Brainwaves, Robots and the Flying Bicycle is a melding of art and technology, where the artificial constructs of art and science are brought down, taken apart and played with to create new possibilities of expression. Through a range of media, three up and coming artists – Susan Olij, Shih Yun Yeo and Rachel Law – bring a range of experimental works that defy traditional constraints of what it is to create art and to that offer a brief glimpse of illumination on a truth before it fades away.
This group exhibition offers different perspectives to the concept of Humanity, Art and Machine. Susan’s layered images of nebulous forms explores the inner workings of mind and spirit with a central motif of brainwaves and life forms inspiring her work while Shih-Yun’s utilizes non-traditional tools such as robots and remote control cars to create spontaneous paintings of unparalleled freedom and honesty. Rachel’s Flying Bicycle installation uses modern microcontrollers and sensors to create an experience of Sublime flight, a child’s daydream come to life.
Presented as a work-in-progress, the show is both playful and introspective with questions of art, science and humanity. The informal unmounted hanging, studio atmosphere and experimental nature of the work allow them to experience the exhibition as an ongoing conversation between the artists, the works and themselves.
Join Artitute this 21st April, 7pm at Instinc Gallery@Soho2 for the opening of Brainwave, Robots and the Flying Bicycle.
A Blogger’s Guide: Busting Classical Music Myths, a preview of A Musical Chemistry
A shop house in a colourful district, bare light bulbs and basement den furniture — it was not your typical Western Classical music setting. Then again, it was not a typical Western Classical music event. There were bloggers, musicians and …… (orchestral drum roll) a Chemistry company!
Mrs Olive Kan, the SNYO Manager, described to us about the most recent part of the program in Italy, where 3 lucky young flautists Jasper, Rachel and Sijing were mentored by a violin master, amongst other cultural immersion activities. From their skilled performance that day, which included a work with some jazz influence, you would not have guessed they look like typical youths in Singapore.
Music veteran and educator Mr John Sharpley shared with us that one of the composers which they performed, included Indonesian traditional gamelan influences in his other works, long before world music became popular. John himself arranged some music for the R.E.M. rock band!
And how can we miss SNYO yummilicious heart throb, Music Director Darrell Ang at the event. He told us that he too like other youths, was in a school orchestra which nurtured his talent to be a successful conductor. A dream he had about becoming an orchestra conductor led him to decide to study music in Russia. He disclosed publicly for the first time in public that his parents had to sell their home, he had to work odd jobs and he had to sell whatever he could of his possessions for that to happen.
At the event, we were coaxed to play a musical game with John. Surprisingly, the bloggers were able to correctly guess the answers to questions thrown at us even though they had little exposure to Western Classical music! Well, thanks to the help of technology where one clever participant was smart to do an Internet search with his mobile phone for the composer who had 20 children. Can you can who is this famous composer? Answer this question and you stand to win a pair of free tickets to the concert on the 21st April. (See details below)
Young flautists Jasper, Rachel and Sijing
Two young bloggers whom I spoke to were becoming fast friends even though it was the first time they met that day. Between plotting to appear together some day, dressed like their favourite pop idol Lady Gaga, they earnestly agreed to attend the upcoming Lanxess – SNYO concert, aptly named A Musical Chemistry. So who says Classical Music is for the old fuddy duddy?
Promotion!
Not to let our Artitute readers go off empty handed, we are giving away 10 pairs of free tickets to catch this musical chemistry on Thursday (21st April)! Email Artitute with your Full Name (as shown in your IC or Passport) and your IC or Passport Number, with the subject header “I love Musical Chemistry’s free tickets, please” and your answer to who is the composer who had 20 children! 10 lucky folks will receive an email from Artitute by the 20th April on details on how to collect your tickets.
‘My We’, by Filipino artist Louie Cordero is inspired by the recent spate of violence and occasional murder of people failing to accurate sing Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ in Filipino karaoke bars. The installation comprises four cast figures and an all in one karaoke machine that features on repeat, the words to the sinatra classic superimposed on video and tabloid headlines.
You know how some people love watching movies like Saw, or dramas like Criminal Minds, NCIS and CSI where you sometimes catch glimpses of really gruesome human mutilation? Gore is something that I find hard to figure out. It is gruesome and yet people are still compelled to look at it.
Fortunately for someone like me, who cannot take gore, the psychedelic pop colored insides spilling out of these bodies lessened the revulsion and kind of made it appealing to look at.
Filipino artist Louie Cordero’s impaled sculptures seems to have captured that fascination people have with gore, but at the same time presenting it in a way that is easy to stomach as well as addressing the issues that led to it.
I am not sure if at this time it would be too weird to share with you the fact that these figures resemble the artist himself.
Louie Cordero offers an idiosyncratic take on the violence that happened and human kind’s often ignorant way of isolating ourselves from it. Underlying the fabric of society in the Philippines today where remnants of post colonialism and the gap between the priviledged and the poor still exist.
By no means be mistaken that he trying to trivialize violence, rather he seeks to capture our interest and filter it towards more pressing issues- like the relationships between beauty and gore, control and overindulgence and overwhelm and ignorance.
More about the Artist
Louie Cordero has always been an artist that is very responsive to the ‘current’ state of his surroundings, stemming from a country with a long history of violent colonialism. His work consistently reflects the Filipino syncretism of indigenous traditions, Spanish Catholicism and the influence of popular American culture. Originally a comic artist his work first came to light in the his comic fanzine ‘nardong tae’.
It chronicles the story of a moustached boy named bornek who is hit by alien poo coming from the sky. An extraterrestrial being who had excreted all manner of excretions and hurled them at the earth in the form of a comet. Borek ends up being bonded with the feces and tries to lead a normal life.
He eventually destroys his university after succumbing to the anger as a result of being ostracized and becoming the butt of everyone’s jokes. This act earns him the label ‘Enemy no. 1.
The comic was first published in 2003 by abang guard productions and Bornek was released as a limited edition vinyl figure.
