Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We are on the ground at TED 2024, and there was one talk early in the week. Well, it kind of stole the show.
Nice aunties. I don't know what it is, but it's exactly what I wanted.
Chapter 2: What is the Auntieverse and who is Nice Aunties?
Nice aunties. She kind of exposed the artsy and fun side of being an auntie.
The auntieverse is going to live in my heart forever and ever and ever again. Nice Aunties is a digital artist from Singapore who is subverting the idea of the traditional scolding auntie with her AI-assisted art. She draws on her Asian heritage to explore the complex inner world of aunties. It's a little tricky to explain.
She basically just invented a world and has been using AI to create art around this world. And I'm not doing it any justice.
Same. So we'll let Nice Aunties herself take it from here on the TED stage. And afterward, stick around because I caught up with her to discuss art and aunties in more detail.
Why are you still single? How much do you earn?
You look fat. I just love aunties. Some of my aunties I only see during Chinese New Year. I used to brace myself for inquisition prior to family gatherings. They call you fat, but present you with plethora of delicious food made with love and great skill." This is exasperating and endearing. I'm not alone in this. This behavior and line of questioning is so common, we even have memes for it.
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Chapter 3: How does Nice Aunties use AI in her art?
I grew up in a big family where the women, my late grandmother, my mother and some of my 11 aunties were expected to take care of children. They were big influences in my life, and I witnessed great personalities, strength, eccentricity and humor They held back from fully expressing themselves because of societal pressures, family expectations and lack of support.
My grandma spent most of her life at home. She did not travel and had little contact with the outside world. In the last 20 years of her life, she had dementia and was bedridden. I often imagine her in an alternate reality where she's out and about having fun, laughing, chatting, enjoying life. But aunties are not just about family. Anyone of any age, of any culture, can be labeled an auntie.
It is not something you really want to be associated with.
Chapter 4: What cultural influences shape the concept of aunties?
as it could mean you're old-fashioned, rigid in your thinking, or naggy. So it is rather negative to be called one. Women of my generation live in fear of being labeled an auntie. But what if you could change this perception, turning it from dread to something fun and positive? I'm a designer from Singapore, and in the last year, also an artist.
I came across some intriguing and beautiful images on social media and then found out they were made with AI. Curious about what AI could do, I found a program, I signed up, I keyed in some words, and within seconds, images appeared. I was amazed and mesmerized. Never before have I found a medium that felt like the shortest path between my ideas and the visual. It became addictive.
Rather than just making images, I wanted to do more with this tool to tell stories about anti-culture. My mother engages many social activities. She is very active, a result of her mother's immobility and limited life. She dances and performs just like the aunties do in Singapore's parks every day. This was a huge inspiration for me.
So, Nice Aunties was born, a project about freedom, exuberance, self-expression and fun. It is a lighthearted perspective on the joyful side of auntie life, also a surreal narrative loosely based on the women in my family, their social lives, their relationships, their quirks, humor and, of course, food.
In the last 20 years, I worked in architecture, a profession of discipline, rules and clients. I always worked in a team. It was about fulfilling the client's brief and budget. With AI, it's just me. It's a breath of fresh air. This lack of restraint has transported me to an imaginary world where my aunties can live freely as themselves, where anything fun can and does happen.
For instance, aunties in public places taking photos with sculptures in absurd ways, a typical holiday photo. becomes aunties trying to kiss the moon but failing badly. Over the course of a year, instead of designing buildings, I developed nice aunties into a world-building project, the Auntieverse. Just like in any world, there are cities, citizens, their lives and their culture.
Antiverse is partly inspired by Singapore, where acronyms are used for everything. A sentence would typically sound like, I'm going to take the MRT to the NTUC near my mom's HDB to avoid the ERP. In the Antiverse, we have tofu-engineered sushi luxury otos, aka Tesla. It's a transportation factory ... where aunties assemble food and legs to create vehicles running on leg power.
It's very sustainable. In Chinese dialect, legs have the same sound as cars. So a common joke would be to say, let's get around on our own cars, meaning we can move around on our own legs, implying self-reliance. So I imagine at Tesla, we have the usual car assembly, a car wash, and of course, a car junkyard. But lakes don't just move cars around in the antiverse.
Buildings use them too, as do animals and vegetables. Another destination in the antiverse is MoMA, the Museum of Modern Anties. when modern auntie culture is celebrated. This is a social space where aunties gather, hang out, eat, chit-chat, have fun, chillax. So one day, I said to my mother that she should show others how to make and then sell her delicious food. She said, no, too tired.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of aunties in family dynamics?
Where do you think these negative stereotypes came from?
Well, I'm not quite sure. I suppose it's from the previous generation of women that I come into contact with in Singapore. So the last generation, the baby boomers, I believe they received a lot of tough love. So that's passed on to the younger generation. So every time you see them, they insult you first. And I always have to brace myself before I go meet my aunties.
Like the last time I saw one auntie, she's like, oh, you look better last time. You don't quite know what to say, you know, to that.
Yeah. Are you supposed to be like, thanks? You know? Thanks, but no thanks.
Yeah.
Yeah. I remember I had an auntie in particular who made a lot of comments about weight, especially for little girls too, you know, going through puberty and be like, wow, you really gained weight. Your legs got big or whatever. Yeah, exactly. And then now... Like starting in my 30s and on, it was stuff like, oh, you look old. You aged a lot since last time.
Or like your face looks bigger.
Yes. The bigger face.
Yes.
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Chapter 6: How does Nice Aunties redefine the stereotype of aunties?
Well, I want to tell more stories. So it's like the ever expanding narrative, right? So if it can be made into movies, fantastic. Netflix series, fantastic. Or like be manifested into something physical, fantastic.
Well, before we go, can you tell me what is your favorite anti-scene or one that you feel closest to?
There is one that is in the talk. I talked about Atlantis, which is a parallel world, inspired by Plato and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So in the video, some aunties were lying on the beach and their guts were made of plastic and spilling onto the beach. So it's kind of gruesome. But it also kind of looked a bit whimsical.
So you can't quite tell, can't quite know what to feel when you look at it. And then there's like the beach and then the waves are breaking and the seagulls are calling. And then next scene, you have anti-mermaids and their tails are made of plastic waste. And they're sweeping the floor in the ocean. So yeah, I think that's gotten a lot of attention on social media.
It's like 6.1 million plays on Instagram. It's more than the population of Singapore. So I'm like, what?
Well, congratulations, Nice Antis. Thank you so much for sitting down with us.
Thank you. So fun.
Genomics pioneer Robert Green says many parents want their healthy newborn's DNA screened for diseases that may or may not show up later in life. There is an argument that knowledge is power, and many families would like to know everything, whether it's treatable or not. The debate over revealing the secrets in babies' DNA. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.
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