电脑的用处上。
So, from both directions, there is kind of, I think, a lack of understanding about what it could mean to be an artist who uses the materials of his own day, or her own day, which I think artists are obliged to do, is to really explore the expressive potential of the new tools that we have. In my own case, I'm an artist, and I'm really interested in expanding the vocabulary of human action, and basically empowering people through interactivity. I want people to discover themselves as actors, as creative actors, by having interactive experiences.
所以从认知的双方向看,我以为还是存在一些缺失的, 那就是,作为一个使用他自己时代工具的艺术家 到底意味着什么。 我以为艺术家的一个使命就是, 不断拓展我们时代新工具的表达潜能。 以我自己为例呢,我是一个艺术家, 我也对以下两件事很感兴趣 一是拓展人类行为的表达方式, 还有就是通过互动的形式来赋予人们更多的体验。 我希望人们用演员的方式来发现自己, 像富有创意的演员那样,通过互动的体验。
A lot of my work is about trying to get away from this. This a photograph of the desktop of a student of mine. And when I say desktop, I don't just mean the actual desk where his mouse has worn away the surface of the desk. If you look carefully, you can even see a hint of the Apple menu, up here in the upper left, where the virtual world has literally punched through to the physical. So this is, as Joy Mountford once said, "The mouse is probably the narrowest straw you could try to suck all of human expression through."
我的很多工作都是为了避免以下这种情况, 这是我一个学生的桌面照片, 我说的这个桌面呢,不仅仅是指 这个被鼠标磨没了表面的实体桌面, 如果你仔细看,你会发现 一点苹果菜单的蛛丝马迹,就在这上边左边一点的地方, 虚拟世界就是这么实实在在的 穿越了来到了现实世界啊。 所以就像 Joy Mountford (原雅虎用户体验设计副总裁) 说的, “鼠标可能是世上最细的吸管, 用它你可以吮吸到所有人类世界的表达。"
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And the thing I'm really trying to do is enabling people to have more rich kinds of interactive experiences. How can we get away from the mouse and use our full bodies as a way of exploring aesthetic experiences, not necessarily utilitarian ones. So I write software. And that's how I do it. And a lot of my experiences resemble mirrors in some way. Because this is, in some sense, the first way, that people discover their own potential as actors, and discover their own agency. By saying "Who is that person in the mirror? Oh it's actually me."
我正在尝试去做的, 也正是使人们可以拥有更丰富 更多样的互动体验。 我们怎样才能摆脱鼠标并且使用我们的整个身体 来做为探索美学体验的方式呢 这并不需要是实用主义的。 所以我写软件。这就是我实现它的方式。 我的很多试验 都是在不同程度的模拟镜子。 因为从某种程度来说,镜子是人们 以演员的方式发现自我的第一次经历, 当然也发现了自己的媒介。 也就是当时那一句 “镜子中的人是谁?哦那是我自己啊。”
And so, to give an example, this is a project from last year, which is called the Interstitial Fragment Processor. And it allows people to explore the negative shapes that they create when they're just going about their everyday business. So as people make shapes with their hands or their heads and so forth, or with each other, these shapes literally produce sounds and drop out of thin air -- basically taking what's often this, kind of, unseen space, or this undetected space, and making it something real, that people then can appreciate and become creative with. So again, people discover their creative agency in this way. And their own personalities come out in totally unique ways.
所以这里有一个例子, 这是我去年的一个作品。 它叫做 “间隙碎片处理器”。 它使人们可以发现他们 做日常动作时候被忽略的阴性图形。 这样人们可以用他们的手和头创作图形, 也可以更进一步的,和别人一起完成。 这些图形还会发声,并且从轻薄的空气中坠落。 基本上就是把这些不被看到的 被忽视的空间,变成真实的存在, 这样人们就可以欣赏,也可以发挥创意。 人们以这种方式, 发现了自己充满创意的媒介。 与此同时他们自己的个性也呈现了出来 以这种别致的方式。
So in addition to using full-body input, something that I've explored now, for a while, has been the use of the voice, which is an immensely expressive system for us, vocalizing. Song is one of our oldest ways of making ourselves heard and understood. And I came across this fantastic research by Wolfgang Köhler, the so-called father of gestalt psychology, from 1927, who submitted to an audience like yourselves the following two shapes. And he said one of them is called Maluma. And one of them is called Taketa. Which is which? Anyone want to hazard a guess? Maluma is on top. Yeah. So. As he says here, most people answer without any hesitation.
除了以整个身体做为输入之外呢, 我还创作了这个 以声音为媒介的作品。 它是一个强大的表达系统,即发声系统。 歌唱是我们最古老的 让我们被听到被理解的方式。 我有幸知道了苛勒 (Wolfgang Kohler) 做过的这个神奇研究, 就是被称为完形心理学之父的苛勒,1927年, 他向他的观众,就像在座各位这样的观众, 展示了以下两个图形。 然后他说其中的一个叫做吗魯吗, 另一个叫做嗒咔嗒。哪个是哪个? 有没有人想猜一下的? 吗魯吗是上边的那个。是的,就像你猜的那样。 据他所说,绝大多数人会毫不犹豫的回答出来。
So what we're really seeing here is a phenomenon called phonaesthesia, which is a kind of synesthesia that all of you have. And so, whereas Dr. Oliver Sacks has talked about how perhaps one person in a million actually has true synesthesia, where they hear colors or taste shapes, and things like this, phonaesthesia is something we can all experience to some extent. It's about mappings between different perceptual domains, like hardness, sharpness, brightness and darkness, and the phonemes that we're able to speak with.
所以我们现在看到的就是一个现象, 叫做 “声觉” (声音的通感现象)。 它是我们每个人都有的一种通感。 就像奥利弗•萨克斯 (Oliver Sacks, 英国脑神经学家) 曾说的, 大概一百万人中的一个 是真的拥有通感的, 也就是他们可以听到颜色或者品尝到形状,诸如此类。 声觉是我们都可以一定程度上体验到的。 它是指联通不同感知领域的对应。 就好像坚固,锋利,明亮和黑暗, 以及我们用以发声的音素。
So 70 years on, there's been some research where cognitive psychologists have actually sussed out the extent to which, you know, L, M and B are more associated with shapes that look like this, and P, T and K are perhaps more associated with shapes like this. And here we suddenly begin to have a mapping between curvature that we can exploit numerically, a relative mapping between curvature and shape.
于是70年来,通过一些研究, 认知心理学家们已经弄清楚了 这个现象,如你所知的, L, M, B 与这种形状的图形更贴近, 而 P, T, K 则更贴近这个形状。 所以如此,我们突然就开始描绘这个 我們可以通过数学计算曲率, 找出曲率和形状的对应关系。
So it occurred to me, what happens if we could run these backwards? And thus was born the project called Remark, which is a collaboration with Zachary Lieberman and the Ars Electronica Futurelab. And this is an interactive installation which presents the fiction that speech casts visible shadows. So the idea is you step into a kind of a magic light. And as you do, you see the shadows of your own speech. And they sort of fly away, out of your head. If a computer speech recognition system is able to recognize what you're saying, then it spells it out. And if it isn't then it produces a shape which is very phonaesthetically tightly coupled to the sounds you made. So let's bring up a video of that.
我就想,如果我们反过来操作又会怎样呢? 于是就诞生了这个叫做 “重塑" (Remark) 的作品。 它是与札却立·里伯曼 (Zachary Lieberman) 以及 Ars Electronica 未来实验室共同完成的。 这是一个互动的装置艺术,它呈现了 说话本身演出可视影子的虚幻场景。 大体上说, 就是你走进这种魔术一样的光晕中, 同时你便看到你自己说的话变成影子, 这些影子似乎飞散了,从你脑袋中飞走了。 如果电脑的语音识别系统 识别出了你说的话,它就把它拼写出来, 而相反的, 它将创造一个图形,一个声觉意义上 极其贴近你发声的一个图形。 我们一起来看一下这个视频。
(Applause)
(掌声)
Thanks. So. And this project here, I was working with the great abstract vocalist, Jaap Blonk. And he is a world expert in performing "The Ursonate," which is a half-an-hour nonsense poem by Kurt Schwitters, written in the 1920s, which is half an hour of very highly patterned nonsense. And it's almost impossible to perform. But Jaap is one of the world experts in performing it. And in this project we've developed a form of intelligent real-time subtitles. So these are our live subtitles, that are being produced by a computer that knows the text of "The Ursonate" -- fortunately Jaap does too, very well -- and it is delivering that text at the same time as Jaap is. So all the text you're going to see is real-time generated by the computer, visualizing what he's doing with his voice. Here you can see the set-up where there is a screen with the subtitles behind him. Okay. So ... (Applause) The full videos are online if you are interested.
谢谢。下面还有一个作品, 与我一起工作的是著名的声音实验诗人雅普·布朗克 (Jaap Blonk) 他是世界有名的 “声音诗歌" (Ursonate) 专家, 这是一首半小时的无意义诗歌 由柯特·舒维特 (Kurt Schwitters) 创作于1920年代。 这首诗是长达半小时的高度程式化的无意义。 同时也非常难于表演。 幸运的是雅普就是可以表演它的全球专家之一。 在这个作品里我们创建了 一种智能的实时字幕形式。 这些就是我们的实时现场字幕, 它的制作是依靠一台电脑,电脑知道 “声音诗歌” 的文本, 幸好雅普也知道,不容易啊。 电脑在雅普表演的同时传输文本。 所以所有你将要看到的文本字幕 都是由一台电脑实时产生的, 它把雅普的声音转换为可视的了。 你可以看到这设置着一个背后有字幕的屏幕。 好了。那么… (掌声) 完整版视频在网上,如果你感兴趣的话。
I got a split reaction to that during the live performance, because there is some people who understand live subtitles are a kind of an oxymoron, because usually there is someone making them afterwards. And then a bunch of people who were like, "What's the big deal? I see subtitles all the time on television." You know? They don't imagine the person in the booth, typing it all.
在现场表演这个作品时我得到了不尽相同的反应。 因为有些人明白 实时字幕在某种程度上是自相矛盾的。 因为字幕通常是有专人事后制作的。 可还是有一些人会说 “有什么大不了的? 我在电视上总是看到字幕啊。” 你懂我意思么?他们根本不去想还会有个人躲在格子间里拼命打字。
So in addition to the full body, and in addition to the voice, another thing that I've been really interested in, most recently, is the use of the eyes, or the gaze, in terms of how people relate to each other. It's a really profound amount of nonverbal information that's communicated with the eyes. And it's one of the most interesting technical challenges that's very currently active in the computer sciences: being able to have a camera that can understand, from a fairly big distance away, how these little tiny balls are actually pointing in one way or another to reveal what you're interested in, and where your attention is directed. So there is a lot of emotional communication that happens there.
除了以上两种用身体和人声做艺术的形式之外, 还有一件我非常感兴趣的事, 尤其是最近这段时间,我喜欢用眼睛, 或者说注视,这种人们用以相互联系的奇妙形式。 事实是相当数量含义隽永的不可视信息 都是通过眼睛来交流的。 这是一项非常有趣的技术挑战, 在当今的电脑科学领域也相当活跃。 新的科技之下诞生了这样一种摄像头,它可以 即使从很远的距离也可以, 辨明我们这两个小小的眼球是如何一会看向这边一会看向那边 就反映出了你的兴致所在, 以及你注意力又在哪里。 这中间很多感情层面的交流也随之发生了。
And so I've been beginning, with a variety of different projects, to understand how people can relate to machines with their eyes. And basically to ask the questions: What if art was aware that we were looking at it? How could it respond, in a way, to acknowledge or subvert the fact that we're looking at it? And what could it do if it could look back at us? And so those are the questions that are happening in the next projects.
于是我便着手于一系列的作品, 它们都是探讨人类是如何通过自己的眼睛与机器交流的。 作品的概念基本上是提出这样的问题, 如果艺术品本身可以意识到我们在看它,又会怎样? 它会如何回应,或者说, 它会怎样认知或者颠覆我们观赏者的注视这一事实? 如果它可以也朝我们看回来,与我们对视,又会怎样? 这些问题基本上就是以下几个作品所要探讨的。
In the first one which I'm going to show you, called Eyecode, it's a piece of interactive software in which, if we read this little circle, "the trace left by the looking of the previous observer looks at the trace left by the looking of previous observer." The idea is that it's an image wholly constructed from its own history of being viewed by different people in an installation. So let me just switch over so we can do the live demo. So let's run this and see if it works.
第一个我将要展示给大家的,叫做 “眼睛密码" (Eyecode), 它是一个人机互动的软件, 它所能做的,就像这圈话说的, 前一个观察者注视留下的印记 正在注视前一个观察者注视留下的印记。 简单来说它是一个完全由 它被装置中的不同观众观看 的自身历史所建构的影像。 下面让我切换过去,现场的做一个小样测试。 我们一起来试试看。
Okay. Ah, there is lots of nice bright video. There is just a little test screen that shows that it's working. And what I'm just going to do is -- I'm going to hide that. And you can see here that what it's doing is it's recording my eyes every time I blink. Hello? And I can ... hello ... okay. And no matter where I am, what's really going on here is that it's an eye-tracking system that tries to locate my eyes. And if I get really far away I'm blurry. You know, you're going to have these kind of blurry spots like this that maybe only resemble eyes in a very very abstract way. But if I come up really close and stare directly at the camera on this laptop then you'll see these nice crisp eyes.
好了。嗯,这有很多不错的视频。 这只是一个测试页,试看看它工作的怎么样。 我接下来要把它收起来, 这样你们就可以看到它的工作了 它在我每次眨眼的时候都会收录我的眼睛。 你好?我想我 … 你好 … 好了。 不管我在哪儿,它真正在做的 就是通过一个眼球跟踪系统来定位我的眼睛。 如果我很远呢, 我就变得很模糊。 你知道, 你将得到的就是这种模糊的小点点, 超级抽象的来看, 还是类似眼睛的。 但是当我凑近电脑上的摄像头并且直视它时 你将看到这样又好看又清晰的眼睛。
You can think of it as a way of, sort of, typing, with your eyes. And what you're typing are recordings of your eyes as you're looking at other peoples' eyes. So each person is looking at the looking of everyone else before them. And this exists in larger installations where there are thousands and thousands of eyes that people could be staring at, as you see who's looking at the people looking at the people looking before them. So I'll just add a couple more. Blink. Blink. And you can see, just once again, how it's sort of finding my eyes and doing its best to estimate when it's blinking. Alright. Let's leave that. So that's this kind of recursive observation system. (Applause) Thank you.
你可以这么认为,就好像你在用你的眼睛打字输入一样。 只是你输入的是你看别人眼睛时 你自己眼睛留下的记录。 所以每个人看到的就是 在他之前的所有人的观看。 事实上, 这个作品设置在更大型的装置中, 那里有成千上万的眼睛 可供人们观看 这样你就可以看到之前在看的人在看 之前在看的人在看。 我要在增加一些眼睛。眨眼。眨眼。 你可以看到,它又一次的找到了我的眼睛 并且尽可能的通过眨眼来评估。 好了。就这样吧。 总之, 这就是一个无穷递进的观察系统。 (掌声) 谢谢。
The last couple pieces I'm going to show are basically in the new realm of robotics -- for me, new for me. It's called Opto-Isolator. And I'm going to show a video of the older version of it, which is just a minute long. Okay. In this case, the Opto-Isolator is blinking in response to one's own blinks. So it blinks one second after you do. This is a device which is intended to reduce the phenomenon of gaze down to the simplest possible materials. Just one eye, looking at you, and eliminating everything else about a face, but just to consider gaze in an isolated way as a kind of, as an element. And at the same time, it attempts to engage in what you might call familiar psycho-social gaze behaviors. Like looking away if you look at it too long because it gets shy, or things like that.
最后我将要展示的这一系列作品 在机器人技术领域基本上也都是新的,至少对我来说是新的。 它叫做 “光绝缘体" (Opto-lsolator)。 我将展示的是这个作品之前一个老版本的视频。 视频只有一分钟。 在这个作品中,光绝缘体的形式是 在有人眨眼的时候也给一个眨眼的动作。 它是在你眨眼一秒钟之后眨眼的。 这个装置的用意是 用最简单的材料呈現注视的现象。 仅仅是一个眼睛, 这么看着你,去掉脸上其他的东西。 让我们以一种独立的方式来思考注视, 好像它是,一个元素。 与此同时,它在试图探讨也许你更习惯称作 社会心理学的注视行为。 例如当你注视良久便忍不住看向别处 因为会变得害羞。 或诸如此类。
Okay. So the last project I'm going to show is this new one called Snout. (Laughter) It's an eight-foot snout, with a googly eye. (Laughter) And inside it's got an 800-pound robot arm that I borrowed, (Laughter) from a friend. (Laughter) It helps to have good friends. I'm at Carnegie Mellon; we've got a great Robotics Institute there. I'd like to show you thing called Snout, which is -- The idea behind this project is to make a robot that appears as if it's continually surprised to see you. (Laughter) The idea is that basically -- if it's constantly like "Huh? ... Huh?" That's why its other name is Doubletaker, Taker of Doubles. It's always kind of doing a double take: "What?" And the idea is basically, can it look at you and make you feel as if like, "What? Is it my shoes?" "Got something on my hair?" Here we go. Alright.
那么,最后一个我将展示的 是一个叫做 “长鼻子" (Snout) 的新作品。 (笑声) 它是一个八呎长的长鼻子, 上面还有一只惊愕的大眼睛。 (笑声) 其实它里边有一个800磅重的机器人手臂, 我借来的, (笑声) 从一个朋友那儿借的。 (笑声) 有几个好朋友多幸福。 这是在卡内基梅隆大学。我们在那有一个很棒的机器人研究中心。 我将为大家展示这个叫做长鼻子的作品。 这个作品的意思是 制造一个一看到你就持续表现惊奇的机器人。 (笑声) 这个基本上是说 它持续表现的像在说“啊?… 啊?” 所以它还有一个名字叫做万事成双,做什么都要两次。 它总是好像在连续惊愕两次的说 “怎么会?” 大意就是说,它能不能就是看着你 然后让你觉得 “怎么了? 是我鞋子出了问题么?” “还是我头发沾上什么东西了?” 嗯,就是这个。
Checking him out ... For you nerds, here's a little behind-the-scenes. It's got a computer vision system, and it tries to look at the people who are moving around the most. Those are its targets. Up there is the skeleton, which is actually what it's trying to do. It's really about trying to create a novel body language for a new creature. Hollywood does this all the time, of course. But also have the body language communicate something to the person who is looking at it. This language is communicating that it is surprised to see you, and it's interested in looking at you.
我们一起来看一下。 对科技狂热者,这有一些幕后揭秘。 它有一个电脑的视觉系统。 并且它在尽可能的朝那个活动最多的人盯着看。 那几个就是它的目标。 那上边就是骨骼。 这就是它在试图去做的。 这个作品是在试图为一个新生物来创造一种戏剧化的身体语言。 当然,好莱坞经常这么干。 更主要的是这种身体语言可以真正的 与那个看它的人沟通交流。 这种身体语言传递的信息就是,它看到你很惊奇, 同时它对观察你也很有兴趣。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
(Applause)
(掌声)
Thank you very much. That's all I've got for today. And I'm really happy to be here. Thank you so much.
非常感谢大家。这些就是我今天展示的全部内容。 很高兴今天可以来到这里。谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)