Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures
Abstract
Panel: Dr. Lilian Chee, Dave Lim and Dr. Simone Shu-Yeng Chung. Moderator: Dr. Zdravko Trivic
The conversation responds to the themes set by the National University of Singapore, “The Screen as Surface, Site and Space”:
Screen-based devices have become an inexorable part of our everyday lives. They include (but are not limited to) apparatuses for cinematic entertainment, imaging, surveillance, social networking, creative expression, documentation, 3D modelling, real-time collaborations, and hosting immersive environments. They exist in many forms and sizes, from touchscreens on compact smart devices to building facades and infrastructure that serve as the canvas for massive media architecture projections in urban environments. Electronic visual displays proliferate in most industries: art and design, healthcare, IT, research and development. At the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic, screens acquired greater relevance, as the ‘window’ to online interactions, offering solace and immediacy remotely across geographical distances and time zones.
With the screen serving as the subject of discourse, we probe into its earliest developments informed by proto-cinematic forms of entertainment. One can trace the mechanisation of vision in the late nineteenth century that gave rise to a cinema of attractions and new technologies of seeing, in photography, actualité films, and opaque projections. Merging cinematic immersion with the haptic virtues of the screen, multi-screen artworks and interactive installations imbue new media with an environmental dimension, privileging a more mobile and embodied form of spectatorship. Meanwhile, the digital age introduced an unprecedented range of virtualities, expanding the lexicon of extended realities to encompass augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual worlds – all with varying degrees of interactivity and typically mediated through LCD screens and head-mounted displays.
What is evident when exploring these optical histories is the primacy of space for the structuring of experience, and how spatial ontology is continuously redefined by milestones in screen technology development. By reflecting on historical precedents, how might this further enrich our understanding of the materiality of screen as media?
Dr. Lilian Chee
Lilian Chee’s research connects embodied experience and affective evidence with architectural representation, affect theory, feminist politics, and creative practice methods. Her award-winning film collaboration 03-FLATS (2014) has screened in 16 major cities. Current publications include Architecture and Affect (forthcoming), Art in Public Space (2022) and Remote Practices (2022). She co-directed a short film Objects for Thriving (2022) studying elderly occupants and their spaces through domestic objects. She leads a Social Sciences Research Council funded project examining work-in-the-home practices and the relational transformation of public and domestic spaces.
Dave Lim
Dave Lim (b. 1994, Singapore) is a visual artist and filmmaker. Coming from a documentary and research background, his work reflects upon the the distinct individualistic responses to larger forces of power such as urbanity and spirituality. He works frequently with DASSAD and MPEG, two art collectives based in Singapore. His work has won multiple awards such as the National Youth Film Awards (2020), NTU Global Digital Art Prize (2019) and the Objectifs Documentary Award (2019).
Dr. Simone Shu-Yeng Chung
Simone Shu-Yeng Chung is Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. She holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and M.Phil. in Screen Media and Cultures from the University of Cambridge. After completing her studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Architectural Association, she practiced as a chartered architect in London. Simone was a Rome Scholar in Architecture and Urban Design, Japan Foundation Asia Center Fellow in 2019, and the 2020 CCA Research Fellow in Architecture. Her research interests reside in the synergistic potential offered by the moving image medium to architecture and urban studies, and issues pertaining to contemporary culture, collaborative contemporary practices and intangible heritage in Asia. She co-edited, with Mike Douglass, The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore (2020, Amsterdam University Press), and recently served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 17th Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2021).
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Saturday 3rd December, 2022