Hello folks. This is the super-long update on recent going-ons: CUBE, HAO, Community Museum Project, Really AR, Generi-City, Reclaimland and other lovely digressions which I have encountered recently.

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CUBEOpen

My work had been selected for the CUBE Open 2010 but sadly it was logistically impossible to bring my work to Manchester on such short notice. Nevertheless I am now working on a portable version of my reactable! From now onwards, where ever appropriate or feasible, portability shall be a consideration in all subsequent projects.

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HAO

Last week I attended HAO, a four-day summit involving curators, art managers, and artists from Singapore and the region, organised by Audrey Wong and Khairuddin Hori and curated by Villains (well done you guys! it was one of the best things I have ever been to).









Amongst numerous other things (forgive me if I don't list every single thing down here), Mikal Telle shared with us his experience running Telle Records in Bergen and how he brought together musicians and artists (a rollercoaster story from bankruptcy to banksy! remarkable!), Margaret Chan regaled us with her research and insights on Tangki practice in the region (ritual, performance, and bicycle handles and other modern apparatus through the cheek?), Audrey Wong brought us to see her mother's Chinese Opera Teahouse on South Bridge Road (Cantonese Opera Karaoke!), and Zaki Razak also orchestrated/mediated a rather interesting dialogue-as-performance on the Lasalle Bridge (like a bridge over troubled waters?). Khairuddin Hori from SAM also took a gander at describing a "brief history of singapore contemporary art", which was pretty accurate and something which I think ought to be basic knowledge or incorporated into every single damn art school in Singapore. Everyone making art in Singapore should at least first understand the context in which art is created in Singapore even if they don't want to make work that fits into any particular tradition of the creation of art. I'm at the point where I think that the most sad thing for an artist is to make work which is completely universal and generic.

Community Museum Project

Which brings me to one of the things I saw there that completely blew me away. Howard Chen's presentation on his Community Museum Project - sheer genius. The "Street as Museum" and "Museum of Complaints" shares some commonalities with my own work, but Community Museum Project executes it so brilliantly and goes one step further by working closely with the communities and NGOs to effect changes/improvements after using their projects to uncover insights or hidden knowledge about the places.


From Community Museum Project: "Street as Museum".
Photo from Community Museum Project site.

This is constructive action, people! I want to be making works like that. Like what Raoul Vaneigem says, "people who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth." I think I would have more respect for people who go into "Opposition politics" in Singapore if they spent less time casting aspersions on PAP or inventing puerile nicknames for hot-button issues or newsmakers, and more time putting their money where their mouth is: finding out what is the real problem, and fixing these issues.

Everyone should go see the Community Museum Project site. Now.

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Syndicate - DJ Nobody & Nocando (@ HOME Club)



Anyway, HAO was so perfectly organised that it coincided with Syndicate. So we all went down to where DJ Nobody & Nocando (L.A) played, a good one for the hardcore hiphop fans who turned up that night. Also saw Kiat, Max Lane and Darren Dubwise on the decks during the night, until ridiculous o'clock...

Circuitry, Crying Catz (@ Straits Records)



On the last night of HAO I also saw two acts play outside Straits Records - Circuitry and Crying Catz. Circuitry did an intense, punishing noise performance like the last time I saw them at Blackhole. As for Crying Catz, he makes this compellingly danceable combination of all the lovely ravey/dubby sounds. Todd-Edwards-cut-up-&-re-pitched vocals meets Zomby's-arcade-game-influenced jungle all mashed up with big wobbly bass. The metal screams make it even better! Strangely, I initially mis-remembered Crying Catz as Crazy Catz, which meant I unintentionally led me to many cat pictures and cat videos on the internet before I found the real Crying Catz. "Crying" makes more sense though, like that quote that i always remember from dj /rupture, of the "aestheticized cry" of auto-tune. But I digress...

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Really AR

Last month I was invited by re:act to share my work at "Really AR 5". It ran alongside the opening of Generi-city, a photographic exhibition comparing "generic spaces" in Singapore and London. This was part of the ArchiFest 2010 fringe, and it featured photographs by Singaporean architects and architectural students/writers based in London. I forgot to write about it then, so here is a somewhat belated outpouring about that event. Johnny Gao & Pan Yichen spoke about the Generi-city project, Justin Zhuang shared with us his Reclaimland.sg project, and the eminent architect William Lim gave a talk about Singlish, proving his prowess as a nimble polymath (but maybe not so convincing as a Singlish speaker). For those who are unfamiliar with his work, he is responsible for well-loved buildings such as People's Park and Golden Mile, and he also worked on the conservation of Central Market (with the Annexe behind it) and its development into a cultural, shopping food and entertainment area.

Generi-city

The Generi-city project was "a series of conversations between six pairs of architects and architecture students", culminating in a series of images selected to fit broad categories such as "Transit, Eating, Leisure, Retail, Living and Occupational". A curious choice of categorization, I thought. Even with fairly good knowledge of both cities, sometimes I could not always immediately discern the usage of the space from just looking at the photograph.




Generi-city:
Photos of opening by Olivia Kwok

I find it incidental that this shot involves the two images which stood out the most for me. The small temple dwarfed by a new carpark is certainly one of the more compelling shots, especially when framed next to a picture of Shoreditch. I was excited to see a street that I recognised but hadn't visited in a long while, but the punctum for me in that shot was not what was in it, but what was not (ie: my not living in that city or walking down that exact street every single day anymore). If there is one road I remember in London, it has to be the path that a pedestrian has to take from Brick Lane to get to the bus stop on Shoreditch High St next to Tescos. This is of course, a memory that is special only to me.



But would the images have any meaning or impact on people who hadn't been to both cities before? How would one know the "use" of a space if one had not personally attempted to conduct any activities in that space before? For example, I am frequently confused about the boundaries of the proper prescribed "eating zone", like for example when I'm grabbing a small quick bite at one of those massive food halls in ION or Tangs after my Japanese classes. But couldn't anywhere be an "eating spot"? This would be simply a matter of taste, wouldn't it, in more ways than one; or would the act of eating in an unusual/unexpected place be viewed as a tasteless act by others? What about classifying spaces by number of people who depend on the building's existence, or the number of people interact with it, or how open/confined the space is?

I suppose their point was that the generic city is much more malleable - Singapore will custom-build its buildings to fit the needs of businesses; meaning that we can construct all sorts of big new spaces to specs and then stuff them full of things - whereas a place like London may have less room for maneuvering if it is to keep in the "spirit" of a grand old city; so people must retrofit old buildings or build conservatively in order to pander to urban planning approvals. A neat observation, but where then does it leads us from here? What does all this mean for the Generic (but actually flexible) city, and the Unique (but actually tidy) city? This seems to raise more questions than to provide any understanding on the issue; perhaps Johnny and team would like to explain more or expand more on this when they publish a more complete set of writing on this?

Reclaimland


Reclaimland.sg: Street barber Lee Yoon Tong
Photo by Sam Kang Li

Justin Zhuang also shared his work at Really Ar and I really loved the project he did with three other journalism students from NTU's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. They trace a number of cases in which people in the community have reclaimed land for their own usage in Singapore. From stories about community-built skateparks, citizen gardens under HBD flats, hidden kampung farms near the KTM rail tracks, to the old uncle who conducts his barber business behind the shophouses in Telok Ayer, they have been investigating these issues from a journalistic viewpoint, along with brilliant photo documentation. To read more, visit the Reclaimland site at http://reclaimland.sg. Justin also writes some really interesting stuff about design at his own site, http://justrambling.sg.

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I think I have to stop now. How did this post get so ridiculously long...

Here is a list of all the links mentioned above. ENJOY!
Community Museum Project
Reclaimland.sg
Generi-city
reallyarchitecture

Last week I built a new site to collate links about projects which interest me:

BUILD! is a grid-style weblog about maps, art, architecture, non-places, urbanism, psychogeography, metaverses, transportation, technology, sound art, augmented reality, data visualisations, and other things which I love! This is a visual library of links to inspire one to build more things.

But then of course, I really must finish uploading the memories for Here the River Lies FIRST! I promise I will get on that before the end of November! I'm trying to get some other projects off the ground at the moment too!

Hello world! I'm still alive! I've been a bit of a hermit lately, working on new projects, but tomorrow I will be out in the world again - probably heading down to Barcamp first), and later in the evening I'll be sharing my work at Really AR?

Really Ar? is a sharing session where invited creatives and academics share their projects that explores various facets of the built environment. This edition of Really Ar? presents 5 exciting projects that explores the question of identity and community in our landscape through the lenses of diverse disciplines such as film, sociology, architecture, illustration and graphic design, which will conclude with a Question and Answer segment on the different perspectives that defines Our Singapore?

This Really AR? session is held in conjunction with the opening party of the 'Uniquely Singapore – Distinctively London: a GENERICITY project' exhibition at Illuma.

Featuring Debbie Ding, Justin Zhuang, Johnny Gao and Pan Yichen, and the eminent William S.W Lim!

Date: 09 October 2010
Time: 6.30pm - 9pm
Location: Illuma Bugis, Filmgarde, Level 5
201 Victoria Street

Session is moderated by Tan Szue Hann.

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In other news, here are links to some other interviews I did last month:

Interview with Rajinder Singh
Interview with Superyouth

And thanks so much to Hazel & Gilles for asking me down to Lasalle to speak last week! I had a great time talking with the lovely and very lively folks from fine art there. We had a discussion about natural geographical features and one of the girls who came to my talk noted that Singapore doesn't have a culture of going out and appreciating nature since there is very little of it which is not man-made. Nobody goes "rambling" here, because a garden city is something that is immaculately pruned by human hands - a completely different experience compared to the rolling fields of say, the Cotswolds.

Gilles also mentioned that it is not that Singapore is flat by nature, but rather that reclamation and the flattening of Singapore's natural features (so it could be built on) was something that had been conducted from the very beginning, once the British arrived. Must investigate this further!

Goodbye Substation Gallery! Thanks once again to all those who made my first solo exhibition possible and gave me so much help and support with this - The Substation, my parents, Effendy, Annabelle, Tania, Asylum, Emily & Chris and the rest of the team at Substation, Dominic, Hongda, KK, Steve Black, Lu Jia, Ah Fu, and all my colleagues at Redworks. Thanks must also go to everyone who gave me invaluable advice along the way - Martin, Andreas, Vladimir, Yanying & Bin! And thanks to my gallery sitters for their patience in monitoring the equipiment and helping to set up the somewhat complicated map table every single morning - Vicknes, Nell, and Marc.

\\ is now packed off and rolled up, hopefully to find another venue at which to exhibit again in the near future! Thank you to all who came down to see it! If you've left memories by the riverside, be sure to check back in a few days to see if your card is online at psychogeography.sg/river



Two days ago, one of my fan blades spontaneously broke apart after working tirelessly for almost a full month. The thing about computer fans is that if one blade breaks then the fan is rendered completely useless as a missing blade will cause too much vibration. So I had to amputate it. Poor thing. It does take a heavy toll on all the equipment...



I'll be updating the FULL documentation of all the memories in the next day or so, along with more on the technical setup while its still fresh in my mind! I will be drawing up some models of my setup on sketchup, which I am trying to learn to use properly for once. It is good to be working from home once again.

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on a geeky sidenote: after spending so much time at Substation,
I became Mayor of Substation on Foursquare....
come and oust me if you dare!

Yesterday Jiekai and his crew popped by to film some things at the gallery, including Debbie rambling on about Singapore River - he's working on a project about Singapore's prehistory. We were talking IP rights where historical material/maps are concerned, and he mentioned a book that sounded pretty interesting: The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History. I want to read that!

Later in the evening, I also recorded a video of some of my ex-colleagues playing with the table. Ridz, Leeyen, Jess and Michele were amongst the first people whom I asked to draw their impressions of the river - more than a year ago. Inbetween working intensively on all those flash banners and microsites, I decided to start collecting sketches from people around me. Some of my renderings were based on their sketches, so it was really interesting to see their responses to it!

\\ from Debbie Ding on Vimeo.

One full month of operating has taken its toll on the poor ancient Macbook inside, which was already slow to begin with, and now suffering a lag of a few seconds. Even Marc (who has been gallery sitting for me recently) has begun to recognise its quirks, like its habit of shutting down suddenly when its too hot. But at least it is still running!

LAST THREE DAYS!

《新加坡河: 人们心中的断辰线》
xin jia po he: ren men xin zong de duan chen xian



This is the chinese translation of my exhibition title. I gave a short talk about my work at a session called "Re-inhabiting the City" recently and the audience turned out to be more chinese-speaking than initially expected. Siew Ching and others helped to provide a running chinese translation for the session and this was their translation of the title!

I am also thinking that "心理地理学" might be an appropriate translation for "psychogeography". Would any superior chinese speakers like to comment on this!

Last night I spent a considerable number of hours wrestling with Drupal, Views, Location, Gmaps, and the confounding CCK. I dont think I fully understand Drupal's taxonomy yet, so maybe that's why its still a struggle to edit Drupal. And so this morning I woke up early, deleted Drupal off my server, installed Wordpress and WP Geo - AND GOT EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED UP AND RUNNING IN LITERALLY HALF AN HOUR. With simply Wordpress and WP Geo!

Nuff said.

ITS UP AND I'M READY TO DOCUMENT IT ALL!

http://psychogeography.sg/river

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Site building

I'm no web developer, but a peculiar thing happened again which I don't really understand. Each time I create a new database, it seems to suggest to me that the hostname would naturally be that string of numbers that appears behind it - in this case, the 209 number. In fact, the EVIL, evil MySQL Manager even says that its the Hostname.



But it is not! I actually have to go into phpMyAdmin to find out the real server hostname, which in this case is actually a 216 number as reflected on top. The last time I installed Drupal, I vaguely recall the exact same thing happening? WHY? WHAT IS THAT FIRST MYSTERIOUS NUMBER FOR THEN?



NON COMPRENDRE. Can anyone explain this?

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psychogeography.sg/river was built with:
Wordpress 3.0
WP Geo Plugin
Foliogrid Template

Flipbook Catalogue

for \\ : The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline

Featuring an essay by Tania De Rozario
Designed by Asylum
Other Writing by Debbie Ding

Available at $16 from The Substation

Flipbook images depict the historical changes in the Singapore River from 1819 to present day, and also projects it into the future, into an imaginary flatline.

THE SHAPE OF THE SINGAPORE RIVER

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september

a series of 20 illustrations of the map of the singapore river, based on collected sketches made by people and what they think the shape of the Singapore River looks like, without making reference to anything else.

HERE THE RIVER LIES

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september

a psychogeographical game in which visitors can leave both real and imagined/mythic memories on locations by the riverside - a 1.5metre x 3.75metre handdrawn map of the Singapore River (with an isometric projection) and its surroundings - where visitors can also indicate which memories they collectively believe in, with small stickers. see what memories lie by the river, or add your own to the map!



after opening night



map of the river



memory cards



a bit like skyscrapers



in the gallery



"LKY Sighting"



"I BECAME A GOD" (at St Andrews Cathedral)



"Monster Creeper taking over the world one creep at a time"



"A Memory of Grandfather"



"She wouldn't come, but..."



"UFO LANDING" (mmm yes, that thing which landed opposite funan)

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Opening Night, 2 September 2010

Kevin Lim (Whattheart) took some great photos on opening night.
Click on the image above to see more images from his flickr set.
Thanks for sharing these pictures, Kevin!

interactive map table installation

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september
speculating on the shape of the singapore river and city around it
come on down and see it!

equipment used:
15" macbook pro on opening night/13.3" macbook on all other exhibition days
modified ps3 eye camera with m12 mount, 3.6mm lens, 850nm IR filter (from peauproductions)
panasonic PJ503D viewsonic projector
aluminium profiles for projector mount
two mirrors (85cm x 85cm, 40cm x 30cm)
two surveillance camera infrared lights (850nm)
wooden box (80cm x 100cm x 100cm)

software:
reactivision
udp flashlc bridge
flash (coded up in flash builder, as3)
safari + saft (fullscreen mode)

concept, design, and flash programming by debbie ding
hardware construction and mounting by dominic ho and zhuo hongda

BUILT WITHIN TWO MONTHS FTW

if anyone else is interested in this sort of interactive tables, i would love to find other collaborators (in and around singapore) who would like to build other interactive/touch table setups, especially with music and sound.

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PS: better quality video coming soon

What a great address this Google "Street View" spot has...

One small thing I noticed recently was that Google Street View also includes the underground expressway tunnels as well. Even the ones that go under the Singapore River. So, that qualifies as a street too?

today me and dominic succeeded in approximately aligning the camera/projection/fiducial setup with the visual response in my flex swf. i've switched to using CS5 Flash Builder because I eventually want to publish it as an Air app. so far its been sweet using reactivision with TUIO AS3 library.

we are using a 3.6mm lens for the PS3 Eye and the projector is at a resolution of 1024 x 768 x 96hertz. apparently hertz refers to the refresh rate and when i set it higher than 120 hertz it says out of range. this is all gobbledygook to me too but what i know is that when i stare at the back of the projector and shake my head (oh the migraine!), for a split second i see the light dividing itself into bright bands of red, green, and blue...

The View from Cavenagh Bridge

Yesterday Keshav and Jared kindly helped me shoot a timelapse of the River, which we are going to edit down into a small introductory video for the exhibition. Coincidentally, in trying to find the words to articulate the tone I wanted to go for, I discovered the "Blue Hour". Apparently the French have already thought of a word for it (ah! they think of everything!) - with the expression "l'heure bleue", referring to the blue part of twilight, between darkness and daylight.

I've seen the phrase "Blue Hour" thrown around in photography forums such as like skyscrapercity, but bizarrely, for quite some time I always thought it was some internationally francised club that happened to set up shop at locations with magnificient aerial views of different urban cities. I was led to this mistaken conclusion because of the odd way in which it is sometimes spoken about - as if the Blue Hour is actually a physical space and not a time of day.

"Yeah, I was there at the Blue Hour yesterday, it was really cool."



my "blue hour" moodboard

a. ferris wheel scene, chris yeo's in the house of straw, 2010
b. photo i took at dawn, 2007
c. gaspar noe's enter the void, 2009

Dominic and Edward have been helping me with the projector mounts and testing the setup for the table. while studying mechanical engineering, Edward previously built other things with aluminum profiles, so he recommended using these aluminum bits to build the mount instead of wood (as it would help conduct the heat away from the projector better!)

despite its complex appearance, (well, to construction noobs like me) it's actually a rather simple and modular system to build with, along with other parts (gussets, glass/mirror mounts, hinges, etc). plus it has the benefit of being lightweight and easily adjustable for height/length...



one thing is that you MUST remember to do in advance is to: TAPPING THE SCREWS. and what is this mystical tapping business? this refers to the process of creating a thread for the screw to go into. according to Edward you can do it by hand, but of course it is always ideal if you can just get the supplier to thread it on the spot. saves you from the heart attack of suddenly having to google for hardware stores in the city area...

I downloaded the TUIO AS3 Library, ran the demo file for fiducials successfully, and checked it with a trace. ClassID is the fiducial marker number, SessionID is the Movieclip instance number. x and y are the onscreen coordinates. a is the rotation. capital-letter X Y A refer to the velocity at which the variables have changed.





Current setup:
+ TUIO AS3 Library with LCConnector
+ UDP FlashLC Bridge
+ reacTIVision
+ In-built Macbook Pro iSight

while looking for card stands, i saw a muji-lego collaboration involving a special muji hole puncher and lego bricks, used to make little toy paper characters.



you can make the same type of card stand with any 5mm hole puncher - in my case i am using an "Eyelet Punch PU-101" - a standard eyelet/hole puncher used mostly with rivets (bought a long time ago from Popular). i tested out a homemade version with some of dominic's lego bricks. it works just as expected, but i may or may not use this method of a cardstand for the "psychogeographical game" in the end...

the bricks are incidentally "Red & White & WOW!" yesterday i watched the National Day Parade while sketching the canvas. as i was standing in the sketch area which represented the bay, NDP telecast showed a panoramic shot of the fireworks lighting up the entire bay area.



also in the process of hunting for stray lego bricks, i realised we had given away all my lego but i did find my TOMY toy parts instead. here is an instant tableaux from the box of NATIVE AMERICAN CHEMICAL DISASTER PLAYSET: