With the theme “Home – What We Love About It”, Singapore HeritageFest 2011 kicked off yesterday, across multiple venues around the island, in colourful fashion.
Tag: art
How HP Marries Art with Technology
Through the kind invitation of HP and their PR agency Edelman, I was privileged to attend a special experiential showcase of HP’s ‘Touch the Future, Now’ technologies last Saturday night at VivoCity (11 July 2009). Its great to see technology companies focusing on enlivening the complete user experience beyond just the features and specifications alone, and HP has done a good job doing that.
Part of their “Touch the Future, Now” Campaign, HP partnered with five local illustrators (or artists as I prefer to call them) – Brian Chia, Soh Eeshaun, Ben Qwek, Neo Ann Gee and Michael Ng – to construct and share their visions for the future around music, art, communications, gaming and the cityscape in Singapore. Their works were projected within the visual of an HP TouchSmart PC on the façade of VivoCity as part of a HP ‘Touch the Future, Now’ Light Show Extravaganza.
First, I made a trip to the “Touch the Future, Now” Experiential Zone at VivoCity Central Court B. Featuring HP’s TouchSmart Technology, it allowed one to interact more engagingly with the PC beyond just the usual mouse and keyboard interfaces.
Graffiti and Street Art – Vandalism or Marketing?
Street art along a wall in North Richmond
Being an avid runner, I often jog around the Parkville and Carlton areas near my university campus and chance upon street art along various walls, pavements and fences. Some of the air-brushed displays are aesthetically beautifully and probably the result of considerable and painstaking effort to create enduring works of art. Surprisingly, I don’t see that many acts of graffiti which are overtly anti-establishment or vandalistic in nature (or perhaps I haven’t been to those neighbourhoods yet).
While musing on this phenomenon, I chanced upon this interesting article by Mark Holsworth who reported on how several merchants in the Brunswick suburb of Melbourne (just a stone’s throw away from where I am putting up at Carlton) have engaged street artists to decorate their shopfronts. Holsworth highlighted two examples of this could be done tastefully. The first is a convenience store located at the Lygon/Brunswick area:
The Art of Branding
Spotted this funkily dolled up postbox just outside UE Square along Unity Road recently while waiting for my son and wife. Its a bid to add much needed colour, vibrancy and art to the city. Apparently, this is part of STAMP, a nation-wide competition organised by URA and Singpost which looks at making over 40 postboxes in the city.
Nice touch there which helps to rejuvenate the old and weary brand image of snail mail. After all, we do know that it is fighting a losing battle against email and other forms of online communications. These splashes of art certainly gives us more reasons to visit our mailboxes to pay our bills!
Now, if only they would do it for all the 800 postboxes around the island instead of just those in the city. That would definitely add a few notches in rebranding and repositioning Singpost as a creative and fun loving provider of an essential service.
Update: Saw that Sparklette also posted about this, albeit in a series!
Inspired by Iskandar
Iskandar Jalil’s exhibition “The Pottery Voice of Iskandar Jalil”
Anybody who is a collector of pottery and sculptural pieces would be familiar with the works of Iskandar Jalil, one of Singapore’s Cultural Medallion winners and leading ceramicist. Accolades, awards and acknowledgements abound for this inspiring master potter, touted as one of Singapore’s best leading artist and a great teacher to boot.
Iskandar’s recent exhibition at MICA’s Atrium – Material, Message, Metaphor – The Pottery Voice of Iskandar Jalil – was very well received. In fact, I understand that 40% of his pieces were already sold, at prices ranging from $500 to as high as $8,000.