Heyya! My zine’s idea was to focus on textures and shapes unique to Marine Parade, categorising into the ‘layers’ that make up the neighbourhood.
Since I wanted to explore the topic about textures, I got the idea to incorporate other textures and superimpose them into my photos and mimicking the actual photos, trying to create more variety in my works and not make the pages that flat since I was only planning to focus on the visual aspect on the zine only through my photos.
For example, the waves will be replaced with lace.
scan of my lace dress: sea waves
scan of blue sticky notes overlaying: tiles
scan of several blue yarns: lines patterns of the rock
scan of cellophane paper: glass roof
I also did some watercolour drawings so that my beach layer won’t be so plain.
For the buildings, I thought of mixing textures of clay and paint streaks to make a play on the characteristics of how buildings were made.
scan of paint streaks
Now for the pages process! I used Photoshop to create all my edits, saving the pieces as individual pictures then pasting in on InDesign.
I forgot to mention that I titled my zine ‘Slice of Life’. The name was derived from the anime genre – slice of life, whereby the anime of this genre focuses on a cut of narrative that could happen in the every day life of a character. It enhances the ‘layers’ concept and introduces to the readers that they will be getting a taste of a part of Marine Parade!
Because of this, for my cover page, I edited a slice of cake showing the different layers that I gathered from my photos.
It was modelled after this photo of a chocolate cake:
The ‘cake’ layers include the sea waves, tunnel wall connecting to ECP, the post office’s architecture, rock monument, a shop’s banner. The top was then decorated with the clouds as the whip cream and the wheel sculpture as the chocolate piece.
Photos used for this edit:
I also put the cake on top of a paper plate, similar to those used in hawker centres (the popiah), as the use of ‘proper’ plates and utensils may make the styles too contrasting as the cake looks quite whimsical whereas the a porcelain plate is bit formal.
I used my blue painted swirls to add on abstract patterns in the background so that it was less plain.
The back cover follows the same layout showcasing an empty plate with leftover bits of the cake, signifying the readers digested the mini experience of Marine Parade after reading my zine, being a perfect last page to my zine.
For the pages inside, I originally wanted to divide the pages from the top to bottom as people, cultures (food, monuments, etc), architecture, beach. I realised the limitations of the number of pages I could do and thus decided on the following layout.
pg. 2: contents page – introducing readers to the layers
pg. 3: first layer – cultures
pg. 4-5: second layer – architecture
pg. 6-7: third layer – beach
For the contents page, I kept it simple. As mentioned, I wrote down the ‘layers’ that I would be showing.
The drawing of whale was extracted from one of the wall murals below the HBD flats.
For page 3, it is about layer 1: the cultural aspect of what makes Marine Parade unique. Unlike most other neighbourhoods, there was an effort to make it a culturally unique place. There was many recurring usage of the nautical theme through the multiple figurines placed around the neighbourhood.
I also included some of the ‘everyday’ objects that I found! Although there were not exactly part of the nautical theme, I had not seen them in any places yet, making them special too.
I compiled the photos as a collage.
For the 4-5 pages, they centred on the architectures that one can find in marine parade.
I wanted to present the architecture to form up one continuos flow of buildings. Mimi helped gave me some ideas such as making fonts out of these building structures or just putting them in a collage style. Such as:
Another idea was to overlay the different patterns that I found. Whereby the buildings will follow the grids of the patterns or fit into them.
In the end result, I chose to make it as a collage style.
I then added on the “reflective glass roof” cellophane paper cutouts and overlaid the paint streaks in a similar fashion to follow the pattern as shown below. The pattern was used in many of the HDB flats’ void-deck walls design.
For the 6-7th page, they featured the beach – East Coast Park!
I decorated it with the little shells/starfishes drawings I made. The background used was the waves painting. As mentioned, I used the lace to superimpose on the sea waves.
I included the stone benches as I felt that they are an iconic object found in ECP. The white flowers were also added as greeneries are an important part of the beach.
During my visit, the trees near seawalls area were blooming! It was really beautiful and I wanted to include them for appreciation of the nature aspect of Marine Parade.
And that’s all the pages that make up my zine! Hope you had fun viewing it!
Hello! For our 2D’s second and final project, we were each assigned to a random neighbourhood in Singapore and afterwards present a zine about it (:
Aaaand the neighbourhood that I got is.. Marine Parade! To be honest, the ‘bubble’ that I live in mainly revolves around the MRT’s purple north-east line and I had zero idea about what does Marine Parade look like. Just the week before Mimi picked the neighbourhood for me, I was talking to my hall friend, Evelyn. Our conversation went something along the lines of:
Me – “Oh ya, where do you stay ah?”
Evelyn – “Marine Parade!”
Me – “Oh…. Marine Parade.. Where is that?”
Great start to the project. However I was quite pumped up as this meant exploring a side of Singapore that I was unfamiliar with! I had no idea of where to go and what to expect, and it was really interesting to discover the unique sides of Marine Parade in my recce trips.
It was really quite inconvenient to visit via MRT but lucky for me, I had a direct bus from my house, bus 43! (But it was really super far when I went from hall…) During my first visit, I went during the evening as it had been raining for the previous few days. The findings were not much. I only covered the Marine Drive area.
There some nice mural paintings about community care (for the elderly). And I noticed that most of the HDB flats were white with some blue accents.
After some of my classmates did a presentation on colour theory, I got inspired to have colour theme so that my photos can look more consistent. Which was why on my second recce trips, I focused on sceneries/objects that were white & blue (with some green)!
Here’s what I found!
I walked from Parkway Parade to the estate areas, covering basically the whole Marine Parade Road: Marine Drive, Marine Terrace, Marine Crescent. It was really fun photographing the colours aspects of the neighbourhood, there were a lot! I guess it was because there was an effort to integrate a nautical theme since it was built on waters (which I will elaborate on in a later part). From HDB flats to condominiums to even the landed properties, most of them were a mixture of blue & white. Along the way I also spotted objects that were blue & white too, such as the chairs, market shops’ banner and decorations.
Also it was then that I realised that East Coast Park was part of Marine Parade….. Which was embarrassing because every Singaporean had been to ECP at least once in their life. Which was even worse when I told people I have not been to Marine Parade before when I frequent ECP often when I was young (￢_￢;) ohmy
These were the photos that I took and which that I used to present my findings.
ANYWAYS! I did some research on my own too.
Background Information of Marine Parade:
Marine Parade is a reclaimed land, being part of Singapore’s multi-phase project. Works started at 1966. Being one of the first few housing estates on reclaimed land, it was popular in demand of that time. Which was why in recent times, it had regraded as one of the silver zones in Singapore.
I thought that the fact that Marine Parade is a reclaimed land was really cool, and I wanted to incorporate this information into my zine’s idea.
Reclaimed land is the mad-made process of stacking and packing layers of sand on sea waters. Because there are layers of the whole land, I thought of translating that into my zine.
Whereby the pages of the zine are the layers that form up Marine Parade, e.g. the sea waters on the last page. And architecture, people, culture are the layers stacking on top (the upper pages). I proposed a rough idea to Mimi but she felt that the idea had to be more concise.
An idea then popped in my mind. The concept of these layers are also associated with their ‘textures’, e.g. Smooth waters vs rough sandy lands vs angled layers of buildings. From my photos, I noticed that there were also many intriguing-looking shapes and patterns from the buildings.
Basically, I wanted to work with textures and shapes of Marine Parade, exploring the ‘layers’ of the land, while being in the theme of blue & white.
I wanted to my audience to focus more on the visuals on the zine which was why I decided to include only photos and edits in it, showcasing the textures of each layer.
I went to look up for inspirations on how I could make the layouts of my photographs more interesting.
I wanted to do more the scrapbook style similar to those of Japanese magazines, where they played around with patterns and photo to make their editorials more appealing.
In order to gather more finds about the textures, I went back for a third and fourth recce. This time I explored near the ECP area and got these photos.
Once again I found new textures to work such as the wall designs, sand particles, sea waves. Also! There were a lot of cute sea animals statues aww. And bonus popiah photo since it was my lunch @ marine parade central’s hawker centre + it’s sort of white colour haha.
I think I was more or less settled with these photographs at that point. I did went back two more times because I wanted gather some thoughts and opinions people had of marine parade as I felt that texts can make my zine look more entertaining to read and convey my message better.
Refer to my next post for the making of the zine’s pages! (:
HELLOOO. Welcome to the first 4D project of this semester! This project is about exploring about what is Singapore to me? How well do I understand it? What is the way of life here in Singapore?
For task 1: we were suppose to choose between four approaches on the ‘theme’ that we were going for. They include:
1) Have a conversation with someone random and find out about their lifestyle in Singapore.
2) Visit a place that you are unfamiliar with or haven’t been to for awhile.
3) Visit a place during a different time of the day.
4) Have a conversation with a family member and find out about possible traditions/life stories/experience about Singapore.
I immediately decided to do no. 2 with those three questions that I had in mind. This is because I was always complaining to my family and friends that Singapore is too small and there is nothing left to explore. I thought I knew Singapore well enough. Which was why I wanted to challenge myself to discover new places of Singapore!
To be honest, my game plan was basically googling “interesting place to visit in Singapore”… BUT HEY, there were places that caught my eye and I was really amazed that such sites exists in Singapore. However, when I saw ‘Jurong Fishery Port‘, I knew it was the right place to go!
I’ve always enjoyed visiting markets in other countries, so I was excited to know that I can see fresh produce up close in Singapore! The fact that not many people would frequent that area makes me even more hyped to visit as both the audience and I will be on a learning journey together to find out this place! yay!
Research:
I made a total of two recce trips – 15 Jan and 21 Jan 2017.
It was truly a whole new world to me!!! Even just entering the port’s gantry, you are required to submit your IC to attain a pass. Once my mum and I stepped into the ‘market’ area, we were very much overwhelmed with our senses. There was so many things going on at the same time: selling of seafood, pushing of carts, cleaning of the fishes’ guts, etc. The smell aspect and sound aspects were definitely there as well: grimy smell of the ocean and voices yelling over each other.
Here are some of the photos that I got from my first trip:
(gantry gate)
(cleaning the fishes)
(bustling with activities!)
(display of seafood: they are either displayed on the floor (whole fishes) or put in baskets/styrofoam boxes)
(push carts: they go around helping to transport the fishes around the market)
(the ‘accountants’: in charge of calculating their daily business. and oops, got caught red-handed hahaha)
(objects used in the market)
(cute friendly uncles!)
(packing fishes to be sent for delivery/selling)
(an uncle scooping ice to keep the fishes fresh)
(venue name + pretty looking containers)
I think I had a pretty fulfilling first trip as I managed to capture many moments, showing a sufficient preview of what the fishery port is about. Although it was late in the night at 3-4 am, the energy of the port was high with bustling activities! While everyone is sleeping, these uncles and aunties were working, ensuring that we get our fresh seafood produce at our nearby markets! The overall atmosphere was also really different unlike our neighbourhood’s wet markets.
However, Michael mentioned that these are just photos and anywhere else can be ‘interesting’ and ‘a whole new world’ experience as well. What makes this fishery port so unique? Hence I decided to go back for a second time to interview different people (of different roles) to understand more about their way of life.
Unfortunately, on the day that I went back, it was two more days before Chinese New Year and the place was PACKED. Everyone was really busy and they either had no time to accept my interview, or because their boss was supervising and they could only focus on their jobs. It was quite depressing as I got rejected by quite a lot of people and I had been walking aimlessly for more than one hour.
At first, I did managed to get one interview from an uncle in the fishery port’s market. He works as a fish shop owner at one of the wet markets in Angmokio. He was with a few other uncles at a shop stand, and waiting for the ships to unload the fishes they had caught. Basically, the shop is a distributor in name: store vendors will buy their produce from them, then selling it in their own stores. I asked about his working hours, his working experience, and opinions about supermarkets vs their wet market business, etc. His replies were how working was really tiring and that there was nothing they could do about the rising competition, especially in times of bad economy and bad produce.
AND THIS WAS WHAT I COULD ROUGHLY REMEMBER. BECAUSE MY AUDIO RECORDING GOT CUT OFF WHILE RECORDING (OH NO!!!!)
Being dejected, I went back to the coffee shop area to find my mum. (the coffee shop area is located inside the fishery port, but away from the ‘wet market’ area, it is for the people working to have meals and quick breaks) I was close to giving up on this expedition but my mum encouraged me to ask the uncles in the coffee shop instead since they are taking a break/got off work, so most probably more willing to talk to me.
With that, I approached this table of uncles and OMG I WAS SAVED.
At first they were quite uneasy about me approaching them but they were really happy to share and talk to me!!!! Especially Uncle Wang, who provided me with a lot of insights about the lives of people working in the fishing industry. He works as a facilitator at NTUC where he oversees the distribution of fishes across the island’s stores.
He explained that it is a really tiring job as they had to work in the middle of the night. It will be even harder for the store vendors as they had to carry on business in the morning/afternoon after waking up at 2/3am to get their produce. Because most of the people working are elderly, the job is really straining on their health. When I asked him if he is concerned about how the fishing industry in Singapore may possibly die out because of big corporation’s convenient supermarkets and the lack of younger people who would want to do such laborious jobs, he replied that he would not be concerned. There are always foreign workers who can help out. The only reason why Singaporeans are still continuing on the jobs is because they could not switch to other better jobs due to their low level in education.
“Everyone wants to stop doing but they can’t.”
He would rather seeing the younger generation study hard to get a good job then endure the hardships of these jobs. It struck to how I never got to understand other people’s way of life. Working is really tiring and we often take it for granted that most Singaporeans are wealthy and can afford a comfortable life, when in fact they are many out there who are struggling to get by with life.
Uncle Wang also brought me around the area and I took some pretty cool shots from the second floor of the wet market too.
(person sleeping in the car)
(ship unloading area)
(hustle bustle)
(more shot of people: I also focused on the elderly workers)
(the food court)
(BIG THANK YOU TO UNCLE WANG!!!)
(AND OF COURSE THANK YOU TOO, TO MY BEAUTIFUL MAMA WHO ACCOMPANIED ME THROUGH THE TIRING NIGHTS AND DRIVING ME TO THE FISHERY PORT)
Presentation Idea:
After learning about the fishermen’s way of life, I wanted to present on how draining their jobs are. Showing my audience a side of Singapore they are unexposed to – how there is always a flip side to everything; how everyone has differing attitude to their jobs, contrasting with those working in the Jurong Fishery Port.
I really wanted to incorporate the photographs that I took as I felt that they truly help best express what I saw and can better bring across my ideas. However, just putting up a gallery of photos will be too boring and I was quite stumped on how to present them.
After hearing Michael’s suggestion to incorporate elements of the fish market into my works, I noticed most fishes were packed in styrofoam box. This inspired me to presenting my photos in a styrofoam box, where the act of removing the lid unveils someone’s way of life in Singapore! Instead of fishes, the audience will be getting the messages that I am trying to convey through the pictures!
I picked out some of the nicer photos that reflect what I saw at the fishery port, sticking to theme of the working lifestyle of the people. Originally I wanted to individually print out each card and write a message at the back, expressing my thoughts and what I felt or learnt from the trips when I look at the photographs. However my english standard really cannot make it and it does not deliver that emotional impact of the messages that I was trying to bring across. Hence I ended up grouping two photos back and front. They were grouped based contrasting similarities.
(The ‘accountants’: one being engrossed in work vs one sitting alone and staring into space)
(Food court: crowd vs sitting alone)
(Fish sellers: waiting for business vs busy with customers’ orders)
(Cheerful, hanging out with friends vs Tired, waiting for friend)
(Cleaners: Local vs Foreigners)
(Delivery men: pushing vs pulling)
(the two uncles that helped me a lot)
As you can see, the photos were meant to show how even in similar context of setting or action, there are two sides to it (other than the last one featuring the two uncles. but they really helped me out a lot and I wanted to somehow include them. I guess they did helped in in their own but different ways though)
Through this, it invokes the message of how in a similar context of in the middle of the night, while a part of Singapore is sleeping comfortably, another side is working tirelessly. While the young have the chance to strive and get good well-paying jobs, the older generation are struggling to stay in their limited jobs.
I laminated the photos so that water would not seem in and ruin the photos since I printed them on paper.
I also printed some random fishes transparencies and mixed it with the photos while being covered in ice. This is to stimulate the real life experience of buying fishes in a boxes and makes it more relevant to the theme, as just putting photos may be too plain.
Here’s what the box look like on the inside!
Also, I pasted the top of styrofoam box lid with the aerial view of fishes, so that it looks like the audience are peering into the world of the fishery port itself.
I also played a recording that I made of the fishery port while presenting my piece, as I wanted to stimulate the actual site setting.
It was fun watching my classmates interact with this piece! I didn’t expect that so many people would get involved hahaha.
Check out the photos and videos!
I really appreciate the class feedback and how accepting they were of my concept. At first they did not quite get it, and it was even more troubling when the lamination fell off and the photos were printed too darkly, making it hard to see. They also brought up the problem of recreating this work elsewhere as it would be hard to make it a permanent piece with the addition of the ice cubes. It was really neat when they suggested that I could put the photos in frozen blocks of ice as well since one of the message that I mentioned was how the people working at the fishery port are trapped in their jobs, improving my installation piece.
Reflection:
I had fun doing something I had never done before, creating an interactive installation piece, and addressing ‘serious’ social problems into my works. I’m glad I experimented with something different. Even for the choice of location, I’m also glad that I picked somewhere that was wayyy out of my comfort zone. Through this project, I hoped that I showed my peers new places in Singapore to venture upon and expose them to another unfamiliar lifestyle! (:
