CAN’T HELP MYSELF BY SUN YUAN AND PENG YU Written by Irish May Quilente We consider it as one of the most interesting and disturbing art pieces in existence. This art installation isn’t just a machine; it is a code where everyone can decrypt different meaning of it. It’s like a sign with various message on it. This mechanical arm was created in year 2016 and since then it has lived to serve one singular purpose. There is a deep red liquid which the machine has been assigned to keep in a predetermined area in the center of the room. If and when the liquid leaves that predetermined area, it is the arm machine’s job to scrape it back. But whenever it tries to keep the liquid in the center of the room, it accidentally splashes it on the walls and floor around it and it will look very messy. This creates a vacuous cycle of splashing-scraping-splashing action. Imagine watching it all day, you will feel pity towards to it because the machine looks like very tired getting those liquids into the center. This machine wasn’t programmed with emotions, but was programmed to look like it has emotions. In addition, machines don’t have feelings and it doesn’t care that it’s repeating the task over and over again because that is the only thing it was designed to do. So if it ran out it would be just over with. But the thing is we are humans and we put everything into a human perspective. We don’t only relate this to human life but we feel bad for the machine itself. While watching it doing the task given to it, you will feel sad for it. We put human qualities onto the machine and we think this thing is very poor creature if only it could complete its purpose. The longer it goes on, the sadder the machine appears to be. And we love the concept about humans that we are so emphatic that we even feel bad for something that doesn’t have feelings or sometimes we even feel bad for something that it doesn’t even exist. It says so much about humanity and how much we care about other things. As we watching the video clips on how this art installation works, many ideas pop up on our minds. It is a perfect representation of what will happens to you if you do the same the thing every day. This art encourages us to do something new in order to gain knowledge for us to grow. We should try new experiences because experience is the best teacher. In contrast to this idea, watching this amazing art makes us remember to take a rest. We are not a machine nor a robot, we should take a rest from working and working and working, take a rest from studying and studying and studying. Dirty government and poor people are one of the hidden resemblance of this machine. We can say that this art shows what dirty government and poor people do in their everyday life. First, the machine resembles a dirty and bad government. This machine is trying to clean the mess, the mess made by itself. It will not work because the cleaning is in stupid ways. Just like a dirty government, even though they have programs and plans, they do it in a stupid way because they are greedy, they only think of their selves. Second is the poor people, just like the machine. They work and work and work every day to survive. The way of their living doesn’t change because they don’t have opportunity to have a stable and good job. Unemployment leads to poverty and these two are the biggest problems in a country. I can’t help myself is an art representation of how people slowly dying both physically and mentally. Physically by doing work every day without a rest, and mentally by keep doing the same thing which makes your heart break. As everything sweeps away, for instance, your boyfriend or circle of friend tends to leave you alone always, you still try to pull them back to you desperately while losing the strength that you have. It’s like you are trying to save yourself by continuously cleaning up the pieces of you as you endlessly fall apart, alone, while everyone watches you and use you for entertainment. You keep fixing yourself, but it never works out. You eventually get tired of trying, just hoping someone will help you, but they just watch you to surrender instead. That’s what we feel and think while watching this amazing masterpiece. And you know when it eventually stops it’ll become a whole new piece of art. It will probably call as “I couldn’t help myself”. From its name “I can’t help myself” to “I couldn’t help myself”.
