演说者：Janet Echelman

演说题目：珍惜你的想象力，生活更加美好

人类的生活却少不了无穷的想象力，想象力是打开新世界的大门。那些意想不到的艺术品，带给我们无处无在的美感。跟随Janet Echelman博士一起思考：人类如果失去了想象力，世界将会怎样？

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This story is about taking imagination seriously. Fourteen years ago, I first encountered this ordinary material, fishnet, used the same way for centuries. Today, I'm using it to create permanent, billowing, voluptuous forms the scale of hard-edged buildings in cities around the world. 

这个故事是想告诉大家要珍惜想象力。14年前我第一次接触到这个普通的材料，渔网，几百年来人们一直用它捕鱼。今天，我用它来创造永久的、随风飘逸的、动感十足的、如坚固建筑物大小的雕塑，竖立在世界各地的城市中。

I was an unlikely person to be doing this. I never studied sculpture, engineering or architecture. In fact, after college I applied to seven art schools and was rejected by all seven.

我本来不太可能做出这样的成就，我从未学习过雕塑、工程设计或者建筑。事实上，大学毕业后我申请了七所艺术学院而无一例外地都遭到了拒绝。

I went off on my own to become an artist, and I painted for 10 years, when I was offered a Fulbright to India.Promising to give exhibitions of paintings, I shipped my paints and arrived in Mahabalipuram. 

我决定自己走上艺术家之路，我画了十年的画，终于拿到傅尔布莱特奖学金，被邀请去印度，许诺了要办画展，我将画送上船运，然后抵达了玛玛拉普兰（Mahabalipuram）。

The deadline for the show arrived -- my paints didn't. I had to do something. This fishing village was famous for sculpture.So I tried bronze casting. But to make large forms was too heavy and expensive. 

画展快要开幕了，可画还没运到，我必须找到代替品。这个渔村以雕塑闻名，因此我尝试了铜雕，但要雕刻大型的铜像很笨重且很费钱。

I went for a walk on the beach, watching the fishermen bundle their nets into mounds on the sand. I'd seen it every day, but this time I saw it differently -- a new approach to sculpture, a way to make volumetric form without heavy solid materials.

一日我去海滩散步，看着渔民在沙滩上将网捆绑成型，每天经过时我都看到这一场景。但这一次，我观察的角度变了，我看到了一种新的雕塑方式，它可以塑造立体几何的造型，而不必运用沉重坚实的材料。

My first satisfying sculpture was made in collaboration with these fishermen. It's a self-portrait titled "Wide Hips." (Laughter) We hoisted them on poles to photograph. I discovered their soft surfaces revealed every ripple of wind in constantly changing patterns. I was mesmerized. 

我第一个令人满意的雕塑是和这些渔人们合作的成果。它是一个自画像，名为“宽臀” 。我们用杆将它支起来拍照，我发现它柔软的表面展现了风的褶皱，伴随着不断变化的图案，我被迷住了。

I continued studying craft traditions and collaborating with artisans, next in Lithuania with lace makers. I liked the fine detail it gave my work, but I wanted to make them larger -- to shift from being an object you look at to something you could get lost in.

我继续学习工艺传统与工匠们合作，随后在立陶宛与花边编织者合作，我喜欢将这精美的细节赋予到我作品中。但我想把作品放大让它不仅能供人观赏，还能让人迷失其中。

Returning to India to work with those fishermen, we made a net of a million and a half hand-tied knots --installed briefly in Madrid. Thousands of people saw it, and one of them was the urbanist Manual Sola-Morales who was redesigning the waterfront in Porto, Portugal. 

回到印度后，我与渔人们合作编织了一张网，有一百五十万个半手工编制的结。在马德里短暂安置数千人看到了这件作品，其中一人是城市规划专家，索拉莫拉雷斯（Manual Sola-Morales）当时他正在重新设计葡萄牙波尔图的海滨。

He asked if I could build this as a permanent piece for the city. I didn't know if I could do that and preserve my art. Durable, engineered, permanent --those are in opposition to idiosyncratic, delicate and ephemeral.

他问我能不能把作它建成一座永久的作品，立在城市中。我不知道我能否在这样做的同时保留我作品的艺术性，耐用、工程度高、永久这些都与独特、精致、短暂，恰恰相反。

For two years, I searched for a fiber that could survive ultraviolet rays, salt, air, pollution, and at the same time remain soft enough to move fluidly in the wind. We needed something to hold the net up out there in the middle of the traffic circle. 

我花了两年的时间，寻找一种纤维能够抵抗紫外线、盐空气、污染而同时能够保持足够的柔软度，在风中游动。我们需要一些东西支撑大网让它能竖立在交通环道的中央。

So we raised this 45,000-pound steel ring. We had to engineer it to move gracefully in an average breeze and survive in hurricane winds. 

因此我们架起了这座45,000镑重的钢圈。我们必须进行工程设计让网能在微风中优雅地流动同时又能抵御飓风的袭击。

But there was no engineering software to model something porous and moving. I found a brilliant aeronautical engineer who designs sails for America's Cup racing yachts named Peter Heppel. He helped me tackle the twin challenges of precise shape and gentle movement.

但当时没有设计软件来模拟这种多孔物体的移动，我找到了一个优秀的航空学工程师，他设计了美国杯竞赛帆船的帆，他是彼得·赫普尔（Peter Heppel）彼得帮助我解决了这个二重挑战，模拟了精确的外形和优雅的运动。

I couldn't build this the way I knew because hand-tied knots weren't going to withstand a hurricane. So I developed a relationship with an industrial fishnet factory, learned the variables of their machines, and figured out a way to make lace with them. 

我不能按照旧的方式来塑造这次的作品，因为手捆的结承受不了飓风的袭击。因此我与一个渔网工厂结成合作伙伴，学习了他们机器的不同变量并找出了一种方式通过机器来制作花边。

There was no language to translate this ancient, idiosyncratic handcraft into something machine operators could produce. So we had to create one. Three years and two children later, 

当时没有语言来翻译这古老的、独特的手工艺，将它转为程序让机器操作者可以用来生产，所以我们得创造了一种。三年后，我有了两个孩子，

we raised this 50,000-square-foot lace net. It was hard to believe that what I had imaginedwas now built, permanent and had lost nothing in translation.

我们终于竖立起这张50,000平方英尺的花边网，难以置信我曾经的想象现在被建成了永久的作品，而在这转化过程中仍保持了原有风味。

This intersection had been bland and anonymous. Now it had a sense of place. I walked underneath it for the first time. As I watched the wind's choreography unfold, I felt sheltered and, at the same time, connected to limitless sky. 

这个十字路口曾经是乏味、毫不起眼的，而现在已成为一道风景线。我第一次漫步于雕塑下，看着风的舞姿慢慢伸展，我感到被庇护，而同时又与无尽的天空相连。

My life was not going to be the same. I want to create these oases of sculpture in spaces of cities around the world. I'm going to share two directions that are new in my work.

我的生活从那时改变，我想要创造出这些绿洲雕塑让他们竖立于世界各地城市的空隙之中，我想要与大家分享我工作中两个新的方向。

Historic Philadelphia City Hall: its plaza, I felt, needed a material for sculpture that was lighter than netting.So we experimented with tiny atomized water particles to create a dry mist that is shaped by the wind and in testing, 

历史悠久的费城城市大厅，这是它的广场，我当时认为，我们需要的雕塑材料要比网还轻。我们实验了这些微型原子化水离子，创造出一种干的薄雾，能够被风改变形状。

discovered that it can be shaped by people who can interact and move through it without getting wet. I'm using this sculpture material to trace the paths of subway trains above ground in real time -- like an X-ray of the city's circulatory system unfolding.

在测试中我们发现它也能被人改变外形并且穿行其中的人们不会被沾湿，我用这种雕塑材料在地表来追踪地铁即时的路径，这就像城市循环系统扩散的X射线。

Next challenge, the Biennial of the Americas in Denver asked, could I represent the 35 nations of the Western hemisphere and their interconnectedness in a sculpture? (Laughter) 

这是下一个挑战，丹佛将召开两年一次的美洲会议。有人问我，能否将 西半球的三十五个国家和他们的关联性表现在一件作品当中。

I didn't know where to begin,but I said yes. I read about the recent earthquake in Chile and the tsunami that rippled across the entire Pacific Ocean. 

我不知从何开始，但我说能。我读到了最近智利的地震、海啸的余波动荡了整个太平洋。

It shifted the Earth's tectonic plates, sped up the planet's rotation and literally shortened the length of the day. So I contacted NOAA, and I asked if they'd share their data on the tsunami, and translated it into this. Its title: "1.26" refers to the number of microseconds that the Earth's day was shortened.

它改变了地球的构造板块、加速了地球的自甚至缩短了地球一天的长度。我联系了美国国家海洋和大气局（NOAA）询问他们是否能够提供海啸的数据，然后我将那些数据转变成了这件作品，它名为“1.26” 指代的是地球天数被缩短的微妙。

I couldn't build this with a steel ring, the way I knew. Its shape was too complex now. So I replaced the metal armature with a soft, fine mesh of a fiber 15 times stronger than steel. The sculpture could now be entirely soft, which made it so light it could tie in to existing buildings -- 

我不能依靠钢圈，以我原有的方式来搭建这座雕塑，因它的形状太过复杂，我将金属的支架用一种柔软，细孔状的纤维代替，它比钢强韧15倍。雕塑现在完全是柔软的，因此很轻，可以被固定在已有的建筑上，

literally becoming part of the fabric of the city. There was no software that could extrude these complex net forms and model them with gravity. So we had to create it.

名副其实地成为城市织物的一部分（译者注：fabric这里有双重含义：织物；建筑构筑）当时没有软件能够模拟这种复杂的网状结构并模拟重力对它的影响，因此我们必须制作一个。

Then I got a call from New York City asking if I could adapt these concepts to Times Square or the High Line.This new soft structural method enables me to model these and build these sculptures at the scale of skyscrapers. 

然后我接到一通来自纽约的电话问我能否将这些概念应用到时代广场或者高线公园，新的软构架模式让我能够模拟这些雕塑外形，并且将它们建得如摩天大厦一般高大，

They don't have funding yet, but I dream now of bringing these to cities around the world where they're most needed.

邀请方还未筹集到资金但我现在梦想着将这些雕塑带给世界各地的城市，给那些最需要的地方。

Fourteen years ago, I searched for beauty in the traditional things, in craft forms. Now I combine them with hi-tech materials and engineering to create voluptuous, billowing forms the scale of buildings. My artistic horizons continue to grow.

14年前，我处处搜寻美。在传统事物中、在手工艺中寻找。现在，我将其与高科技材料和工程设计结合，来创造撩人的、随风波动的如建筑般大小的作品，我艺术的边界不断扩展。

I'll leave you with this story. I got a call from a friend in Phoenix. An attorney in the office who'd never been interested in art, never visited the local art museum, dragged everyone she could from the building and got them outside to lie down underneath the sculpture. 

最后，我要告诉你们这个故事我接到了凤凰城一个朋友的电话，她是一个办公室律师，从未对艺术感兴趣过，从未去过当地的艺术博物馆，但却把所有她能号召的人拉出大楼，让大家一起躺在雕塑的下方。

There they were in their business suits, laying in the grass, noticing the changing patterns of wind beside people they didn't know, sharing the rediscovery of wonder.

他们躺在那儿，穿着商务套装躺在草地中，看着雕塑的形状随风而变，与陌生人一起分享这重新发现的美。

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

谢谢大家。非常感谢，谢谢大家，非常感谢非常感谢！