State of Archives is a 48-pp Research Compendium aimed to understand more about local design archives. There is generally a lack of interest in and conversations surrounding local visual culture. By unpacking the potential and value within these repositories, it is hopeful to bring light to the different ways where an archive can benefit the way we understand the visual language that is around us.
View full compendium here.
Maverick is a BA(Hons) Graduation Project during the final year at LASALLE, College of the Arts. It is a project which provides Singaporean design students aged 25 to 29 with a resource to fail productively. By employing the use of a digital repository and a toolkit, it elicits conscious iteration and formalised reflection in creative processes in order for creativity to be more deliberate and less governed by the fear of failure in collectivist cultures.
The outcome is a response to these key research inquiries:
How does learning occur in a post-pandemic world? To what extent does our Confucian values influence the way we think creatively? How can we harness the value of failure without repercussions? Is there a method to self-reflection?
Insights from the research conducted prior to the outcome has revealed that learning in today’s context is vastly different from the past. Rather than being taught, there is more value in the learning which is derived from self-discovery and critical-thinking.
The proposed solution is to design a toolkit containing an Activity Book, accompanying tools, and a Pocket Guide. The toolkit aims to elicit Productive Failure through the activity of drawing a Self-Portrait with your eyes closed. By doing so, the user will recalibrate their expectations when drawing themselves, and motivates them to iterate.
The activity is split into 2 phases. The first is to allow for the participant to draw as they normally would, while the second phase will introduce the tools and structured reflection questions to help them detect failure better. At the end of the activity book, they will be able to experience and notice the difference of quality between both phases.
View the full Activity Booklet here.
Besides the physical toolkit, there is also a visual documentation and analysis from the user-testing. It is a compilation of the sketches and written reflection from the 10 participating Singaporean design students aged 25-29.
View the full Visual Documentation here.
There is also another component to the project, which is a digital repository. The website houses not only the self-portraits and written reflection from the participants, but it also contains the content, context and research articles. The aim of this component is to provide the audience a well-rounded research to the inquiry by situating the issue in its context. It hopes to inspire others to see the value in a reflective practice and productive failure.
Maverick’s digital repository can be visited here.
Recent studies show that self-reflection is found to be extremely important in learning, especially in design education. While reflection differs from person, this article introduces the different methods which I feel is most applicable to creative practice.
Recent studies show that self-reflection is found to be extremely important in learning, especially in design education. While reflection differs from person, this article introduces the different methods which I feel is most applicable to creative practice.
In order to learn from our mistakes, we first have to acknowledge and detect it. However, there are various factors which makes this action of detection much harder. This article highlights the ways I’ve discovered that can help detect failure in our practice.
A Future tells the story of social inequality through the perspective of a worried, yet hopeful mother.
According to reports by MoneySENSE, an estimated 26% of Singaporeans are living by the skin of their teeth and are economically vulnerable. There are external and internal stressors – like psychological exhaustion from territorial stigmatisation, which inhibits, and makes it harder for them to break out of the poverty trap.
Despite these inhibitors, the younger generation is capable of breaking out of this vicious cycle. By educating the youths desirable financial habits through financial literacy games, they can influence the family nucleus, and give them the chance to succeed once again.
Footage is a mixture of self-shot content and stock footage.
This video is a book trailer for a Research Compendium. It is an inquiry into the importance of archive infrastructures, and how its leverage is capable of shaping design-thinking.
This is a visual response to re-imagine Singaporean sitcoms as part of Netflix Singapore’s National Day Campaign brief. The title taken is “Under One Roof”, a sitcom centred around family bonds and racial harmony narratives, delivered through comedy.
The core of this response was to highlight the evolution of the meaning of a living room. The consumption of mass media has changed over the years, and it has also transformed the significance of a living room. We saw parallels between that and the living room scenes in Under One Roof was the most memorable–Tan Ah Teck delivering the moral of his stories. We also appropriated his iconic line, and the sitcom’s sound effect as well as opening credit.
As the brief was to interest younger generations in the local golden sitcom days, we decided to render the iconic living room in Under One Roof, following closely to the furniture and the layout.
Ambiviolence is a self-bound, found-object artist book. The appropriated images are selected from the Indian paintings of religious manuscripts – the Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavad Purana. The medical images are selected from a variety of magazines, medical journals, and books.
The title of this project is a play on the word ‘Ambivalence’ and ‘Violence’, because the narrative conveyed is the normalisation of violence which comes in the name of Science. It shows the demodularisation and erosion of the human body. In today’s digital age, we turn to science as a new form of hope, rather than religion. We even try to define and prove the credibility of religion.
The contextual and sometimes visual symmetry between the facing images reveals the thin line between science and religion.
