My Itchy Fingers

Voyage Night Festival and Night Lights 2011

Itchyfingers joined many others at the National Museum of Singapore for our third museum night festival. Called Voyage Night Festival, one of the highlights was Corazon de Angeles in Paradise (Heart of Angels) by a Belgian theatre company.

It was a very wet day. Coincidentally, it poured heavily for last year’s night festival as well, but luckily we were there for both nights so could catch the show on Friday. The Saturday show started late due to rain. This time, however, Itchyfingers skipped the first Friday show and so were a bit worried that the Saturday one would be cancelled. Luckily it started to clear up in the early evening.

We reached the museum earlier to catch other exhibits and performances. Entry to the museum was free, so we visited Abbas, 45 Years in Photography (now showing until 19 Sep) as well as a photography and watercolour painting joint exhibition by Ong Kim Seng and Kwek Leng Joo on the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, which just ended on the day of our visit.

Titled, “A Dozen of Those” by Lim Shing Ee, these 12 balloons held by
faceless brown figures sitting on brown boulders, represented the sense of
displacement and dislocation of those who uprooted themselves from their
familiar environment. The artist is a Singaporean living in Japan with her
Japanese husband and two young sons. We caught Eva Quartet performing here…

But I thought these little guys looked more like little Magnum ice-creams
sitting on round chocolates! 😀 Or coffee beans? 😀

Then we heard from museums volunteers that the show would again be postponed to 11.45pm from the original 10.30pm due to the rain! But I thought it stopped raining in the early evening already? That would mean close to two hours’ wait for us! We didn’t hang around to wait since we started our day very early for birdwatching and were getting tired. There wasn’t that many interesting programmes or installation to keep us entertained while waiting, maybe cos we only stayed around the museum vicinity and didn’t go to the Art Museum. A bit disappointing to have missed it. Click here to see what we have missed…  😦

However, all was not lost. Itchyfingers went back the following week for the Night Lights 2011 event, an outdoor showcase of light installations from France.

This was another highlight of the show – Lyrical Perspective (Perspective Lyrique) by 1024 architecture, a visual and sound-based interactive mapping projection that made the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) facade come alive. Visitors were also invited to interact with the installation by making sound into the microphone. Wonder how many drivers were distracted while passing by? :p

 I love the music! 😀

The “face” and the sound actually sounded constipated! Hahahah… 😀

Enter the Art Museum and you would be spooked by this guy…

Titled, “Switch” by Tony Oursler, this was a 8-part installation using
recorded images incorporated with sound projected onto doll-like figurines.
It was fun observing other people’s reaction when they first saw this – some
were amused while others got a shock…hahah 

An illustration on the mechanism behind the work

Another pair at 8Q ….Funny looking….they were holding hands! 😀

A wall full of moving flowers…I think these were existing exhibits and not
part of the festival 

A cute floral patterned elephant sat next to the stairs

A closer look and I realised the elephant was decorated with tiny flower 
stickers! Some of them were peeling off…works of some visitors with
itchy fingers…

The SAM’s courtyard was invaded by gigantic jellyfish!

Titled, “Curiosités” by Alain Benini, these were “a nest of luminous jellyfish
rising up from the fountains and float over the courtyard with a curious
ballet of tentacles”

They looked graceful. If you have visited aquariums, you would remember
seeing the graceful dance moves of the illuminated jellyfish under changing
lights. So I thought maybe there should be a change of lights on the huge
jellyfish balloons, with music synchronizing both light and movement.
Then it would look more magical…

Now it relied on the natural breeze to give us “upskirt” glimpse of the 
jellyfish ladies…hahah. This just reminded me of Sundown Marathon… 😛

Another installation that encouraged interaction was “Reactive Wall” by Mojoko in collaboration with computer programmer Shang Liang. Showcasing over 200 images of popular local and graphic icons, these were “activated” and popped up to cover the wall when visitors made sounds through the microphones….There were two on show. One was a huge coloured panel, which I thought wasn’t working that well maybe partly due to the earlier technical glitch. The other was this smaller black-and-white one in a small room. Maybe a more confined area made the animation work better, cos even sounds from outside could be captured here…

Most of the sounds actually came from outside the room, where visitors were shouting
at the coloured wall! 

Itchyfingers then went back to the National Museum to catch the Open Air Cinema Under the Banyan Tree. The last one we watched was some time back. I was attracted to the movie, 13 Ghosts by William Castle, after reading the e-newsletter. It was supposed to be “13 times the thrills! 13 times the fun! 13 times the screams!” and “13 times the entertainment when you use the Ghost-Viewer!”. Huh? So this old black-and-white movie was already so advance that they had 3D effects?

The “Ghost-Viewer” everyone got free from the museum. We were supposed
to use the red panel to see ghosts if you believed in them and use the green
one if you didn’t. Er, but why block off the ghosts when you were watching
a ghost movie? :p? Clearly a marketing gimmick from the director…hahah

Itchyfingers with our Ghost-Viewers…hahaha

We were still thinking why the organiser didn’t give a brief on how to use the Ghost-Viewer. Then the movie started…So the job was left to the director himself! 😀

A synopsis of the movie: “Cyrus and his impoverished family get the shock of lifetime when they inherit a huge but ramshackle house from an eccentric uncle. Their new residence comes complete with a spooky housekeeper and 12 horrifying ghosts. Held captive in the eerie house, they must sacrifice an unlucky 13th before they can be freed!”

Viewing through the blue cellophane of the Ghost-Viewer…look, no ghost!

And through the red….oooo…ghosts! So scary! Hahahah….

Actually with or without the viewer, you could still see the ghosts, but they were just not as clear and three-dimensional. Tisu Boy didn’t really like the show as he thought the effects were not good, but that was a 1960 movie! Quite good for the time already!

When the screen turned blue, the big words of “Use Viewer” were there to
remind audience to choose between their blue and green viewer. Similarly,
when it turned back to normal black-and-white, we were reminded to 
“Remove Viewer”. It was quite a fun experience though…

Itchyfingers ended our night before viewing two more installations…Didn’t get to see “The Fish Tree” at the School of the Art cos we needed to get up early the next day and wasn’t too impressed with “The Cloud” and “Parking Mad”.

“Lampounettes” by TILT showcased a row of gigantic table lamps along
SMU building. Made you want to read a book under the light…hahahah 

“Green Invaders” by Yves Caizergues! Sound of the video was switched off cos of noisy kids! :p 

Also see related posts:
> The World’s Slowest SMS vs Broken Satellites – Night Festival 2010
> Night at the Museum – Night Festival 2009
> Come Drink…and Laugh with Me
> Singing in the Rain Under the Banyan Tree