Aisya Rila is a year four Visual Communication student at Nanyang Technological University, Art, Design & Media. With a diploma in Film, Sound and video, her interests include a mixture of media and design. “I love video editing to the core, and I wish to explore into multi-disciplinary art using interactivity as a tool of communication.”

HI:SS (Hearing Images, Seeing Sounds is a real-time audio-visual installation exploring the expression of musical structures and translates them into compelling visuals. “This is my graduation project, and it aims to encourage the viewers to consider the possibility of composing with visual aesthetic rather than the customary aural one. By combining visual and musical thinking through aesthetics and tools of generative art, new improbable relationships are explored and possibilities are opened for variable audiovisual collective experiences.”

Zihan Loo received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2011, and did a BFA at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Zihan started out working in theatre, and discovered moving image as a medium only in 2005, during his first year at NTU. The moving image seemed like a medium which was a perfect amalgamation of all his interests in performance, movement, visual design and lighting.

“My work is anchored in the moving image and extends to performance and mixed-media installations. I deploy these divergent mediums to address fundamental societal and artistic questions, such as the relationship between the artist and participant, the role of the “proper” and the still under-recognized pervasiveness of shame. A quiet lyricism and poetic rhythm couches my explorations of shame, sexual content and the dangers and pleasures of self-exposure. In submitting to my own self-exposure, I propose my work as a gift to the viewer.”

Singapore’s only art walkabout, OH! Open House, visits Tiong Bahru on 18, 19, 25 and 26 February. This year’s event expects to take 1500 strangers on tour into the heart of Tiong Bahru. Fifteen artists have installed their artworks – spanning a range of sculpture, photography, video, installation, interactive media – in six real life homes in the conserved and postwar apartments.

The tour will be touching on some of the issues there like gentrification, the clash of old and new, Eastern and Western through both the tours and artworks. For example, one of the artists is tackling the Speak Mandarin campaign, which has created a barrier between dialect speaking generation and the young. There will also be unique photo opportunities into private and intimate spaces of Tiong Bahru. Some highlights also include a reconstruction of an artist’s bedroom and life in its entirety using only plastic tape, an interactive light installation that will track 1500 OH! visitors, a site-specific project with Singapore’s first Monkey God temple, a scientific lab located in a bathroom dealing with what else – waste management and a social sculpture to create a new Tiong Bahru food court.

Confirmed artists are Ang Song Nian, Cindy Salim, Dilys Ng, Gilles Massot, Green Zeng, Isabelle Desjeux, Jying Tan, Lavender Chang, Marc Gabriel Loh, Mark Wong, Patrick Storey, Race Krehel, Sokkuan Tye, Stephen Black and Zhao Renhui.

OH! will be open from 4pm till 9pm on 18, 19, 25 and 26 February. The tour starts at Tiong Bahru Community Ctr, 67A Eu Chin Street. $15 tickets are sold at the door, and the last tour leaves at 8pm. Visit the website for details.

A new crew has arrived and they’ve been busy painting the town walls. Surprisingly, they are not using spray cans but a projector attached to an iPad. This form of electronic graffiti called projector bombing, is a collab between artist/designer Lun Cheak and photographer Szeling.

“It’s an endeavor to explore what art would look like in a graffiti scarce Singapore, and ‘what if’ Singapore would become more liberal towards graffiti art, Lun explains. “It is also an exploration of graffiti through a different medium, one that is “not illegal”. I create the artwork on my iPad, connecting directly to a projector, and Szeling shoots the work with a Fuji camera. We are making strides in trying to bring attention to our project, maybe through an exhibition.”

What about a digital Street Art Showcase à la Toronto guys? That’d be awesome right?

A winebar owner and his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease, are about to move out of the house they have lived in for the last 40 years. Artist Alecia Neo (Home Visits) and sound artist Clarence Chung, both 25, hope to preserve the memories and personality of the 1970s home in their latest art installation, Villa Alicia.

This August, the house in Binjai Park will play host to a sound and photography installation before it is vacated by its occupants, Tan Ying Hsien, a winebar owner, 49, and Dr Nalla Tan, 88, a prominent physician and feminist. Visitors will get a chance to wander through the bungalow, which is split into two parts. Ying Hsien’s is filled with his marathon medals and wine magazines, and the other, belonging to his mother, is filled with paintings, drawings, kitchenware in rooms that have seen little change since the 1970s.

About forgotten memories and the act of remembering, Villa Alicia looks into how memories and histories are shaped by time, mind and disease. Human memory is fragile. Can we preserve and reproduce memories through physical objects and documentation? How accurate is it? How true?

Alecia explains: “I see the value in capturing the fragility of memories, people and spaces, through a rare opportunity in having access to the home of a prominent person; the contrast of generations, the new and the old, and the loss faced as memory fails you.” The house is slated to be demolished a few days after the exhibition closes.

For Ying Hsien, the decision to sell and move out of the house was a heart-rending one. “I’ve lived there for the better part of a lifetime and most of my memories are inextricably tied to the house. Whilst I carry away these memories, their physical link will be severed when the house disappears.”

The exhibition runs from 6 to 11 August, from 9 am to 9 pm at 43 Binjai Park, Singapore. Admission is free.

An unprecedented collaboration of four creative minds, -Adrian Yeo of ktone.fm (music production), Clara Teo of Fakenylon (interactive), Ryan Lee of Frommetofu (video) and James Khing of Bangers & Mash (graphic design)-  Jupiter is the result of a freejam.

The inspiration of the artpiece is designing for, from and with music. It stemmed from James‘ background in Zouk and LifeBrandz where he had to design flyers and other collaterals to showcase the musicians who came to the clubs.  From there he created many unique design styles, the most popular being the deconstruction of machines and re-creation into more futuristic contraptions.

When tasked with the launch project of ktone.fm, James decided to revive this style and Jupiter is reanimated to make the experience for the user more interactive. “Users click on each individual image of the DJ to produce an electronic sound (clips from tracks produced by Adrian), and can click it again should they wish to stop the sound. They can play up to four different electronic sounds simultaneously, thus becoming “music producers” in their own right, as they try to match the sounds with each other.”

Tan Peiling graduated from Nanyang Technological University, School of Art, Design and Media with a major in Photography and Digital Imaging. She has a strong interest in examining how spaces affect human experiences. Using the relationship between sound and visual image as a primary inspiration, her work usually requires audience participation and interaction.

Peiling about her work: “Your Voices Fill The Void In My Mind is a multi-media installation derived from an interest in examining how auditory memories are remembered, and its effect on visual imagination during the recollection. By attempting to find out how voice memories aid in visual recall, I asked my family members to recall individual voices of one another and the visual imageries that were brought about during the voice recollection. These images and voices were then recorded and re-interpreted into the installation piece, projected into a custom space.”

“The piece was inspired from previous interest in attempting to visually depict different sounds that a group of hearing impaired desire to hear. Approaching the project with the intention of creating a multi-sensory experience for them, I created a multi-media installation titled First Sound, using a custom vibration device and a video projection to simulate hearing experience. The piece is intended for people to touch the vibration caused by sound while experiencing the video, so that they can both ‘see’ and ‘feel’ the sound concurrently.”