Zine Part 1: Location Research

LOCATION RESEARCH: BUGIS

For this zine project, I wanted to explore Bugis as it is one of my go-to places for food, shopping and entertainments. Although I visit this area quite frequently, most of my time spent were at the shopping malls (Bugis Junction & Bugis+). Therefore, I conducted an online survey to gain a deeper insight on the location and to see what else it has to offer.

SURVEY RESULTS

According to the survey results, people frequent Bugis Junction & Bugis + the most. But when I asked the participants for their favourite location in Bugis, I was heartened to see some interesting answers.

1. HAJI LANE: Cafe and Boutiques

2. NATIONAL LIBRARY: Study

3. SUNSHINE PLAZA: Good Printing

4. WATERLOO ST: Buddhist Temple, Fortune Centre and Fu Lu Shou Complex

LOCATION RESEARCH: WATERLOO STREET

After researching on all the places as mentioned above, I decided to focus on Waterloo Street. I remember my mom would to bring me to the Buddhist temple at Waterloo Street when I was a kid. In my memory, I didn’t like this place very much because it was very hot and crowded. But upon visiting it today, I find the location very unconventional.

OBSERVATIONS




INTERVIEWS

I wasn’t able to get much interview over there due to the demographic. The people there were very careful about strangers and therefore reluctant to participate. SOBS

SECONDARY RESEARCH
While it is easy to refer to the Waterloo Street area as a Chinatown of sorts, owing to its high concentration of Chinese, Buddhist-centric festivals and service vendors, it is important to note the other communities who have existed here right from its beginning.

INFOGRAPHIC FOR PRESENTATION

Micro-Project 6: Super Participation

For Micro Project 6, my group mates were Dion, Jia Ying and Si Hui.  We were to create a Facebook page and post as regularly as we could for 24 hrs. We were also encouraged to share everything that we did that day with the group and comment on each other’s post. The aim of this project was to explore the idea of digital identity and the different persona people portray on social media.

SIHUI

For Si Hui, she posted a lot of screenshots of her game play in Habo Hotel. Since most of her posts were about a character she assume in the game, she did not reveal much on what she was doing in real life. From this, I inferred that she is a rather private person.

Even so, I thought I was still able to get a glimpse of her personality through the decisions she made in the game and the captions of her screenshots. She has a very quirky way of describing things and it is super entertaining.

 

DION

For Dion, she documented almost everything she did that day (from the food that she eats – places she visits – game play) without much filter. I felt like her posts were very entertaining to read because she was often in some sort of distress.  From this, I inferred that she is a person with a sense of humour even in dire situations.

 

JIAYING

For Jia Ying, I thought that she was a family orientated person because she was the only one that posted pictures of her family member. She also shared with us the songs she was listening to that day, which I thought was very interesting. Generally, I felt that she is a down-to-earth person because there was not much filter on the content she posted.

 

ME

For myself, I find that it was a chore to constantly post something on social media. A lot of times, I would forget entirely about the project and my friend have to remind me to post something. I started out well, documenting some of my routines and activities I did for the day but eventually I lost interest and started to post super random things that has no actual content.

 

Research Critique 3: Glitch & The Art Of Destruction

This is the end result, listen it at your own risk.

For this Micro Project, my group members Nikki, Joel, Joseph and I created an audio through the act of destruction. We wanted to demonstrate the art of destruction by going against all the rules and norms established in music production and redefine the idea of what is considered music.

We started off by recording an audio of us singing the ‘Happy Birthday’ song. The recording was done at a stairway that produced a lot of echo, in contrast to the ideal studio setting. All of us have our ears covered during the recording, so that we could not hear ourselves. This resulted in a total lack of synchronisation; our pitches were off and all of us started and ended the song at different timings. 

We also recorded other sounds on our way back to the classrooma screeching door, metal cabinets closing, bottle dropping and bottle against railing— to add more textures to the song. We then mashed everything together in Audacity and added random effects to destruct the audio.

This project allowed us to look into destruction as a form of artistic expression and practice it firsthand. We intentionally curated imperfections in our work,  and by doing so, transformed the medium and meaning of the artwork. As mentioned by Menkman in the Glitch Studies Manifesto article, these imperfections shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse’It was a liberating experience to embrace inconsistencies in technology and challenge the norms of established systems. Instead of trying to attain perfection, it is a change to surrender to chaos and explore the possibility of randomness.

Menkman also described glitch/destructive art as ‘an always growing language’. The essence of glitch lies in its unpredictability and disfavour. Once people start to understand or embrace a glitch, it is said to have passed its tipping point. When this happens, the essence of glitch art vanishes as the glitch is understood as a new norm and no longer have its element of surprise. Therefore, glitch/destructive art is deemed as a radical and an ever-changing expression because the curators have to constantly explore methods to tilt the equilibrium of normality.

In the recent years, glitch art has been gaining a lot of attention and what was once understood as a glitch has now become a new commodity. According to Jon Cates in an interview with Randall Packer,glitch is already now being compromised or being folded into aesthetics that are also highly popular’. I think that despite this, glitch art can never truly be dead as it is something that will evolve with human’s constant need for advancement.