“Singapore’s founding father thought air conditioning was the secret to his country’s success”  – Vox 

As an ongoing theme of my practice, I’ve always been curious about alternative spaces, and human agency towards these spaces. Somehow, I’ve find myself trying to reconcile with various national policies and history that has happened while being present in these spaces.

Most recently, I’m trying to capture a series of images involving Air Con as a representation of our city’s obsession with efficiency.  As quoted from our Ah Gong, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew,  “This (aircon) was key to public efficiency.”.Yvan Cohen/LightRocket via Getty Images
Original Image for Assignment 2
Taken by: Clara Lim
Shot on: Sony A6000

First Attempts/Experiments.
I wasn’t so happy with  how I’ve edit (or the lack of my ability) to properly mask the images.

After getting a refresher on the notes, I managed to neaten up my mask layers a little bit (the haphazard ones on the left are honestly before I got comfortable with the mask options)

A couple more experimenting on different masked areas and using the curves.

At the end of much attempts, I decided to bump up the flat-ness of the Aircon masking area and juxtapose with a very eccentric colour spectrum for the surroundings. The “Fines” on the walls are also featured in unison with the Aircons. While at the left, it was important to leave the door flat as well as a message to convey our gateways to these subconscious, fleeting spaces that pretty much make up our society today.

Vibrant city, at what costs? Ideally, i would really wish for this to be printed in riso like the examples from Anna Lomax.

We’ll see how it goes!

Links to the psd files:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cypBb63v-kOClS8sQf4D32ovqcf7_98g/view?usp=sharing