Guest Speaker: Candice Ng

Candice Ng’s works have revolved around memories or rituals. She is very interested to translate these “past” events or behaviors into the “new” digital medium. This is very interesting as we do not relate behavior or habits of our young days (especially when a lot of new media was not introduced).

Her work “Conscious Bits” caught my eye as shows snippets of a person’s life and teachings by interacting with the work. I feel that it not only let us know a bit of their lives and their upbringing.

Questions I would ask Candice are:

If identity formed by existence of a being when he/she is alive, then why is it only marked by death?

Why is the idea of personal identity so important when in this new media age where there should be a greater focus on global identity instead.

Hyper Essay – Fragility

Plannet: https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/pe0001in/2016/01/21/floating-baby/

Fragility of Time: https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/chen0907/2016/02/01/58/

The two projects that caught my eye was Marc Quinn’s “Planet” and Ignacio Canales Aracil’s “Fragility of Time”. Not only these two art pieces have similar mediums, they explore similar themes: to explore instances that only exist for a very short time.

In Marc Quinn’s “Planet”, the artist plays on weight (it is made of heavy metal) and the illusion of weightlessness. I believe that it shows that youth is only temporary and that it passes by before we realise it.  Yet in Ignacio Canales Aracil’s “Fragility of Time”, he pressed and dried wild flowers to form structures that are very delicate; again, showing that temporal strength of something structurally weak. The projects vividly depicts the human fear of the inability to control time and forgetting important memories.

Despite the two project are similar in themes, they are very different in the way they are planned and executed. “Planet” has a much wider scope compared to “Fragility of Time” because the former has a bigger volume and uses materials that cannot be created nor transported by a single person. “Fragility of Time”, on the other hand, is made up of flowers thus is much easier to handle. Even though Canales used unique techniques to create the sculptures, I believe that the process can be done by the artist himself.

“Planet” and “Fragility of Time” are both project that require lots of planning through many channels. The starting point of the two projects might be similar since both of them explored similar concepts. “Planet” was a part of 3 separate installations in the same collection while “Fragility of Time” was a stand-alone project. Marc Quinn probably has some experience with creating public art pieces and the expectations from sponsors or collaborators. However, Canales probably have experiment many times before perfecting his sculpture. Furthermore, as his sculpture is delicate, he has to think of ways to transport it from places to places.

The organisations they have to contact to exhibit their works are very different. Marc Quinn have to connect governmental organisations to seek approval for his work while Canales is able to seek private organisations for his work to be displayed. That is one of the major differences between public art pieces and gallery art pieces since museums can control who can see the art. This help to protect artist and their audience if their works are not socially or culturally accepted.

“Planet” is be site-specific while “Fragility of Time” can be displayed in any gallery with a space big enough. Marc Quinn choose Singapore’s Garden’s by The Bay to display his works. The garden provides a peaceful ambiance to his work which can express his message clearly without interference as city spaces often disrupts artistic expression with static. This is exactly opposite in “Fragility of Time”, the exhibition are in enclosed gallery space, artificially made for humans to be imaginative, accepting and appreciative to every work. However, if “Planet” loses its site, it would also destroy meaning where there is no juxtaposition of the surreal scene with reality.

Case study: Sonoport

The visit to Sonoport opened my eyes on entrepreneurship and the media scene in Singapore.

When arriving at the offices, I am surprised to see such an open office with a small group of people working on very  different aspects of a project.

Sonoport, as a brand, was very clear in its objectives. They are able to clearly recognize their targets audience and decide who they want to market their products to. As sound on the internet is new, Sonoport saw opportunities in multiple areas, mainly: advertising and social media. Sonoport was decisive in their project goals and they met up respective organisations that would be interested in invest in those areas.

I really like Sonoport’s determination to push their products to showcase that it is a concept that works. For them to come up with their own line of dish soap for the advertisement was something most entrepreneurs would not do.

Sonoport’s take on competition is very unique, they focus on the areas that other companies do not have and secure their clients so that they are still entitled to the funding that is necessary. However, in Singapore, Sonoport is relatively a pioneer in web-based audio storage system, thus minimizing the number of competition on a national level.

Questions:

I believe that sounds in advertisements are often viewed as invasive and unnecessary. Have Sonoport looked into non-invasive types of advertisements? (eg. advertisements that people want to look or to find out about the product instead of pop-ups or sidebar advertisements)