:: Digital Photography & Imaging

It was quite a tiring experience to travel from one end of the exhibition at the Singapore Flyer to the other end at the Central Promontory Site near the Collyer Quay. I spent the whole afternoon at the exhibition. Although feeling very tired after the trip, I feel that the experience is worthwhile and very enriching. The art installations as well as the art pieces presented at the event are really marvelous and of a high standard.

I set off my tour at the Raffles City Shopping Centre, down to the Singapore flyer, then the Esplanade, and along the Esplanade Bridge, finally to the Central Promontory Site at the Collyer Quay. I came across various outdoor exhibitions such as the Fantasmas (Phantoms) by Isaac Montoya, where a single art piece can be view from two different viewpoints behind the red and blue filter, the appearing and disappearing ‘Fog’ by Fujiko Nakaya, ‘Daing’, the fleet of bamboo pole with slippers, by Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan, ‘Manas’ by Ilya & Emilia Kabakov and many more. To my astonishment, some of the installations were so huge that it is almost impossible to be created without the help of machineries to build it. An example is the ‘Containart Pavilion’ by Shigeru Ban.

Below are some of the photos that I have taken during the tour around the exhibition.

(Fantasmas (Phantoms) by Isaac Montoya)

(Daing by Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan)

(Manas by Ilya & Emilia Kabakov)

Successful artwork: Location (6) by Hans Op de Beeck

I feel that the most successful exhibition for the event is Hans Op de Beeck’s art installation named Location (6). The artist presents his art installation by leading audience through a long corridor into an alternate-universe where everything is white in a lofty igloo-like dome that will then reveals the content of the work which is a small observatory for fictive panoramic vista of a imaginary desolate snowy modeled landscape bask in artificial fog and bright white lights. Efforts can be seen into making sure that everything stays white in this installation, as even the bedroom slippers they prepared for audience to enter is also white. Thus I feel that the art installation fully fulfilled the theme ‘wonder’ of the Singapore Biennale 2008. We can tell from the melancholic vision of Op de Beeck’s landscape that such scene is only available to the Europeans. Therefore when it appears in Singapore, a country that enjoys a tropical climate all year round, it is a scene that cannot naturally exist, that creates novelty in audience and a real treat for the eyes to gaze into the near-nothingness.

The installation not only allows the audience to experience the visual of winter atmosphere, but also to experience the feel in such condition and answer to the imagination of being in an igloo, thus emphasizing dislocation. The artist wants us to move between inside-looking out and outside-looking in, to be in spaces where not everything is in place, even when we are tricked into illusionistic fineries. With these, I feel that it clearly gives the audience a strong sense of wonder and answers to it when one looks at it in details.

Unsuccessful artwork: Wonder Wrap by Gary Carsley

I feel that the most unsuccessful exhibition is the Wonder Wrap by Australian artist Gary Carsley. His work is featured within the Pavilion in the form of functional tables and chairs decorated using veneers, which has floral prints from Little Guilin in Bukit Gombak and the Chinese Garden. From a distance, it looks interesting; raising the question as to why these chairs and tables are all standing in the middle of the room, but that is not the intention. The focus of the art installation is on the Draguerrotype laminates, which are digitally-edited photographs that are glued over chipwood to give the impression of a real timber. But the large open space at the Containment Pavilion seems to reduce the impact and makes it less engaging.

The theme of the Biennale is ‘Wonder’ but the intent of the installation seems somewhat confusing and messy to me and I can’t really relate it to the theme until near inspection. My first impression of the installation is that it would portray the theme ‘wonder’ strongly and anticipated that the chairs would somewhat do some wonders instead of just the imprints. To me, I feel that the layout does not seem to be in place and the intention of the artist is not transmitted successfully to the audience. Overall, it is a decent piece of art, except that the meaning behind it wasn’t as clear, and that begs the question whether does random arrangement of objects contribute significantly to the art installation? Also, the rationale behind how the different parts of the chair were selected is also not clear from the art installation.

On the whole, it was really an enriching experience as well as an eye-opener for me as this is my first time visiting such a grand event. This exercise gives me an opportunity to learn how to analyze the various artwork and view them in more details which somehow enlightened me in one way or another.

(Picture taken from National Geographic. Click on the image to view the higher resolution version)

This photo above shows a large glistening iceberg calved from the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland drifts through Disko Bay on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. It is taken by James Balog on a project to capture global warming in the act using 26 solar-powered cameras, taking time-lapse photographs of glaciers in the Atlantic Ocean. It will produce more than 300,000 photos over the course of two years to alter public perception of the global warming issue.

The above photo is just one of the photos to illustrate the effect of the rising temperature in the atmosphere. It clearly illustrates the realism of the situation by showing the melting of the iceberg gradually.

Aesthetically, I feel that the photographer has applied the rule of third successfully for the viewers to perceive the melting of the iceberg by the blazing sun due to depletion of the ozone layer. It also brings the focus of the 2 main objects (the sun and the iceberg) in the photo to the viewers.

In terms of the light quality, the light source for this photo comes from the natural source (i.e. the sun). Clear enough, the direction is from the top as it can be identified from the brightened up portion of the iceberg.

Focusing on the details of the iceberg, you would be able to feel the rough texture. Due to the fact that this is an iceberg, it automatically tells us that it has a hard texture as well. This kind of feeling is based on individual’s subjective experience which is outlined in the theory and aesthetics of photography.

Moving on to talk about the focus, I feel that the photo is in sharp focus as it clearly shows the outline and details of the iceberg. The photo gives me a cool feeling as majority of the colours portray in the photo are cool colours except for the emphasis of the scorching sun which brings out the main idea of global warming in the Atlantic Ocean.

As for the point of view in this photograph, it is a straight shot from far, but due to the gigantic size of the iceberg, it adds on perspective effect to the photo, which will give viewers a feeling that it is shot from a low angle.

I feel that the photographer has chosen to include only the sun and one gigantic iceberg (i.e. the Jakobshavn Glacier) and choose to exclude other smaller icebergs is because of the emphasis of one particular iceberg is stronger than a mass amount of smaller disconnected icebergs. By doing so, it would draw a stronger climactic attention to the viewers.

Overall, I feel that this is an excellent piece of work as the photographer considers all element of aesthetic to further elaborate the seriousness of the situation, and to bring across the message to the whole world to prevent further harm to the atmosphere.