Chris Anderson: Cai is incredible. Cai's language is Mandarin. Many of us do not speak Mandarin. But Cai agreed to do a wild experiment. For this talk, we collaborated with another TED speaker, Tom Graham, and his team at Metaphysic, who built an AI model to make Cai's translator's voice sound just like Cai speaking -- just like he is speaking in English. So Sang is in a sound booth now. Sang, Hello. Sang: Hi, everyone. CA: OK, so it's great to see you. Now let's hear you sounding as if you were Cai. Sang: My name is Cai Guo-Qiang. CA: (Laughs) OK, nothing's going to go wrong here. Nothing's going to go wrong. (Laughter) The stage is yours. Cai Guo-Qiang: Thank you. (Applause) (Speaking Mandarin) More than 1,000 years ago,

when Chinese alchemists were developing
elixir of immortality, one recipe caused an explosion. Boom. Boom. (Laughter). They named their
discovery “fire medicine,” the Chinese word for gunpowder. From the very beginning,
gunpowder has been about accidents, loss of control, and destruction. But it's also been about the healing
power and unseen energies. I dreamed of becoming an artist
when I was little, but like my father, who was an avid painter himself,
I was cautious and timid. Caution is a fine quality in life,
but not so in art. And Chinese society was also very
controlling when I was young, so I longed for an artistic medium
that could help me free myself and lose control. I came from an ancient city
in southeast China called Quanzhou. The city had many firecracker
factories when I was young, so it was easy to get gunpowder. When I first began using
gunpowder to create art,

I would lay out a canvas
in the living room and set up small explosions on it. (Laughter) Seeing the canvas on fire one day, my grandmother threw
a linen rag over the flame and put it out with a small puff. It was my grandma who taught me
that while it's important to light fires, it's more important
to know how to put them out. (Laughter) Over the decades, I've grown closer to gunpowder
and mastered more techniques. (Explosions) My creations forever oscillate
between destruction and construction, control and freedom,
dictatorship and democracy. For example, here I first painted
my imagination of Paradise, a mirage of temptations. I exploded colored gunpowder to create a sensual and dazzling garden, so beautiful that I didn't want
to lay a finger on it. However, I picked up my courage and scattered black powder
all over this beauty. Covered it with a blank canvas
and ignited again.

Bang! (Explosion). When I removed the canvas on top, the once enchanting garden was now forever sealed beneath the black. However, what shocked me the most was the canvas on top, which now looked like an apparition of that heavenly garden. At the end of 1986, I moved to Japan. My cosmology, which till then was a simple one, developed by stargazing and studying feng shui in Quanzhou, suddenly expanded to include the latest developments in modern astrophysics. As a young artist from China, my grueling experiences with getting visas around the world inspired me to explode a chain of big footprints that traversed the Earth. The footprints would evoke extraterrestrials racing across several kilometers, bam bam bam, in only a few strides, ignoring artificial borders and disappearing into the distance. (Explosion). After decades of attempts around the world,

this concept was finally realized as 29 footprint fireworks at the opening ceremony
of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The big footprints walked across the 15-kilometer
central axis of Beijing, like an invisible giant in the sky. Witnessed by 1.5 ... (Applause). Witnessed by 1.5 billion people in person
and through live broadcasts, this work symbolized the era's idealistic
delusion of globalization. In the early '90s, I conceived
a work titled Sky ladder, a ladder made of fireworks that would
connect heaven and Earth. I made many failed attempts to realize
the idea over 21 years. The difficulty of the project
lay in its technical requirements. We needed a helium balloon
of over 6,000 cubic meters in order to raise a ladder as high as the World Trade Center. Once up, the balloon
could easily be blown away. And because it would carry lots
of dangerous materials.

we had to acquire numerous permits
for land, sea, and air. In my hometown, it's said that 500 meters
is the height of the clouds, so the ladder symbolized a useful dream of reaching for the stars
and touching the clouds. I've created so much art around the world, but my grandma has never seen
any of them in person, so I was determined to do something
awesome for her to see. (Video) One! Fire! (Music) Cai Guo-Qiang: One morning in 2015, at the crack of dawn, a golden ladder rose into the sky. It was a birthday present
for my grandmother, who turned 100 that year. (Applause) (Laughter) She passed away one month later. In 1995, I moved from Japan
to New York with my wife and daughter. After I came to New York,
my work became more site-specific, addressing more socio-political themes.

and reflecting the changes.
I've developed from living in the West. This transition also allowed me
to better thrive in different cultures around the world. Some have asked why I never
deal with the subject of sex. I would often say,
Isn't explosion sexy in itself? (Laughter). Ten years ago, I was invited
to create an artwork in Paris. I decided to invite 50 couples
from around the world to a sightseeing boat on the Seine, where they would first enjoy
a 12-minute firework display that simulates the process of lovemaking. Why 12 minutes? Because that seems to be
the average duration of French lovemaking. (Laughter) According to the internet. (Laughter) Excited by the passionate
climax of the fireworks, the couples then entered individual
tents to do whatever they wanted. When satisfied, they could press a button and trigger fireworks
from a small boat nearby. (Laughter).

I had prepared 300 shots of fireworks. However, the couples didn't use them all. In the end, the fireworks
spelled out the words: Sorry, gotta go. (Laughter). Nighttime fireworks are visible
because of light and are more focused
on the explosions themselves. Daytime fireworks rely on smoke. They are like a painter's brush
moving across the sunlit sky in real time. In Shanghai, I realized
the daytime fireworks Elegy, lamenting the severe environmental
problems China faces. On the day, clouds loomed low over the Huangpu River, and the firework smoke lingered
in the air long afterwards, like an ink painting
with its gentle sorrow. For my solo exhibition
at Uffizi Galleries, I created fireworks
in the shapes of flowers and plants from Renaissance paintings. People from across the city
could see the fireworks as they launched
from the Michelangelo Square, reigniting the spirit of the Renaissance.

Last year, I realized the project When the Sky Blooms with Sakura in Fukushima, which suffered the earthquake and tsunami 12 years ago. On the June day, we had a rare collaboration of the wind and the waves to realize these daytime fireworks, like a symphony of reverence for nature. (Applause) I've realized over 600 solo exhibitions and projects worldwide, often facing numerous challenges such as weather conditions, legal regulations, and social-political hurdles. But such is the nature of my art. Behind the momentary magic lies countless unknown factors. Gunpowder and I have been travel companions on a 40-year-long, fantastical journey. Yet, I have never grown tired of it, thanks to its uncertainty and uncontrollability. And it's the same fascination with the unforeseeable that led to my research in artificial intelligence that began in 2017. This led to the launch of my AI Cai, my custom AI model.

AI Cai deep learns from my artworks,
archives, and areas of interest. It also mimics contemporary
and historical figures I admire, developing distinct personas that can debate with each other, forming an independent and free community. AI Cai is my artwork, but it's also a partner
for dialogue and collaboration. In the future, it may even
create art by itself. Recently, we also enabled AI Cai to sprinkle and ignite
gunpowder on canvases. Nowadays, if I burn through a canvas, it's usually an intentional loss
of control for effect. But when AI Cai burns something,
it's a genuine accident. (Laughter) Perhaps AI Cai is that rash,
clumsy boy Cai. People often assume that I like fireworks, but what I really like are explosions. (Laughter) I like their energy and magic. Over the years, the goal of my gunpowder
creations has never been political, but their results do carry
political significance.

At a recent Nobel Prize event, I said, Using explosions to create beauty
rather than warfare and violence provides a sliver of hope
for our shared human future. (Applause) Gunpowder helped me
set my timid personality and liberate myself
in a repressive society. Its uncertainty makes me
both uneasy and exhilarated. That's similar to my interactions with AI. The unknown and uncontrollable aspects
of AI are indeed unsettling. But today, as contemporary art
seems weak and conservative, I hope that AI can help me
unleash creativity, transcending the current dimensions
of human cognition. Can AI reveal heavenly secrets and open a door to interspecies
civilizations for us? If the disruptive nature of gunpowder
can bring hope to people through the beauty of explosions, then can the unsettling power
of AI do the same, bringing hope to mankind's future
by expanding the unknown world? (Explosions)

I'm always at the beginning
of the next great journey. Thank you everyone, and thank you AI. (Applause and cheers)

A Firework Ladder to the Sky — and the Magic of Explosive Art | Cai Guo-Qiang | TED

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