The next round of Singapore Creative Technology Pecha Kuchas will take place at 7PM on 9 March 2024 (Saturday) at Figment Club House. This event continues the series of ArtxTech Pecha Kuchas organized from the ground up by folks in the Creative Technology Singapore community, including Tusitala, Feelers, and Serial Co.
This iteration of talks is organized by the Interactive Materials Lab, and co-organized by Tusitala and Be.Fantastic, with venue sponsor Figment. This round, we place a focus on designerly approaches in creative technology. We have put together an exciting line-up of four speakers that each showcases a distinct design practice within the broad field of creative technology:
If I had to trace it back to a point when it all started, when my fascination in physical computation started, it would be in 2016 when I submitted a proposal for an architecture competition to design an Internet Museum along the banks of River Thames in London. My proposal was based on a Black Mirror episode Be Right Back (Season 2, Episode 1) which tells a story of a woman who recently lost her boyfriend and recreated her lover as a living, synthetic being from his data points. That inspired me to look into ways to create physical (sensual?) ways of interacting with data and technology, and has informed my practice ever since. For my presentation, I will share about my practice, how I got here, and present a few works: Weathering with Us, Errant Stars (part of Lucy in the Sky with Debris), and Phases (Melaleuca cajuputi).
Bio Isabella Ong is an artist based in Singapore, whose work examines the complex and fraught relationship we have with our environment. She works across the fields of art, computation, electronics and research, combining computational techniques with the physical investigation of materials like volcanic sand and debris. Drawing from a range of ecological sciences, she collaborates with scientists and experts to communicate their research to a broader audience. Her work has been exhibited at COP26 in Glasgow, the National Design Centre in Singapore, and Today Art Museum in Beijing. She studied architecture at the National University of Singapore, and received her MArch in Design for Performance and Interaction from the Bartlett School of Architecture. In 2023, she was an artist-in-residence at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA). She is also a co-founder of awe.curation, a platform that presents artists and designers working at the intersection of art and technology.
Run of the mill, all-solving, and all-knowing. Design shall do it all. Tragedy-based frameworks besiege the creative industry's designerly endeavours. It all began with the beloved 5-steps design-thinking process, and then it exploded into UX design, before leading us into this peculiar emergence of creative technology. But where did the fun, pleasures, and the serendipity of living go? Through the lenses of computational-thinking and technology, 'A Design Comedy' is a serious antidotal tale where design is revived as a creative force that seeks to enrich and augment society.
Bio Yeo Ker Siang (Yang Hexiang) 楊賀翔 is a Singaporean interested in design as a fabrication activity that makes things up for society. Through research, making and teaching, he utilises media and technology to propose conceptual engagements that enrich the interactions among people, values, and cultures. He has been certified and approved as a designer since 01 July 2014, when he graduated from the National University of Singapore, with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Industrial Design. In 2017, he became more designerly when he graduated from the Royal College of Art with a Master of Art in Information Experience Design.
An opinionated approach on how to craft mixed reality experiences.
Bio Interaction designer and developer, currently at Unity Technologies.
The weaving loom is undoubtedly the predecessor of today's computer. The dressing of a loom works like an algorithm which, when combined with the weaver's input sequence of lifting groups of yarn, an output of woven textile is produced. Unlike digital data the computation within a loom is always subjected to physical conditions such as friction, gravity, and the fact that everything takes up (significant) space. Is the loom a biased computer, or is the computer an idealistic loom?
Bio Tiffany Loy is a Singaporean textile artist, trained in textile-weaving at the Royal College of Art. Employing a weaver’s approach to sculpture, Loy explores fundamental relationships between elements of materiality such as colour, structure, and tension. Minuscule details invite viewers to take a closer look and indulge in the act of observing.
📣 Pecha Ku-what?
The
Pecha Kucha
is a short presentation format where speakers come with 20 slides that
progress automatically after 20 seconds. It is a short, non-stop, rapid
talk format that is used worldwide to pitch and engage audiences
regardless of topic.
👋 About the Interactive Materials Lab
We are a research outfit located in the Division of Industrial Design at
the National University of Singapore. We conduct design research with a
focus on human-computer interaction, particularly material systems to
support physical interaction and experience design. Our practice is
characterized by blending designerly exploration, technical experiments,
and rigorous making. We are interested in uncovering new ways of
blending physical media with tangible computing, along with probing the
interactive materiality that such systems facilitate. →learn more about us
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