This week, we took a trip to Art Science Museum for the Another World is Possible exhibition. Coming off from the recent RPO submission, we needed to immerse ourselves back into the creative world and be inspired by the experiences that other well known designers and artists has created for us to get back in the making mood.
To help guide our understanding of the exhibition, Andreas shared with us 5 guiding questions to help our reflection process.
The exhibition is curated with projects that reimagines the future, presented in a manner which counters the common portrayals of a dystopian future by offering a more hopeful perspective. It tells the story of how the future will look, mediated with technology but yet embraces the heritage and culture that the projects are designed for. The project titled "People of the Rift" by Osborne Macharia is one example, where it explores how African beadwork merges with futuristic aesthetics to craft a new form of cultural expression.
People of the Rift - Culture x Futurism
Before I continue with the 5 questions, I got to stop to share my thoughts son People of the Rift because its one of my top favourite projects in this exhibition.
Firstly, I love the concept that is grounded upon, which is this speculative and alternate world where men and women from African culture grow to be powerful figures (I.E Seers, Guardians), but still are deeply connected to their African heritage. This project's Futurism is not about fancy technology, but more about how the African people advance in their capabilities, as seen from their detailed and advance beadworks. It is this slight tweak in focus in their approach towards Futurism and the respect towards African culture that really makes me love this project so much. Secondly, as a avid photography fan I love the job that Osborne has done. The lighting, direction of poses and styling is near pefect. The lower angle shot amplifies their perceived aura and the editing just makes everything so clean and sharp. There is this sense of awe and even fear when you look at these images!
This project demonstrated to me that work grounded in cultural context can create deep meaning for both audiences and the communities being represented. I also observed the amount of research involved to ensure that the portrayal of African tapestry and beadwork remained authentic, which highlighted the importance of truly understanding one’s subject and target audience. This reminds me that in my own design practice, drawing from cultural contexts can be a powerful and meaningful approach, but it must always be done with adequate research, sensitivity, and respect.
The first thing I noticed was the choice to include works from artists/designers from different disciplines (I.E Film, Fashion, Game Design). I feel that this was done to not only allow the exhibitons to be catered towards a larger target audience, but also to show different perspectives and approaches of how people approach futurism. The projects also ranges across different cultures and topics. Some projects talk about South East Asian while some discusses about how we combat the climate crisis. It really feels like a expansive take on how the future will look like across the board.
My peers playing BARC.
Oops looks like I jumped the gun when I talked about People of the Rift, but another project that I really liked was BARC, a project that I feel is a great example of a Multisensory Interface. BARC is a 4 player competitive arcade-shooter like game where instead of guns, participants use barcode scanners and roleplay as warehouse assistants. Other than "Shooting" at on screen objectives, they must also scan physical receipts that are printed in real time, making it a exciting rush to clear the game.
I think that the whole experiece had a solid and cohesive narrative - a warehouse worker rushing to get their job done, juggling between different tasks of stocking drones and scanning physical receipts. The design interventions also stay cohesive with the narrative, using barcode scanners as guns and printed receipts as another manner of interaction. This example highlights to me the positives of aligning design interventions with the context that it is grounded in. This helps with audience engagement and also their intuitive understanding of the experience.
Entrance to Exhibition
This Future Island City
Totem for Eagles - Totems of Another World
We are Authors of the End
People of the Rift
Other than the learning points I mentioned above and looking at the exhibition as a whole, I would say that the biggest learning point is about the importance of world-building (creating a narrative). Having a strong narrative helps audiences to have a easier time understanding the experiences, as they can relate to its social-cultural references. Having a strong story is not enough, the artwork/design must also align with the context that it is grounded on to make sense and provide value (similiar to how People of the Rift does it).
In this exhibition, I noticed that the future is portrayed very differently from sci-fi movies (typically dystopian, robots taking over the world etc). The future portrayal here seems hopeful, powerful and intriguing. For example, the exhibition titled "This Future Island City" explores the future architectures that can help Singapore prosper. There was a particular project within this exhibition called "Totem of Another World", which explores "Totems" that serves as a resting place for native flying species in Singapore, such as Eagles and Birds. While we might think technology might make it less habitable for the wild life, this project counters it by creating futuristic architectures that helps protect their wellbeing.