Willard Wigan: Hold your breath for micro-sculpture | TED

168,839 views ・ 2009-08-04

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:12
There's an old saying, "Just because you can't see something,
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doesn't mean it's not there."
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My work is -- it's a reflection of myself.
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What I wanted to do is to
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show the world that the little things
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can be the biggest things.
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We all seem to think that,
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you know, if we look down on the ground, there's nothing there.
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And we use the word "nothing."
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Nothing doesn't exist, because there is always something.
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My mother told me that, when I was a child,
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that I should always respect the little things.
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What made me do this work? I shall go into my story.
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This all started when I was age five.
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What made me do it? At school, I will admit this:
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academically, I couldn't express myself.
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So I was, more or less, classed as "nothing."
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My world was seen as less.
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So I decided I didn't really want to be a part of that world.
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I thought, I need to retreat
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into something else.
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So when my mother used to take me to school,
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she thought I was at school,
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and I used to do a U-turn, when her back was turned,
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and run off and hide in the shed at the back of the garden.
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Now, the one time I was in the shed,
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and my mother suspected something,
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thinking I was at school.
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My mother was like the woman in Tom and Jerry.
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So you'd just see her feet.
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(Laughter)
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So I was hiding in the shed, like that.
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And all of a sudden ...
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And then I saw her legs.
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And then she said -- grabbed me like that, because my mother was quite big --
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and she lifted me up and she says,
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"How come you're not at school?"
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I told her I couldn't face it because the way
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the teacher was treating me, ridiculing me,
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and using me as an example of failure.
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So I told her.
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At that age, obviously, I couldn't express it that way,
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but I told her I didn't feel right.
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And then she just said, "You're going back to school tomorrow."
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And walked off. And I didn't expect that,
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because I expected one of these ...
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But I didn't get it.
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So I'm sitting there thinking.
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And as I looked down on the ground,
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I noticed there was some ants running around.
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And I went into this little fantasy world.
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And I thought,
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"These ants, are they looking for the queen ant?
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Or do they need somewhere to live?"
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So I thought "Perhaps,
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if I made these ants some apartments,
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they'll move in."
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(Laughter)
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So I did.
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And how I set about that, I got some splinters of wood.
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And I sliced the little splinters of wood with a broken shard of glass,
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constructed this little apartment.
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Well it looked like a little shanty shed when I'd finished.
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But I thought, perhaps the ant won't know, it'll probably move in.
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And so they did.
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That was a bit crude, at the time. And I made all these little apartments
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and little merry-go-rounds, seesaws and swings, little ladders.
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And then I encouraged the ants to come 'round by putting sugar and things like that.
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And then I sat down and all the ants came along.
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And all I could hear was "Is this for us?"
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(Laughter)
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And I say, "Yes, they're all for you."
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And they moved in, and decided not to pay me any rent.
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(Laughter)
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And from there I was watching this little world.
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It became part of me.
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When I discovered that I had this gift,
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I wanted to experiment with this world
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that we can't see.
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So I realized that there was more to life
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than just everything that we see around us that's huge.
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So I started to educate myself on this molecular level.
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And as I got older, I continued. I showed my mother.
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My mother told me to take it smaller.
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Now I shall show you something here.
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And I'll explain.
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As you can see,
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that's a pinhead.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Now that is called the Huf Haus.
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The gentleman who commissioned me to do this
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was a gentleman called Peter Huf.
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And he says to me "Willard, can you put my house on a pinhead?"
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(Laughter)
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So I say, "How are you going to fit in there?"
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(Laughter)
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And then he said to me,
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"I don't believe you can do it. Can you really do it?"
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And I says, "Well, try me."
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And then he said, "But I don't believe that you can do this." So I said, "OK."
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So, to cut a long story short,
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I went home, went underneath the microscope,
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and I crushed up a piece of glass,
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crushed it up.
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And underneath the microscope
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there were splinters of glass.
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Some of them were quite jagged.
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So I was crushing up these pieces of glass,
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which, as you can see,
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that's the actual frame of the house.
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And the actual roof is made up of a fiber,
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which I found in my sister's old teddy bear.
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(Laughter)
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So I got the teddy bear and I said,
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"Do you mind if I pull out one of your fibers?"
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So I did.
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And I looked at it beneath the microscope. And some of it was flat.
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So I decided to slice these up
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with the tool that I make
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by -- I sharpen the end of a needle into a blade.
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And then I actually
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slow down my whole nervous system.
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And then I work between my heartbeat,
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I have one-and-a-half seconds
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to actually move.
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And at the same time I have to watch I don't inhale
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my own work, at the same time.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Because that has happened to me.
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(Laughter)
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So what I did, like I said, come back to the glass.
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I found these little bits of glass.
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And I had to make them square.
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So I'm thinking "How can I do this?"
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So what I did, I got an oilstone. Broke the edge of an oilstone off.
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And what I did, I took pieces of glass. And I started to rub them.
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I used a little tweezer which I made from a hair clip.
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And I built rubber around the end of the tweezer so it wouldn't crush the glass.
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And then I started rubbing, very very gently,
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till some of the edges were quite square. And then I constructed it.
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And how I constructed it,
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is by making grooves in the top of the pinhead.
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And then pushing the glass in with its own friction.
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And as I was doing it, what happened?
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The instrument that I used turned into a catapult.
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And it went like this ...
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And then that was it.
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(Laughter)
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Gone.
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So I'm thinking, "Mr. Huf isn't going to be very happy
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when I told him his house has gone to another,
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into the atmosphere somewhere."
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So to cut the story short,
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I decided that I had to go back and do it.
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So I found some more. And I decided to, sort of,
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construct it very, very slowly,
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holding my breath, working between my heartbeat,
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and making sure everything is leveled.
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Because it's such a small sculpture,
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nothing can go wrong.
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And I decided to build it up.
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Then I used fibers out of my jumper,
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which I held and stretched.
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And made the beams going around the house.
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And the actual windows and the balcony
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had to be sort of constructed.
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I used a money spider's web
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to actually attach certain things,
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which sent me insane.
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But I managed to do it.
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And when I finished it, I came back the next day.
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I noticed that the house was occupied.
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Have we ever heard of a dust mite?
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Darren dust mite and his family moved in.
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(Laughter)
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So basically I'd completed the house.
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And there you are.
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(Applause)
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(Laughter)
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Right. As you can see,
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Bart Simpson is having a little argument.
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I think they're arguing about the space on the pin.
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There's not enough room for the two of them.
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So I didn't think he was going to throw Bart off.
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I think he was just warning him actually.
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But this one was made out of a nylon tag
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out of my shirt.
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What I did, I plucked the tag out
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and put it underneath the microscope.
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I used the needle which has got a slight blade on the end.
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Can anybody see the blade on the end of that needle?
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Audience: No.
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WW: So what I did is the same process where I
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just kind of hold my breath
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and just work away very, very slowly,
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manipulating the plastic, cutting it, because it behaves different.
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Whenever you work on that level, things behave different.
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Because it's on this molecular level things change
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and they act different.
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And sometimes they turn into little catapults and things go up in the air.
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And, you know, all different things happen.
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But I had to make a little barrier, going around it, out of cellophane,
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to stop it moving.
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Then static electricity set in.
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And it went ...
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And I'm trying to remove it. And the static is interfering with everything.
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So there is sweat dripping off my head,
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because I have to carve Homer Simpson like that, in that position.
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And after I've cut out the shape,
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then I have to make sure that there is room for Bart's neck.
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So after I've done the same thing,
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then I have to paint it.
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And after I've actually sculpted them,
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I have to paint them.
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I experimented with a --
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I found a dead fly.
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And I plucked the hair off the fly's head.
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Decided to make a paintbrush.
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(Laughter)
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But I would never do it to a living fly.
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(Laughter)
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Because I've heard a fly in pain.
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And they go "Meow! Ow!"
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Even though they get on our nerves,
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I would never kill an insect
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because, "All creatures great and small" --
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there is a hymn that says that.
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So what I decided to do
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is to pluck fine hair out of my face.
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And I looked at it underneath the microscope.
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That was the paintbrush.
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And whilst I'm painting I have to be very careful,
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because the paint starts to turn into little blobs.
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And it starts to dry very quickly.
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So I have to be very quick.
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If I'm not, it will end up looking
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not like what it's supposed to look like.
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It could end up looking like Humpty Dumpty or somebody else.
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So I have to be very very careful.
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This one took me approximately,
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I would say, six to seven weeks.
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My work, rough estimate,
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sometimes five, six to seven weeks;
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you can't always anticipate.
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(Applause)
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As you can see,
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that's Charlton Heston brought down to size.
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(Laughter)
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He says to me, "Willard" --
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You can see him saying, "Why me?"
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I says, "I enjoyed your film. That's why."
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As you can see, there's an aphid fly there.
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That's just to show the scale
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and the actual size of the sculpture.
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I would say it probably measures ...
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a quarter of a millimeter.
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In America they say a period stop.
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So say if you cut a period stop in half,
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a full stop, that's about the size of the whole thing.
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It's made -- the chariot is made of gold.
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And Charlton Heston is made of a floating fiber,
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which I took out of the air.
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When the sunlight comes through the window you see these little fibers.
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And what I normally do is walk 'round a room --
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(Laughter) --
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trying to find one. And then I put it underneath the microscope.
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I remember one time I was doing it, and the window was open.
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And there was a lady standing by the bus stop.
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And she saw me walking around like this.
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(Laughter)
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And then she looked at me.
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And then I went ...
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And then she went, "Hmm, OK, he's not mad."
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Yeah, to actually do this thing --
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the actual chariot is made of gold.
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I had a 24-karat gold ring.
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And I cut off a little flake of gold.
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And I bent it 'round,
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and made it into the chariot.
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And the horse is made from nylon.
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And the spider's web is for the reins on the horse.
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To get the symmetrical shape of the horse
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was very difficult,
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because I had to get the horse to rear up
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and look as though it was in some kind of action.
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When I did this one,
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a gentleman seen it and said to me,
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"There's no way you can do this, you must have used some kind of machine.
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There's no way a man can do that.
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It must be a machine."
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So I says, "OK then, if you say it's a machine ..."
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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That one took me approximately six weeks.
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(Applause)
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The most famous statue in the world.
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This one, I would say,
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was a serious challenge.
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(Laughter)
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Because I had to put the torch on the top.
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That one is, more or less, the same type of process.
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The bottom of it is carved from a grain of sand,
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because I wanted to get a bit of the stone effect.
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I used a microscopic shard of diamond
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to actually carve the actual base.
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Well, I can look at this one and I can be very proud of this,
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because that statue has always sort of
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kept an image in my head of, you know,
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the beginning of people coming to America.
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So it's sort of Ellis Island, and seeing America for the first time.
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And that's the first thing they saw.
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So I wanted to have that little image.
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And this is it.
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(Laughter)
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And we all know that is the Hulk.
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I wanted to create movement in the eye of a needle.
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Because we know we see needles,
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but people aren't familiar with the eye of a needle
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apart from putting a thread through it.
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So I broke the needle.
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17:11
And made a needle look like
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the Hulk's broken it.
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17:16
It's -- I had to make little holes
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in the base of the needle, to shove his feet in.
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17:19
So most of my work, I don't use glue.
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They go in with their own friction.
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And that's how I managed to do it.
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As you can see, he's looking at the moment. He's got a little grimace on his face.
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And his mouth must be probably about
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three microns.
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So the eyes are probably about one micron or something.
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That ship there,
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that's made from 24-karat gold.
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And I normally rig it with the web of a money spider.
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But I had to rig it with strands of glue.
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Because the web of the spider, it was sending me insane,
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because I couldn't get the web to move off.
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And that's 24-karat gold. And it's constructed. I built it.
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Constructed each plank of gold.
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And the whole thing is sort of symmetrical.
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The flag had to be made out of little strands of gold.
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It's almost like doing a surgical operation to get this thing right.
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18:21
(Applause)
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As you can see, dressage.
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(Laughter)
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It's something I wanted to do just to show how I could get the symmetrical shape.
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The actual rigging on the reins on the horse
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are made from the same sort of thing.
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And that was done with a particle from my shirt.
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And the pinhead I've made green around there
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by scraping the particles off a green shirt
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and then pressed onto the needle.
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It's very painstaking work,
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but the best things come in small packages.
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19:00
(Laughter)
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Bruno Giussani: Willard Wigan!
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(Applause)
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About this website

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