Project 1 Walking Home 2

Video Link:  https://vimeo.com/163204986

Honestly, I wasn’t familiar with video editing at all so this project was quite challenging for me…but here was my concept:

Following up part one of the project of home being a feeling rather than a place, I created a narrative between the protagonist aka me, and a cat(my pet/friend back in home)

It was like letters from protagonist, who left home starting new life in new place, to the cat. Through the letters, the viewers can understand the journey of getting used to a new place and feel at home as well as the protagonist’s idea of home:

Home is being comfortable and feel safe, familiarity of the surroundings and importantly, some company e.g. friends, whether they are there or not, and in this case,the pen friend cat.

Though I tried to differentiate two sides of the conversation by varying the text colors…audience seemed to view it as a cat perspective’s monologue, which was something I needed to work on more and improve.

Also, even though I was rethinking the sounds for the video, I still decided to go without it. I would prefer it to be silent to make the viewers feel that they are actually reading letters and photos attached with the letters rather than some audio book where sounds can be quite distracting.

 

Singapore Diary Research

Interview

“What is like living in Singapore for you?”

A senior said that she usually takes public transport around, has meals at hawker centres and wonders around casually. Even though she goes to shopping malls, things are too expensive and it is crowed during peak hours.

A student said that he has very busy school life and many classmates worked very hard. They were finding balance between school and cca, waking up early and staying up late.

Research

Seeing so many ongoing construction everywhere made me wonder:

How the old buildings co-exist with the modern architecture? 

So I went on to research on news on construction in SG as well as preservation program by URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority).

Some of the questions popped up while I was researching:

What’s relationship between the place and people with so many new buildings coming up?

How are the buildings  different now and how construction affects people’s life

What do people feel about the old and new buildings?

etc…

Then I thought of the Singapore Red Dot Museum and that it was a Colonial-era building so I decided to work on that and did some research…For me personally,this is the place where I started my design journey. Almost four years ago, and as I went there several times more, I found it very fascinating. The bright red color of the whole building makes it distinguish from the street.

Red Dot Museum is the first contemporary design museum in Asia and is housed in the former Singapore Traffic Police Headquarters, a colonial-era building. It was converted in 2005 into a creative hub known as Red Dot Traffic, whose facade was then painted in its now signature red hue. Besides the Red Dot Design Museum, the Red Dot Traffic building also houses food and beverage outlets, creative agencies and a bar.

The building was given conservation status by the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2007.

Progress does not always have to mean that all things need to be shiny and new. A passion for the past, a bit of imagination and some careful reinvention has allowed some of Singapore’s conservation buildings to take on new lives through adaptive re-use.

 

 

 

Sound Art -World’s quietest place

ANECHOIC CHAMBER

An anechoic chamber (“an-echoic” meaning non-reflective, non-echoing or echo-free) is a room designed to completely absorb reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves. They are also insulated from exterior sources of noise. The combination of both aspects means they simulate a quiet open-space of infinite dimension, which is useful when exterior influences would otherwise give false results.

The picture above is earth’s quietest place: The ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories, which is 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and capable of giving the visitor hallucinations. It was constructed with fiberglass acoustic wedges, double walls of insulated steel and concrete.

Visitors are challenged to sit in the chamber in darkness and the longest record now is 45 minutes by a reporter. We would thought that silence is quite nice and yet when it is so quiet, you can hear your own heartbeat, your stomach and many many usually unnoticeable noises. As they said”In the room, you are the sound.”

The experience is said to be very disorientating and visitors will have to sit down to feel less disconnected. Only when you can’t rely on reflection of sounds, echoes to define the space and orientate yourself that you realize how much you usually move around. It is absolutely fascinating to experience that.

 

Project 3 The Library

Visual PROPOSAL

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The installation includes a pillow case with a speaker inserted inside that plays the sounds softly and constantly. 

The pillow was placed at the sitting area near the magazine racks. And a picture of the night sky will be placed above the pillow using blutac. (Refer to above image)

Final Installation

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Artist Statement

乡音 (Xiang Yin ), The Rural Sound

Xiang Yin is an installation project that expresses the artist’s memories of the soundscape from her rural hometown in China. The sounds from life in the rural area such as rooster crows in the morning, cries from children playing in the yard, etc. are sounds that make her feel at home and at ease.  She hopes to share the soothing qualities of her home town with her listener. Through the images and sounds, the listener may start to picture the simple and peaceful rural life, all of which now though distant, remains a wonderful memory for the artist.

 

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The night sky picture attached above the pillow

 

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Screenshot of the soundtracks

Clik here to listen to soundtrack!!

Project 2 Singapore Diary-The Book of Red Dot

Project Title: The Book of Red Dot

The pictures were hand drawn with reference to photographs. This media was chosen for it appeared more personal and almost like a story book instead of a way too serious publication. It contains both historical facts about the place as well as my personal view on it.

“Red Dot” can mean Singapore and also at the same time implying the red dot museum. The reason for choosing the Red Dot Museum was that it was a great example of a well preserved building highly associated with design. Also, there was an interesting twist of how the former traffic head quarter, a place with regulation, is now a contemporary design museum, where rules are constantly challenged and broken.

The concept for this project is conservation, specifically how a colonial-era building was occupied by different organization, well preserved and converted into a contemporary design museum nowadays.

As suggested by Mr. Tan, the place was not revealed at first but rather the introduction of it being the former traffic headquarter, which created a surprise element till the reader found out that the place was in fact the Red Dot Museum. A “Do You Know?” sort of arrangement of the content…

Below are the images:

 

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4D Project II 1 Walking Home 1-Home Is How You Feel

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For me, home is not a location or a specific place. Although home is often associated with hometown and family, for me, home is more of the feeling. It’s the feeling of being at ease and no pressure.1

The comfort of the warm and soft blanket is home. Home is where you take a rest and recover from the outside world.

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The warm and yellowish light reminds me of home as well. The refrigerator light is always very soothing.

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A bowl of rice means a meal. Having food is satisfying and brings good mood.

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The stripy bag is from my hometown for traveling package. It being there is telling me that I have a place to go back and it gives me security and confidence.

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The steamy and dreamy atmosphere is also homey for me.

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The water drips. When I am feeling at home, I enjoy observing small details around me and experience the passing of  time slowly.

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Being at home means relaxing for me. Lying down on bed and starting at the rotating fan and hearing the sounds of it is homey as well.

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Being able to do things that I enjoy is also great.

ADM Library Ideation

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Layout of the ADM Library

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Activities: Reading, studying, printing, resting, watching videos, working etc.

The ways people interact with ADM library are various compared to traditional concept of library being a place with book collections. In ADM library besides reading books, people use it more as a place to do homework. There are many seats and lazy bags for resting. The obtain of knowledge can be done both through physical and virtual databases.

Possible directions/interesting aspects:

  • New ways of displaying books, magazines and etc
  • Unconventional objects in a library (objects from a park, a coffee shop etc)
  • View of the outside through windows
  • A corner for sharing

SAM Visit

  On a rainy Friday afternoon, I left ADM and arrived at Singapore Art Museum, aka SAM. Among the numerous pieces in the 3 exhibitions, there were 2 in particular I found fascinating.


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Here's who I am, I am what you see
BY EZZAM RAHMAN
From President's Young Talents Exhibition

  Inside a dark room were many glass jars on several tables, inside which there was a flower and a light shining from below. At first glance from distance, they seemed like dry flowers displayed nicely in light.

  I discovered that they were made out of skin when I moved and looked closer. There were in fact many different shapes of them. The setting somehow made me think that the artist valued these flowers and the number of them was quite impressive considering how long it might take to collect and made them. It made me wonder why the artist would spend time on this and what he was trying to convey. As we know, this were quite uncommon materials to use to make art work to put into a glass jars. However, the artist managed to create beautiful flowers out of them. All these flowers were part of the artist and they were born via the patient and tedious process.

After reading the text and background on the artist…

I think the choice of materials did reflect well on the title of the artwork. The skin belonged to the artist and it was unique and very personal just as he said “These works are representations of self, about that impermanent moment of someone’s presence.” The flowers were kept in the jars now seemed like a museum of displaying someone’s existence and the time that the person experienced.

They were captured and placed there and appeared  very delicate yet elegant. The nice environment of warm light inside a dark room also created a nostalgic atmosphere. Everyone experiences the metabolism process in life and everyone eventually dies and disappears in the stream of history.  This was quite obvious when noticing the changes happening to our body. However short the moments were, they could be very beautiful and precious.

 


 

4 3

Every Point of View
BY MATTHEW NGUI
From 5 Star Exhibition

  This piece was installed inside a room. When I entered the door, in front of me were many white PVC pipes with incomplete words on them. Walking among the pipes, the texts on them seemed to change. I tried to move around and shrift my height of view to see whether I could read anything out. As I was exploring in the room full of pipes, I found that there were several cameras placed at different corners in the room and then in the far end of the room there was walls of projection.

  It was a pleasant surprise to actually see clearly the words on the pipes were presenting some statements on Democracy. These must be viewed at some very specific angles so that all the pipes became continuous as a background. Interestingly, the pipes present different statements on Democracy when viewed at different perspectives. When there were people walking around among the pipes, the text will be blocked as well. As it turned out that they were real-time video projection.

After reading the text and background on the artist…

Now that I understood the intention of the artist of stressing the importance of the perspective, the pipes and live-cameras installation made sense. The instability and fragile states of Democracy were experienced by the visitors as a slight change of position will cause the loss of the views. Just as it was stated that the artist sees the work as “analogous” to the democratic process: that democracy “is an understanding that different viewpoints exist and that it is within this acknowledgment that ways to co-exist are devised consensually and sometimes, not so.”

However, the write-up stated that “Every Point of View invokes the multi-pillared Parthenon in Athens, coincidentally the birthplace of democracy as an ideal and practice.” This was not that transparent when visitors were exploring in the installation. As much as Democracy was associated with Athens, the pipes were quite different from the columns from the Parthenon.