用自拍寻找博物馆里的另一个你
去年夏天，罗斯·W·达芬(Ross W. Duffin)在加州帕萨迪纳市的一家博物馆里闲逛，他在一幅17世纪的油画前面停了下来，画面上是一位穿盔甲、留胡子的武士。
“I thought, ‘Wow, that is really funny, he looks just like me,’” Dr. Duffin recalled. Then he moved on.
“当时我心想，‘哇，太有意思了，他长得跟我一模一样，’”达芬博士回忆道。然后，他就接着往前走了。
But his wife, Beverly Simmons, was stunned by the resemblance. “She came running after me and said, ‘You have to come back and look at this painting!” Dr. Duffin said.
但他的妻子贝弗莉·西蒙斯(Beverly Simmons)却被这种相似性惊呆了。“她追上我说：‘你一定得回来看看这幅画!’”达芬说。
Dr. Duffin had found his art twin. So the couple did what millions of people have discovered as a new way to interact with art — something that has exploded with new popularity in recent weeks thanks to a new feature in a Google museums app.
达芬找到了他的艺术孪生兄弟，于是他们夫妇就做了一件如今成百上千万人都在做的事情，人们把这当做与艺术互动的新方式——最近几周，由于谷歌博物馆应用程序的一个新功能，这种做法开始爆红。
But Dr. Duffin and his wife were pioneers last summer, using old-fashioned serendipity. He stood next to the oil painting, a work by the Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert displayed at the Norton Simon Museum. He turned sideways, raised his chin and narrowed his eyes. His wife captured the moment with her iPhone.
不过，这股风潮毕竟是去年夏天由达芬夫妇因为这次老式的机缘巧合而引领的。他站在诺顿西蒙艺术博物馆(Norton Simon Museum)展出的荷兰艺术家让·范·拜勒特(Jan van Bijlert)的那幅油画作品旁，侧着身，抬起下巴，眯起眼睛，让妻子用iPhone拍下了那一刻。
Long before the Google Arts and Culture app, which became the most downloaded mobile app over the weekend, art aficionados, dabblers, narcissists and soul searchers pondering a cosmic connection to distant humans have been searching for their art twins, a long-gone, sometimes fictional or unknown doppelgänger encased in oil, sculpture or ceramics.
“谷歌艺术与文化”是上周末下载次数最多的手机应用程序。早在它出现之前，思考与远古人类宇宙联系的艺术狂热爱好者、普通爱好者、自恋者和灵魂探索者一直在寻找他们的艺术孪生兄弟姊妹，寻找那些被禁锢在油画、雕塑或瓷器中的幽灵，它们久已逝去，有时是虚构的，或者不为人所知。
Some set out specifically to find their twin, in an engaging pastime that gives museum visits a new focus. Others, like the Duffins, have stumbled on theirs as they wander.
有些人特地去寻找自己的“孪生”兄弟姊妹，这种令人着迷的娱乐活动成了博物馆参观的新焦点。还有些人和达芬夫妇一样，是在闲逛时偶然发现了它们。
As anyone who regularly looks at a social media feed knows by now, millions more need never leave home or cross a border to find that uniquely familiar face on some obscure etching. They just upload a selfie and let technology do the sleuthing.
任何经常关注社交媒体推送的人都已知道，如今，数百万人不需要离开家，也不需要跨越国界，就能在某件模糊的蚀刻作品上找到那张熟悉的面孔。他们只需要上传一张自拍照，剩下的搜索工作交给科技来做。
The app was available in 2015, but its arts matching feature was introduced in mid-December. Its popularity has quickly surged, and Instagram, Twitter and YouTube users have widely shared photos of both their art twins and those of celebrities, from William Shatner to Taylor Swift. Google estimates more than 20 million selfies have been uploaded using the new feature.
该应用程序是于2015年推出，不过艺术匹配功能是去年12月中旬才添加的。它的人气迅速蹿升，从威廉·夏特纳(William Shatner)到泰勒·斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)，Instagram、Twitter和YouTube用户大量分享了自己和名人，乃至艺术品的“孪生”照片。据谷歌估计，这一新功能吸引用户上传了2000多万自拍照。
Dr. Duffin said he was amused by his moment with the unknown soldier, described by the museum as probably a more mythological than human figure. But the resemblance had an impact on his life after he posted the photograph on Twitter, where it was widely shared without identifying him by name.
达芬表示，他觉得自己与那个无名战士在一起的时刻很有趣，博物馆认为那名士兵很可能是神话人物，而非真实人物。他在Twitter上发布那张照片之后，它被广泛转发(转发时没有提到他的名字)，这对他的生活产生了很大影响。
“A month later, all of a sudden, it started to get a lot of play in the press,” Dr. Duffin, a professor of music at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said in an interview. “I would get email messages from people I had not heard from in years who knew immediately it was me.”
“一个月后，媒体上突然出现了大量报道，”达芬在接受采访时说。他是克利夫兰的凯斯-西部保留地大学(Case Western Reserve University)的音乐教授。“一些多年未联系的人给我发来邮件，他们一眼就认出了我。”
With people seeking selfies that make a connection going back in time, museums are using the opportunity to engage with visitors.
人们想通过自拍找到与久远时光的联系，而博物馆也在利用这个机会加深与游客的联系。
Leslie C. Denk, a spokeswoman for the Norton Simon Museum, said the museum had noticed some visitors posting photographs of themselves posing like works of art, particularly alongside sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol.
诺顿西蒙艺术博物馆的发言人莱斯莉·C·登克(Leslie C. Denk)表示，该博物馆注意到有些参观者在上传自己模仿艺术品姿势的照片，尤其是在奥古斯特·罗丹(Auguste Rodin)和阿里斯蒂德·马约尔(Aristide Maillol)的雕塑旁。
“Art has the power to transport us through time, and so I think it’s a joy to recognize ourselves, a friend or even a pet, in an artwork from centuries ago,” she said.
“艺术具有让我们穿越时空的能力，所以我认为，从几个世纪前的艺术作品中认出自己、朋友甚至宠物都是一种乐趣，”她说。
Art-twinning happens so often in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that it hosts a fan favorite every week on Instagram. The most popular piece to pose with is “Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer,” a sculpture by Edgar Degas.
在波士顿的美术博物馆(Museum of Fine Arts)里，寻找艺术双胞胎的情况经常出现，所以，它在Instagram上举办了“每周粉丝最爱”的活动。参观者最喜欢合影的作品是埃德加·德加(Edgar Degas)的雕塑《十四岁的舞者》(Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer)。
“In our galleries, visitors frequently seek out their museum doppelgänger or attempt to mimic works of art — usually as they search for the perfect Instagram shot,” said Katie Getchell, the deputy director and chief brand officer at the Boston museum.
“游客们经常会在我们的画廊里寻找自己的艺术孪生兄弟姐妹，或者模仿艺术作品的姿势——通常是为了拍到最理想的Instagram照片，”波士顿美术博物馆的副馆长兼首席品牌官凯蒂·格彻尔(Katie Getchell)说。
At the Brooklyn Museum, selfies with artworks are also popular. “The success of Google’s project comes as no surprise to me, or probably to anyone else who works in a museum,” said Brooke Baldeschwiler, the museum’s senior manager of digital communications. “It’s really simple. People love to see themselves in art.”
在布鲁克林博物馆(Brooklyn Museum)，与艺术品合影自拍也很常见。“谷歌那个应用程序的成功对我来说并不意外，其他任何博物馆工作人员很可能也不会感到意外，”该博物馆的数字通讯高级经理布鲁克·巴尔德斯奇维勒(Brooke Baldeschwiler)说。“原因很简单。人们喜欢在艺术品中看见自己。”
If human beings are obsessed with selfies, then the Google Arts and Culture app is the addiction’s enabler for the art world. It does have its critics. Some people just find facial recognition software creepy, and the app is not available in Texas and Illinois, which have some of the country’s strictest laws about the collection of biometric data, including selfies. The app also has mixed results, particularly when it comes to race, gender and age.
如果说人类痴迷于自拍，那么“谷歌艺术与文化”应用程序就是帮人们在艺术世界里实现这种痴迷。它也的确遭到了批评。有些人觉得面部识别软件令人毛骨悚然，这款应用程序在德克萨斯州和伊利诺斯州遭到禁用，因为这两个州关于生物计量数据收集的某些法律是全美国最严格的，包括自拍照。该应用程序也产生了复杂的结果，尤其是在种族、性别和年龄方面。
“My grandmother got Ronald Reagan’s presidential portrait,” said Patrick Lenihan, a spokesman for Google.
“系统给我祖母匹配的是罗纳德·里根(Ronald Reagan)的总统画像，”谷歌的发言人帕特里克·勒尼汉(Patrick Lenihan)说。
Far from the virtual realm, Greco-Roman antiquities, Egyptian funerary portraits and the contemporary people who resemble them are being brought together in an exhibit in Canada called “My 2,000-Year-Old Double.”
在现实世界里，加拿大举办了一个名为“我2000岁的孪生兄弟姐妹”展(My 2,000-Year-Old Double)，希腊-罗马古董、埃及葬礼肖像以及与它们相似的当代人士被聚集到一起。
The Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City has narrowed down thousands of selfies to a few dozen people who resemble the artworks, arranging for them to be photographed in Montreal by François Brunelle, whose previous projects include documenting people who look alike but are not twins.
魁北克市的文明博物馆(Musée de la Civilisation)从数千张自拍照中挑选了几十个与艺术品中的人物相似的人，安排他们在蒙特利尔接受弗朗索瓦·布鲁内尔(François Brunelle)摄影。布鲁内尔之前的项目包括拍摄那些看起来很像但并非双胞胎的人。
Wesley Rowell, 57, who works in New York City, was one of them.
在纽约市工作的57岁的韦斯利·罗韦尔(Wesley Rowell)是活动参与者之一。
He will appear alongside his art twin, a sculpture of an unidentified man from the third century B.C.
他将和他的艺术孪生兄弟一起亮相，后者是公元前三世纪一个身份不明者的雕像。
“To think about the lives, the generations, between him and me in New York City, is kind of bizarre,” Mr. Rowell said. “I keep going back to that human need, to feel like I am connected to everything that was before me.”
“想想看，在他和住在纽约的我之间，相隔漫长的岁月和无数代人，这有点怪异，”罗韦尔说。“我总是会不断产生人类的那种需求，觉得自己与之前的一切都有联系。”
Amanda Bullis, 29, an actor who lives in Jersey City, was chosen for her similarity to a face carved onto a vessel, dating between 300 and 201 B.C.
29岁的阿曼达·布利斯(Amanda Bullis)是一名演员，住在泽西城。她被选中是因为她与刻在公元前300年至201年间的一艘船上的一张脸非常相似。
Ms. Bullis sat for hours for hair and makeup. “In that moment I was able to embody her,” she said, adding that it made her think about her ancestry. “I just found it interesting that I am part of a larger humanity that has been evolving and changing, but largely the same, over thousands of years.”
布利斯坐了几个小时，做头发，化妆。“在那个时刻，我能成为她的化身，”她说。她还说这让她想起了自己的祖先。“我觉得很有趣的是，我是更大的人类群体的一部分，在过去的几千年里，这个群体在不断进化和改变，但总体上是一样的。”
Dr. Duffin, the Ohio professor, said he did not think much more about his art twin after he posed with the painting in California. He is accustomed, he added, to being mistaken for another bearded fellow.
俄亥俄州的达芬教授表示，在加州和那幅画合影后，他没怎么再想过自己的艺术孪生兄弟。他还说，如今他习惯了被人误认为另一个留胡子的人。
Strangers often ask him, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Santa Claus?” he said. “And my answer is, ‘Not since yesterday.’”
他说，陌生人经常问他，“有没有人跟你说过，你长得像圣诞老人?我的回答是：‘从昨天起还没人说过呢。’”
