Assignment 2, the completed work. Rationale and process beneath the break.

A WISE OLD OWL

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

With an overall theme of surveillance and panopticism, I will elaborate on each of the individual compositions and my concept below:

A wise old owl lived in an oak

From the very first composition, I sought to establish a panoptic (see ‘panopticon’) structure right in the middle, surrounded by a vast cityscape. The tower is meant to evoke a tower of babel imagery as well as serve as a shout out to the tower with an eye from Lord Of The Rings.

The line in the rhyme “A wise old owl lived in an oak” serves as an introduction to the owl. In this case our ‘owl’ is the surveyor, who stays hidden in his tower, high and powerful, silently watching all that is around him. With the exploration of the relationship between surveillance and power in mind, I wanted to portray my ‘owl’ as a being of authority, much like how majority of surveillance stems from powerful governments or security organizations.

In the cityscape/forest depicted, the tower is the biggest ‘tree’ and its branches and leaves spans across the top half of the image, shielding the city beneath it, a take on how surveillance and security goes hand in hand. Despite the spying, the tower and ‘owl’ ultimately exists as a protector yet the city it protects is not just a city but one with many smaller trees acting as foliage, a representation of Singapore a ‘green city’ as well as obscuring parts of the city from the all seeing ‘owl’.

The more he saw the less he spoke

In this 2nd piece, the panoptic tower is more subliminal: from the propped up Jesus, the gap between the windows to the scale on the top half of the image. Here, I attempted to create two different spaces in this composition: the interior where the community resides and the exterior where the ‘owl’ is.

The 2nd line in the rhyme focuses on the nature of the owl and how it silently observes, thus I sought to delve deeper into the ideas explored in the first composition: the ‘owl’ as an authoritative figure breaching our privacy, its purpose and the response of the community.

On the outside, the ‘owl’s’ eyes made with lips is a literal take of the “The more he saw the less he spoke” line. It takes up the whole of the exterior and its ‘eyes’ were meant to not just look past the windows at the community in the interior but right at the viewer of the image. To frame the head of an actual owl, I made use of dingbats of a gear and the Singapore Flyer: The ‘owl’ is a well oiled machine at surveillance and it makes use of the whole city to keep an eye on its citizens. At the center of the ‘owl’s’ head is a scale to represent the right to judge between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people.

Within the interior, I made use of a dingbat of men speaking to create a community and a form of perspective. They appear to be in conversation but some within the community are secretive. They have their faces obscured by a helmet, a motif that I would use again in the 4th composition. In contrast to them is the figure of Christ rising from an open book – a literal metaphor – held up by large hands that hopefully comes across to the viewers as the owl’s. He is the ideal law abiding citizen with nothing to hide, and thus not scared of the surveillance imposed.

The less he spoke the more he heard

The 3rd composition takes us to a different part of the city in the reality of this work: a place that consists of broadcast towers that receive information instead of providing; “The less he spoke the more he heard”. Since it was the last composition with the ‘owl’ in power, I really wanted to drive through the point that the ‘owl’ is a powerful figure, hence the worm’s eye view perspective on this image.

The ‘owl’ speaks very little, its broadcast towers sprouting ears, serving the very opposite purpose of a broadcast tower. Similar towers form the city around it with screens of TVs and laptops erected. Despite my initial idea of the onscreen content symbolizing the authorities’ self censorship in contrast to people’s openness with their own information in this piece, some classmates have feedback that they assumed it showed the authorities’ restrictions on the behaviors of the community.

With twitter birds soaring across the ‘skies’, this composition explores the rise in social media and self imposed surveillance: where people openly reveal their day to day activities and thoughts on social media. Represented by the whispering figures spilling sparkles into the hands of the city as trumpets are pointed to the hands as well. I hoped that this imagery would remind the viewers of the phrase “tooting one’s own horn” as the gratification function of social media helps the authorities survey their citizens with greater ease.

Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

Instead of having people adopting the wisdom of the ‘owl’, I interpreted “Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?” as the tables being turned on the ‘owl’. Personally, I felt that the original line in the rhyme itself seemed somewhat condescending and sarcastic. The owl that was referred to as “A wise old owl” or with the pronoun “he” is now reduced to an (albeit still wise) “old bird”.

Here, I wanted to create parallels to the other 3 compositions, but especially the very first composition to highlight the differences between the state of the city when we first began and how it could end. In the first composition, the  perspective was simple and linear in contrast to this: where the city was warped to encircle the ‘tower’, now reduced to a hiding pine tree that no longer spans the city.

The role of whistleblowers have greatly expanded in the recent years, exposing multiple scandals and I feel that it is their role to step up and take action when the authority is no longer acting in our best interest. Symbolized by how the once proud tower the ‘owl’ resided in in the first composition no longer covers and shields the city, literal whistles shines rays of light (like in a city white searchlight hunt) at the ashamed eye of the ‘owl’. I made use of the geared dingbat once again to represent that even the structure of the city is turning against it.

The community and the helmet wearing figure returns as well; their growth represented by the dingbat of the human evolution closing in on the ‘tower’. The helmeted figure is shrugging as though reciting the “Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?” line sarcastically, balancing the scales and the camera. It is now his turn to survey and judge the entity that was once surveying him. The helmeted figures in the 2nd composition initially thought to be unlawful individuals with secrets to hide could also be genuinely concerned citizens who cherish their privacy.

I’m really thankful for all the positive feedback given during the presentation and to hear some of my classmate’s responses towards the compositions and the issue that I tried to explore in this project.