(EDITED on 23/11/17) This is a final presentation post + process/research dump at the end of the post.

The Water Project: CommonCulture

water as the commonality of cultures and thus a medium to bond cultures + fluidity of cultures

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PROBLEM STATEMENT

With growing pressures from globalisation and immigration, added to Singapore’s existing multicultural landscape, there is a crucial need to promote more open conversations and deeper understanding in the Singaporean society among ethnic groups and also between residents and immigrants.

OBJECTIVES

To facilitate intercultural dialogues with the use of participatory design

• As most people would acknowledge that they don’t actually know much about their other cultures, and they wouldn’t know what to ask:-
  • Provide as an open platform for people to share their perspectives and stories related to (cultural) identities
  • Spark interest and curiosity in people towards other cultures – to ask questions 
  • Hopefully meaningful interactions arise from facilitation and engagement by the use of different topics/themes relevant to cultures on the platform, and have people who are able to answer existing questions to contribute
• A softer approach of gathering getting people to understand each other through personal stories, and getting people to identify shared experiences or spark curiosity on their own
  • To shift the approach with intercultural promotion from a more top-down + pigeonholing the CMIO races approach Singapore has been used to, to a more ground-up one and de-emphasise on racial groups
  • Stories and personal experiences are what can spark the empathy of people towards other cultures and their own

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DELIVERABLES

(1) Website: ONLINE OUTREACH

What

• Main platform/anchor of the project – introduction to the intention of the project, platform for archival and interaction
• Interaction and dialogue: Dialogues are facilitated by having a conversation topic set every 4 months to prompti people with questions which are geared towards discovering and sharing their identities and cultures.
• Collecting responses and questions + responses to questions.

Why online?

• Can happen in the long term, sustained, renewed, and changed – not an end point like physical materials are
• Online chat rooms can allow interactions and exchange of thoughts without primary judgement of one’s race or appearance – more receptive

(2) Spatial design: PUBLIC OUTREACH

What?

• First level interaction, basic engagement in the heartlands – act as a fringe project to engage the public physically, notifying them about the project
• Active engagement: Approaching people with response sheet to respond to questions
• Passive engagement: A space to explain project and for responses to be collected from the public

Why physical space? Why heartlands?

• Situated in the heartlands where the demographic is desired – able to reach out to more people
• The heartlands are symbolically known to be the Singaporean cultural identity + attempt to create meaningful everyday encounters (Reconstructing Singapore as Cosmopolitan Landscape)
• Something physical, something tactile can be more easily engaging, and gives people a sense of human touch to the project; to be closer to the people
• To publicise project and highlight the existence of the website

(3) Curation: ZINE

• Released following every topic as a compilation/summary, more in-depth information and discussions into the topic to conclude the conversation round
• Curated responses and relevant articles

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BRANDING: CommonCulture

Common: “belonging to or shared by two or more individuals or things or by all members of a group”, “relating to a community at large”

Symbols and motifs of void decks
Heartland > Neighbourhood> HDB flats > Void deck

 

The CommonCulture logo is designed based on the communal chess table, a common motif of Singaporean HDB void decks. Both sides of the chairs also represents two Cs of the brand name – and being brought together to the centre.

The void deck motif is reflected also on the website, which built on the elements and aspects of the void deck and neighbourhood.

The overall style of the project is an interweave of neat and clean vectored lines with hand-drawn doodles and writings – as to represent the idea of a “meaningful everyday encounters” in our urban setting. Despite the void deck being a concrete, empty grey space, it is the spirit of allowing a space for interaction for people which it represents – like Singapore which is an urban, concrete environment, but there are touches of warm, human interactions in our daily lives.

The blues are taken from the common colour of the communal tables, and red to represent Singapore, while yellow is used as a highlight. Patterns based on the communal table is also made.

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FINAL

Despite the ideal concept of void decks being meant as common spaces for social interactions, it is more often true that we don’t actually utilise it that way it should. In order to maximise and carry on that spirit, we bring the void deck to the virtual, and to the centres of heartlands (near shopping malls and interchanges where there are more people) – with the intention to bring people together.

A project for the people also has to be driven by the people – thus it has to be participatory in nature. The design of the project is to create an available platform with facilitation to spark off interactions. While most Singaporeans would admit that they don’t know enough about other cultures, and there may be a sense of curiosity and desire to understand better, but the problem of not knowing how and where to start – is what this project intends to answer.

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Conversation Topic: Names

• In order to have something which accommodates and relate universally
• And it’s intimate, and closely linked to identity and cultures

(1) Website: ONLINE OUTREACH

WEBSITE LINK HERE

  

The website contains an intro page > about page > a page for the three deliverables each. The main function is for its response submission and response archival, as the space is used for a platform of interaction:

(left: Response submission page / right: An example of a submission entry containing responses to the prompts + questions raised to the community)

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(2) Spatial design: PUBLIC OUTREACH

The public outreach is intended to be brought to various neighbourhoods from time to time – thus made to be simple and condensed in a certain space. Though simple, its design is also made to emulate the feel of a void deck – the metal frames to act as walls to hold up the graphics, the iconic communal chess table, and the mailbox.

Graphics used in the exhibition space:

Response sheet

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(3) Curation: ZINE

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ZINE

Published at the end of every conversation round to conclude the topic, and to further engage the public in the significance of the topic. The content of the zine is separated into three parts:

1. Personal names and the struggle with identity: Personal names can have more impact and significance to one’s identity than thought sometimes. Some people in other parts of the world have struggled and found peace with their name(s) – how they perceive their own identity and how others towards them. Personal names are often related to cultural identities, and this is a part of what separates us into “different communities”. One can identify similarity in how personal names impact identity, despite having different names despite different cultural naming conventions etc.
2. Curated responses which were collected over the conversation round
3. Names and collective identity of a nation: Beyond making sense of each other as individuals based on personal names, there is also the level of how names have shaped nations – particularly Singapore. This fosters a sense of how names can help us find a collective identity, as a nation. Not only what makes us unique and different (personal names) but also the names which relates to us collectively – in order to bring us together, by recognising our differences and commonalities.

Physical copy:

Bound by saddle stitch with thread

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RESEARCH & PROCESS

Ideation

I came all the way from the first few weeks of research about the duality of water – all the way from chengyu, Taoist philosophy and Fengdu Ancient city (I shan’t be elaborating that in this post) to this now – but with the intent of cultures as and always.

Water connects people across time and space.

…is what I have on my mind always, as I think the relationship between water and culture is what is more interesting to me. But of course I had been mostly lost, and unsure what aspect I really wanted to do.

With the idea of:

Water as a medium of connection

I researched on multiculturalism in Singapore + intercultural dialogues + participatory design (here are a few more significant ones):

• Differences between the concepts of cultures, ethnicity, race, nationality
• Difference between multicultural and intercultural
• Ethnorelativism

Intercultural Dialogues

• Report on the role of public arts and cultural institutions in the promotion of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue (European Agenda for Culture)
  • “The objective of intercultural dialogue is to create common goods, shared knowledge and spaces for exchange.” 
• Critical Intercultural Dialogues (Michael Rabinder James)
  • Intercultural criticism as open ended strategy of questioning
• Reconstructing Singapore as a Cosmopolitan Landscape The Geographies of Migration and its Social Divisions that Extend into the Heartlands (Elaine Ho)
  • “a need to go beyond mere tolerance” with growing pressure from globalisation and immigration on top of sg’s existing current multiculturism
  • Foreigner v local distinct within the heartlands – which characterises the Singaporean identity
  • “meaningful (everyday) encounters” – “mutual positive respect for differences”

Multiculturalism in Singapore

• Approaches to promote and sustain racial harmony and multiculturism
  • Racial Harmony Day, forced integrated public housing + public school allocation, bilingualism policy, etc.
  • General representation of 4 racial groups (CMIO)
• The Myth of Multiculturalism in Singapore
  • “In this aspect, the bilingual policy of Singapore also straddle between de-emphasising race and emphasising race at the same time.”
  • “Her citizens might be cordial towards one another (as per the portrayals), but there is little understanding or genuine inter-racial mixing between them. Thus as much as race is downplayed in the formulation of multiculturalism, it is an unavoidable source of national identity.”
• Is Singapore truly multicultural?
• More can be done to build intercultural understanding and interaction: Education Minister
  • Orange Ribbon kits to promote interracial interaction and understanding – children encouraged to gift ribbon to someone of a different race with a personal note and strike conversations with them + a run
• Indicator of Racial and Religious Harmony in Singapore

Participatory design and art

• Participatory artist Lee Ming Wei
  • The Traveller: museum visitors take a notebook home and write their thoughts about leaving home
• Singapore Memory Project
• Migar es Cultura (Migration is Culture) – Museo de America: web-based participatory design collecting stories of migrants and their descendants

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Culture and Campaign Communication: Toward a Normative Theory (Jianglong Wang)

“Culture, on the other hand, is intimately related to campaign communication since campaigns cannot be run without culture as a context. Culture and campaign communication are inseparable because the occurrence of one phenomenon must necessitate the happening of the other. In other words, without considering a given context for a particular communication campaign, it is very difficult, if not impossible to understand the success or failure of a campaign. Likewise, without considering culture, campaign communication becomes a senseless occurrence as culture provides the necessary environment within which campaign sponsors create and share meanings with others in their societies. The importance of culture to campaign communication is therefore apparent.”

But of course there was still a huge mental blockage in terms of approach despite knowing that I was heading into the direction of intercultural dialogues. My main struggle was also how do I create something with the aim to accommodate all different cultural contexts, universally, to have a meaningful meaningful exchange? It is tough to even think of things which could bring different people together. Some exploration:

Approaches

• Playing with the roots and fundamentals of languages (main function is to communicate across time and space): Everyone invited to draw their own interpretation of something (eg. water) or contribute to it
  • Paralleling to the creation of pictographic Chinese characters
  • Everyone has their own visual interpretation and perception of the world around them (ie. may be due to their cultural background, etc)
  • But they are in fact all the perceiving the same thing
  • Eventually being standardised to make up a collective logographic written language – finding a common ground
    • Stemmed from the need to transcend modern day languages which are strongly related to cultural differences – using relatively universally understood visuals of logos/icons instead – if there’s a need for intercultural dialogues (impossible to include ALL languages)
    • Artist reference: Xu Bing
• Folklores and cultural narratives: the shared and unique ones
  • Could invite people to fill in with the languages they want – participatory design + people could volunteer to translate into English to help each other understand – crowdsourcing
  • Highlight the differences and similarities in the stories (finding a common ground while retaining our own uniqueness)
• Promoting interactions
  • People invited to pick the drawing they like the best, and learn the stories attached to each of them
  • Pass down the story to another person

Eventually, I was settled on the facilitation of conversations with different conversation topics. I was still groping around in the dark with the deliverables along the way, though.

   

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Execution

First started off with creating brand identity, and playing with the motifs as I went along.

And then the website first and foremost as it is something I was sure I’ll have as my deliverable ultimately.

trying out styles of illustration

 

The style of the text used for the illustration and the logo were edited to match each other.

Also, after testing the water with the first set of questions I had with a smaller, controlled group of people – in the last few weeks, I then had a crisis with my project. A good number of people gave pretty meaningless responses. It wasn’t like I didn’t expect and foresee this problem, but somehow I realised I might not have thought about my project as well as I hope I did – I wished I could revamp my approaches but I was already stuck a few times. I cut off the responses then, even after trying to revamp my questions and getting stuck. After that, I decided to work on the proof of concept with whatever I have.

• V_1.0
  1. Do you think you know enough about other cultures (of the four races and new immigrants) in Singapore?
  2. What are your thoughts? (v.1)
  3. What is your name? (if available, include variation in native language)
  4. Do you know what your name means? Is there a story behind why you were given it? How do you think it reflects yourself and your identity?
  5. What kind of questions and issues have you encountered with other people (especially with people of a different culture or nationality in Singapore) regarding your names?
  6. What is something about your name (related to your cultures) which you would wish you could let them know?
  7. What do you know about the names from other cultures?
  8. Curious questions you might have about other cultures in Singapore or new immigrants (can be about names particularly or not).

• V_2.0
  1. Do you think you know enough about other cultures (of the four races and new immigrants) in Singapore?
  2. Do you think it’s important to learn more about other cultures? Why or why not?
  3. What is your name? (if available, include variation in native language)
  4. Do you know the meaning of your name? (Especially their cultural links?) Do you think it has any relationship with your cultural identity?
  5. What kind of experiences or issues have you encountered with other people (especially with people of a different cultures or nationalities in Singapore) regarding your name(s)? Or are there any of your personal experiences/stories with your name?
  6. What is something about your name (especially related to your cultural identity) do you wish you could let them know?
  7. What do you know about the names from the cultures in Singapore (your own and others, which you might have heard from your friends)?
  8. Curious questions or insights/thoughts you might have about your own or other cultures in Singapore or new immigrants (can be about names in particular or not).
  9. Any other comments on the topic of Singapore and culture?

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I used Google Sketchup to create the visualisation of the exhibition space.

PERSONAL REFLECTION

This is going to be an extremely honest reflection.

I really valued the project’s openness, and emphasis on the ‘why’ of our design. I learnt a lot from that alone. And really appreciate the devotion into research and conceptualisation, enforcing the meaning of what we are doing – because it’s what I believe in too.

Through the project, I *was* glad I tried out things I never did before like – Wix, Google Sketchup, and finally getting to illustrate more for a project.

But, ultimately at the end of the day, I think I still have a long way to go. Very long. Things are still falling short from my own expectations. I think I still didn’t push myself enough. To think about it, I haven’t really fully utilised my research, or maybe I have yet to use them well. And at the end of the day, I find myself still asking why I did what I did, and is there a point in it. This is in terms of both concept and execution – I’m not the proudest of it, not the happiest about what I’ve done.

So, in fact, beyond learning about the techniques etc, the class made me think a lot more than that, about my role as a designer. I think that I do think too much, but I’m still trying to find myself while trying to strike a balance between that and the purpose of design – to serve an audience. This is the second time we’re designing a whole system of deliverable – I think we’re just getting started – so I’m still finding out what I really want to do, and what I can to contribute to the world as a designer or whatever it takes.

I hope that in the next VC class, I would be able to push myself further, closer to what I would be content with.

Nevertheless, it was still a fruitful class. And I’m grateful for the support of Nanci and the class for the support and the wonderful semester together. 🙂