WEBVTT 00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:10.480 [Sarah Sze: "Measuring Stick"] 00:00:23.940 --> 00:00:26.320 [VOICEOVER FROM FILM] We begin with a scene one-meter wide, 00:00:26.329 --> 00:00:28.689 which we view from just one meter away. 00:00:28.689 --> 00:00:32.660 Now, every ten seconds, we will look from ten times father away 00:00:32.660 --> 00:00:35.060 and our field of view will be ten times wider. 00:00:39.240 --> 00:00:43.240 [SZE] In the Seventies, Charles and Ray Eames's "Powers of Ten" 00:00:43.250 --> 00:00:46.290 was the classic idea of a film 00:00:46.290 --> 00:00:48.330 that could measure time and space. 00:00:51.239 --> 00:00:54.299 That was something I always looked forward to seeing. 00:01:05.420 --> 00:01:08.220 So, I wanted to make a work that was about 00:01:08.229 --> 00:01:11.649 the measurement of time and space through the moving image. 00:01:13.880 --> 00:01:16.100 Everything in it is actually very much about 00:01:16.110 --> 00:01:18.409 some kind of measuring stick 00:01:18.409 --> 00:01:21.809 for how we orient ourselves in time and space. 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:26.539 I had been working on it as a film, 00:01:27.300 --> 00:01:30.600 but I hadn't pulled up the volume on what was it doing as a sculpture. 00:01:31.560 --> 00:01:32.880 And I realized that, as a sculpture, 00:01:32.890 --> 00:01:36.840 it needed to act more like this kind of fleeting image-- 00:01:36.840 --> 00:01:38.180 and it had to become more diaphanous, 00:01:38.180 --> 00:01:39.920 it had to become more fractured, 00:01:39.920 --> 00:01:42.060 it had to become much more light 00:01:42.060 --> 00:01:43.620 and sort of defy gravity. 00:01:44.750 --> 00:01:48.070 So the screens went away and they just became pieces of paper. 00:01:48.320 --> 00:01:52.480 And the top of the desk, I made a mirror. 00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:55.280 This is actually, in some ways, 00:01:55.280 --> 00:01:57.120 a replica of an editing desk. 00:02:04.040 --> 00:02:07.940 I was thinking about the idea of scientist image makers. 00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:11.920 With the cheetah, I wanted to reference Muybridge. 00:02:13.700 --> 00:02:15.400 And then I was thinking about Edgerton, 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:16.960 who created the strobe. 00:02:17.560 --> 00:02:18.640 We take for granted, 00:02:18.650 --> 00:02:21.910 they're really like scientific experiments with images. 00:02:23.060 --> 00:02:24.740 If you spend enough time with the piece, 00:02:24.750 --> 00:02:26.430 you realize this isn't just a video. 00:02:26.430 --> 00:02:29.930 It's actually live information coming to you from the NASA site. 00:02:30.570 --> 00:02:32.010 You see the distance to the Voyager 00:02:32.010 --> 00:02:35.030 and it's the farthest measurable distance 00:02:35.030 --> 00:02:36.950 that we have ever been able to measure. 00:02:39.680 --> 00:02:42.000 Every object that's on the desk 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:45.440 is one of the objects that's being exploded. 00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:48.300 So it has this quality of an experimental site. 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:53.700 You know, this idea of a model that's a scientific model-- 00:02:53.700 --> 00:02:57.120 something that tries to actually measure a kind of behavior, 00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:00.000 I think, is something that I try and do in the sculpture. 00:03:02.010 --> 00:03:04.780 To have these extreme scale shifts in the experience 00:03:04.780 --> 00:03:06.420 in a very close proximity, 00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:08.800 that is actually the way we perceive things. 00:03:09.260 --> 00:03:11.620 I'm trying to do that constantly throughout. 00:03:12.180 --> 00:03:14.700 It's such a volatile experience in every way 00:03:14.709 --> 00:03:16.080 that things are teeter-tottering-- 00:03:17.040 --> 00:03:19.040 that you're constantly trying to find your balance.