VISTA Lab

Dance Dance Dance

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:38:00 +0000

TheatreWorks / 72-13 (and lotsa V.I.S.T.A Lab artists) present:

Dance Dance Dance
3 April 2008 to 5 April 2008, 8pm
72-13
Tickets at $28 and concession tickets at $15
Discount for purchase of 5 tickets and above

‘Virtual Reality is given a new spin in this dance combined with video art to depict the search for lost love’ performance.’ Life!, Straits Times, 21 March 2008

Sojourn with us to the plane that straddles between reality and dreams, unearth together with us the ardent emotions of the past, the present and the future.

Conceived and directed by Choy Ka Fai, choreographed and performed by Joavien Ng, DANCE DANCE DANCE will provoke and spellbound with its enchanting multi-disciplinary virtuosity of contemporary dance and multi-media inter-activity. Sensitive yet intense, this performance revives perspectives on the relationship between the physical body and moving images; convenes an introspective dialogue between video and dance.

NC16 (Some Nudity)

Call now at 67377213, or email at publicity@theatreworks.org.sg for tickets. Enjoy discount for purchase of 5 tickets and above.

Conceived + Directed + Multimedia Design
Choy Ka Fai

Performed + Choreography
Joavien Ng

Sceneography + Illustration
Mohd Fared Jainal

Set Design
Torrance Goh /FARMWORK

Interaction Design
Khoo Eng Tat

Sound Design
Jeffrey Yue

Clothing Design
Grace Tan/kwodrent

Dramaturgy
Ken Ikeda

Today, Friday 28 March 2008, p60

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:43:00 +0000

Click on the article to read about Dance Dance Dance.

V.I.S.T.A Lab Artist Biographies

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:10:00 +0000

0. Choy Ka Fai _
Artistic Director/ Media Artist __www.ka5.info

New media artist and contemporary performance director, Choy Ka Fai has created numerous multidisciplinary works and collaborations internationally. Although trained as a video artist, he works intensively with the performative and trans-disciplinary intersections, creating audio-visual environment that is interactive and experiential. Central to his art-making process is the idea constructing "spaces” for interactions and the altering of time/space as means of creating possibilities for dialogue, thus its possibilities for meaning.
As the Co-Artistic Director of KYTV since 2004, he had created various projects with a unique style of performance infused with pop culture relevance. Directorial works with KYTV has toured Indonesia, Korea, United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan and Japan. His recent major works includes collaboration with Ong Ken Seng in Diaspora (2006) and directorial works Drift Net (2007) exploring blogging phenomenal.Presently, He is the associate artistic director with Theatre Works, Singapore.

1. Zulkifle Mahmod
Sound Artist__www.luzart.net

Zulkifle Mahmod majored in sculpture at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. He is an associate artist with The Substation, Singapore and has exhibited locally, as well as in Thailand, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Norway and Finland. He completed residency programs in the latter two countries. His "Stilt" series forms part of The Swissotel Stamford Singapore’s art collection. Mahmod was selected, with three other artists, to represent Singapore in the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Zul’s multidisciplinary work cuts across sound, installation, drawing and sculpture. His formal training in sculpture has led him to include sculpted sound and live sound performances in his practice over the last three years.

2. Ng Yi-Sheng
Writer/Performer__www.lastboy.blogspot.com

Ng Yi-Sheng is a freelance writer. His performed plays include Hungry (Theatreworks) and 251(Toy Factory), as well as the musical Georgette (Musical Theatre Ltd). He has published a collection of poetry last boy and a non-fiction text SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century. He is also a journalist and reviewer of theatre (and occasionally visual arts) for The Straits Times, Fridae.com and the Flying Inkpot. He studied at Columbia University's Writing Program and has been mentored for poetry by Lee Tzu Pheng and Angeline Yap and for drama under TheatreWorks's Writers' Lab and The Necessary Stage's Playwrights' Cove. He is currently a Creative-in-Residence at 72-13.

3. Joavien Ng Bong Na
Choreographer/Dancer__www.crowjane.com

Joavien Ng Bong Na graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts, School of Performing Arts and began her choreographing career in 1997. Since then, her works have been showcased in Japan, Taipei, Hong Kong, Seoul, Canada and the USA. Ng established dance theatre company Crow Jane in 2003 and its repertoire includes solo dance performances Dream and Victoria, interdisciplinary show Ghosts as well as multimedia dance theatrical pieces Toilet and Conversation in the Park. Her style is characterized by minimalism, dark humor, and theatrical elements. She is inspired by the body’s natural responses and behaviors and hopes to develop beyond the language of conventional dance by collaborations.

4. Patricia Toh Yi Ling
Performer

Patricia completed a Bachelor of Dramatic Arts (Acting) at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, Sydney, Australia. She was seen in shows such as Ne-Zha (The Finger Players), Noalibi (Metabolic Theatre Laboratory), Titoudao (Toy Factory), Prism (Toy Factory) and Wayang Tempest (Drama Plus), in which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Life! Theatre Awards. She has toured Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, China and Southeast Asia. Her interest in the body led her to create Space Ticket with a Parkinson patient and Blind, As You See It with the visually impaired. Her curiosity in puppetry has also resulted in a show at Sydney Opera House Studio.

5. Lim Hock Siang
Musician

Ling Hock Siang graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor of Arts (Music) degree, majoring in erhu and violin. Ling joined the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) in 1997 and is currently holding the position of the Associate Erhu Principal. Together with three friends, he formed The Huqin Quartet, a group which has done numerous tours. In addition to concerts at venues like The Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay, Ling has made appearances in Taiwan, Kuala Lumpur, Australia and New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea. He was also invited to San Francisco and Los Angeles to perform at Singapore Encore. He was awarded the Young Artist Award 2004 (Music) by the National Arts Council, Singapore

6.Grace Tan/Kwodrent
Clothing artist/designer__www.kwodrent.com

Grace Tan is a clothing designer/artist who graduated from Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore. In 2003, Tan set up kwodrent, to explore clothes and design in a new light. It is a series of works based on the study of rectangles, with reference to material and construction methods. All the pieces are spontaneously designed and made by hand, to produce expressive works that resonate with the senses. Because kwodrent is an ongoing project, each piece can be seen by itself, or as part of a progression. kwodrent has exhibited at places such as Melbourne and London. This year, a collection of new works based on the Cartesian coordinate system will be introduced at Singapore, Tokyo and London.

7.Mohd Fared Jainal
Graphic designer/performer

A recipient of Goh Chok Tong Youth Promise Award 2006, Fared deals with visual landscaping and produces work that cuts across theatre, body and design. He has collaborated with various theatre and art groups and has performed in Darwin, Fukuoka, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Yogyakarta, Brunei and Kuala Lumpur. Pop Station, his collaboration with art collective KYTV was showcased in Berlin. He has bagged Best Set Design for 2007 Life! Theatre Awards for the play The Gingerbread Man (Singapore Repertory Theatre). Other works include Shadow Madness, Incon(se)quential and Mat Champion. Fared now teaches design at National Institute of Education (NIE) and LASALLE College of the Arts.

8. Khoo Eng Tat
Interaction engineer/designer ageinvaders.wikidot.com

Khoo Eng Tat is pursuing his postgraduate degree at Mixed Reality Lab in National University of Singapore (NUS). His research topics are human-computer interaction (HCI), family entertainment, interactive language with music and interactive music with visual art. He has shown his work Age Invaders in Montreal for SIGCHI 2006 and in Japan for Interactive Tokyo 2006. Khoo has collaborated with Choy Ka Fai to showcase an interactive visual-sound installation the passage for the exhibition Objects & Desires. His works, From Poetry to Music: A Baba House Study and An Interactive Visual Arts Concert, were presented in the NUS Arts Festival 2007. He is also a composer for recording label Rock Publishing .

9. Torrance/Farmworks
Set designer/Space-maker_ www.work.farm.sg

Torrance Goh is a co-founder of FARM & FARMWORK. FARM is a society dedicated to promoting, celebrating, bringing together and working with Singapore artists and designers. FARMWORK is a design practice that collaborates with artists and designers on spatial projects. Tapping into FARM’s interdisciplinary programmes with Singapore Creatives, FARMWORK’s architectural solutions integrate perspectives from art, fashion and media. Here, architectural designers draw inspiration and work closely with an artist or designer from another ﬁeld to create spaces of character and distinction. Keen in graphic, web and architectural design, Goh studied architecture at NUS and has worked in London and Singapore.

10. Lim Woan Wen
Lighting Designer

Lighting designer by profession, Woan Wen is a nocturnal being with an acute interest in light, darkness and all else that lies in between. Recipient of the NAC Arts Professional Scholarship 2001, Woan Wen was trained and educated at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the National University of Singapore. She works extensively with local theatre and dance companies, as well as independent artists from various fields, and is presently associate lighting designer with The Finger Players. She received the Best Lighting Design award at the 6th Life! Theatre Awards 2006.

Whatever Happened to V.I.S.T.A Lab 3.0???

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:34:00 +0000

It was supposed to happen on 29 February, but we decided to shift it to Arts Fest 2009, so we could give you an even better, even more budgeted and developed production! Serious! We realised doing a 1.0 + 2.0 just wouldn't cut it!

We still love each other though, which is why we're still doing productions together! See above!

VISTA LAB 2.0: INTERFERENCE performance documentation

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:17:00 +0000

At long last!

The photo documentation is mostly at Ka Fai's Picasa site. But here's some of it:

Here's a photovideo for the hell of it too:

V.I.S.T.A Lab 2.0 :INTERFERENCE

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:00:00 +0000

Presented by TheatreWorks

A Process-Presentation by

Choy Ka Fai

In collaboration with

_Joavien Ng _ Mohd Fared Jainal,

_Patricia Toh _Ling Hock Siang

_Ng Yi-Sheng _Zulkifle Mahmod,

_Khoo Eng Tat _GraceTan/kwodrent,

_Lim Woan Wen _Torrance Goh/FARMWORK.

Date : 14-15 Dec 2007

Time : 8pm

Venue: 72-13

Admission: $5

For Reservations ring 6737 7213 or email : tworks@singnet.com.sg

**There will be a Q & A session after the presentations.

INTERFERENCE is about unwanted signals that disrupt or construct movements of nature. It is about the interventions of patterns in history, time, signal and noise.

INTERFERENCE explores the concept of listening to the noise of history: moments which are insignificant in our collective memory. This presentation researches our techniques of remembering and the recollections of irrelevant episodes of unrecorded history.

INTERFERENCE is a space as well as an organism. This mediated space functions as an interactive installation and a performance environment where moving bodies, electronic sounds, visual documents and light are interwoven into a constantly changing artefact of unhistorical events.

********

If history is signal, then time itself must be recognized as noise: an infinitely complex mess of data that resists interpretation.

Our project is therefore to listen to the noise of history, moments, which yield no discernible signal: the insignificant events.

Herein lies a paradox. As artists, as humans, we have a natural impulse to transmute chaos into art.

Is our goal then to reclaim the forgotten into the field of recorded time?

Or should we resist, in our representations of insignificant events, our instinct to render them significant?

********

Conceived and created by Choy Ka Fai, V.I.S.T.A Lab is a series of presentations

resulting from workshop and experiments with the 10 Singapore-based artist/designer across the wide spectrum of artistic discipline. This project is based on the central theme of re-looking at historical events that escapes our people’s memories, seemingly deemed insignificant in our invention of a vibrant, global city. We are interested in the lapses of our recent histories and the understanding of the past to imagine the future.

INTERFERENCE is the second of three presentations of V.I.S.T.A Lab Cycle 1; the third presentations will be held in February 2008.

**For more informations please visit

www.vistalabbers.blogspot.com (well, you're already here)

www.theatreworks.org.sg / www.72-13.com

Supported by

National Arts Council, Lee Foundation, Hong Leong Foundation,

72-13, Web-vision and Power98

With additional support by

Mixed Reality Lab, NUS

V.I.S.T.A Lab Presentations

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 02:59:00 +0000

V.I.S.T.A Lab cycle 1 is a series of 3 presentations resulting from workshop and experiments with the 10 Singapore-based artist/designer across the wide spectrum of artistic discipline. The project is based on the central theme of re-looking at historical events that escapes our people’s memories, seemingly deemed insignificant in our invention of a vibrant, global city. We are interested in the lapses of our recent histories and the understanding of the past to imagine the future.

V.I.S.T.A Lab 1.0: Impetus
Process-Presentation
21-22 Sep 2007
Impetus explores how insignificant events in our history are being recorded, forgotten and fabricated, focusing on the moments and impulses before they transpired. This presentation researches on the origin of data transmission and how information can be made consumable.

V.I.S.T.A Lab 2.0: Interference
Process- resentation
14-15 Dec 2007
Interference explores the concept of listening to the noise of history, moments which are insignificant to our collective memory. This presentation researches on the techniques of remembering and the recollections of irrelevant episodes of unrecorded history.

V.I.S.T.A Lab 3.0: Insignificance
Final Presentation
28,29 Feb &1 Mar 2008
Insignificance is about events that history forgets.
Insignificance events commonly overlooked by historian often reflect the true character of our time, and the promises of future drama. Based on the re-collections of events in Singapore from 1979 to 1991, in events that happen yet have become insignificance to our beings and becoming.

Talkback Session 2

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:12:00 +0000

Why does Ka5 keep introducing me as "a writer who wants to perform"?

Fun fact: the black dress Joavien wears has 1,392 points of stitching (all by hand). These were entered as data based on their X and Y-co-ordinates, which were thus translated into musical information on treble and bass respectively.

Poem by Machine01

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:06:00 +0000

That is, Paviter Singh, intern and multimedia technician for this show.

Caught in the circumference of a storm,
PI is no longer constant,
But it is.

Torrance (our set designer) noted that part of his rubric for this production was to allow the tech crew to be the stars for once. They're set in the centre of the space, with the audience sitting/wandering around them and the mad performers only inhabiting the periphery.

Lovely poem and very, very apt.

End of first performance!

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:13:00 +0000

And we got a standing ovation (of course got no chairs, so got not so many places to sit).

Now doing the talkback.

Some nuggets of criticism from director Jeffrey Tan:

"I loved the experience, but everything was in the words and the words were telling me something else. And yet I'm reduced to seeing full sentences. And that was very jarring. And if there's one thing you should change is not to have full sentences. Every day we're being given full sentences, being told what to think. We need to avoid that."

"This is very clean. This is very clear. This is almost like meditative. I would like there to be more interference."

R.I.P. Teh Cheang Wan

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:43:00 +0000

It's his 22nd death anniversary. To the day. Spare a minute of silence for the Honourable Oriental Gentleman, followed by 50 minutes of noise.

Because it's our first performance tonight. Wish us luck! Just had debriefing and some last-min updates regarding Fared's light tubes and Pat's Stephen Chow-esque laugh. Performance in a little more than an hour. Fared is calming us with sensuous massage.

Camaraderie

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:28:00 +0000

I do like the way we're emerging as a friendly/familial collective as well as an artistic alliance.

Don't we look sweet? Let's see some more from other days:

Torrance and Joavien in the green room.
Ka Fai giving us the new order of scenes.
Zul at the controls.

And Eng Tat at the controls.

Opening tomorrow! Debriefing now! Call-time at three! Yarrrrgh!

More WTFotography

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:32:00 +0000

Come see what it's all about!

Meet Da Interns!

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:50:00 +0000

Here's Pav and Bin, the interns from Ka Fai's video art class. Both super-skilled at electronics (watch them soldering wires and twiddling little knobs - so butch), and able to manipulate central controls while Ka Fai stands back and tries to be vaguely directorial.

The other day during debriefing I called them Green Bin and Curry Pav. :P Yeah, I'm immature like that.

My moustache brings all the boys to the bar

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:38:00 +0000

I'm supposed to act as the first Chinese historiographer Sima Qian in our next presentation. One of the orders from director Choy Ka Fai was that I would have to grow a beard.

I used to look like this:

DAY 0

DAY 2

DAY 4

DAY 5

DAY 7

DAY 8

DAY 9

Now, I look like this:

DAY 10

I think the ultimate intention is for me to look like this:

But then I went and checked a picture of Sima Qian on Wikipedia:

Basket! Of course he was hairless! He was a eunuch!

We has a video flyer

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:43:00 +0000

Wah lau. Joavien Ng is chioh, man.

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:46:00 +0000

Or at least, the shots we got from the photo shoot are:

There's a video coming up!

ROJAK 10: The Collaborative Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 05:32:00 +0000

We're gonna be featured in the next edition of ROJAK this Saturday night:

Dear friends,

Welcome to ROJAK 10: The Collaborative Edition! (in conjunction with the Singapore Design Festival 2007 and the inaugural ArchiFest 2007)

Head down to the historic City Hall Building (Level 3: Chamber) this coming Saturday, 1 December at 8pm. The venue is kindly hosted by Singapore Institute of Architects.

This special edition of ROJAK will feature 5 works of a collaborative nature spanning the fields of architecture, product design, film, theatre, performance art and multimedia.

And they are Magical Spaces: Adib J, Yeo Jia-Jun, Rofan Teo, outofstock: Wendy Chua & Gabriel Tan, V.I.S.T.A. Lab: Ka Fai with various artists, Loo Zihan & Ruby Pan and syntfarm: Vladimir Todorovic & Andreas Schlegel.

The uber-cool invite artwork is by JUN from UFHO.

Like always, please bring drinks to share for the ROJAK dingy and spread the ROJAK sharing spirit :)

See you there! :)

Thanks for reading :)
FARM is a nonprofit Singapore society
that grows systems for the Singaporean creative community.
Visit FARM today!

Hot off the presses

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:20:00 +0000

Su-mei's just printed our flyers!

Just happened to be in the Theatreworks office when she did.

Today's workshop is brought to you by...

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:16:00 +0000

...the letters W, T and F. Which means that the production is coming along quite nicely.

The concept now seems to involve the characters as satellites orbiting the audience on a white catwalk. Heaven knows if we'll have enough money for the 2-metre styrofoam ball.

Omnis mutandis

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:01:00 +0000

The ground's shifted for me in this current edition of VISTA. Having written some conceptual text, I'm now placed as an observer, with the suggestion that I generate further text for print during the rehearsal process itself. No need for me to memorise the babble - I'm going to spend the entire show encased in a perspex coffin.

What's disturbing to me is how much the concept is changing behind my back - apparently, now Joavien is a Queen Android who evolves from being a robot to a human, Fared is an Animal Android who evolves from animal to human to robot, and Pat is going to be a Zen Android who examines our relationship with space by staring at walls.

They say they like my text better this time round - more him, says Ka5. Given me some homework on creating fictions to accompany each character. Me, I'm wary of having ANY text in this show.

Mo' Workshoppin'

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 05:21:00 +0000

We've got nearly the whole team in today. Eng Tat's strapping Joavien into the new electronic motion-detector sensors he's designed; they pick up on her blood pressure while she dances and translate the pulse into pitch. Ka Fai's been testing out his new sound design (Zul is abroad) while Fared and Pat improvise with their bodies - he thinks Pat's gained a new vocabulary of movement, but he's still hoping to translate Fared's inhuman jerks into smoother, more durational postures. Torrance is on his computer doing set design stuff, I guess - me, I'm rankled by the way I'm unable to upload any images, at all. Gmpht!

Pretty pictures and artist bios forthcoming. Woan Wen ain't here yet.

Winter Fashions from kwodrent

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:34:00 +0000

Thursday afternoon Eng Tat, the director and the performers went over to our costume designer Grace Tan's home studio. ET took these shots of Joavien in her December couture:

I like to think of this as her church organ/bell costume:

This one is her 80s polkadot costume:

And what the hell, one last view from the posterior:

Grace Tan gives good pleats. Mathematically designed, too!

Workshoppin'

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 01:46:00 +0000

Pat is investigating walking as a means of measuring time with the human body, inspired by Rebecca Solnit's "Wanderlust".

Joavien and Ka Fai are playing with the collision of the body with time-stimulated multimedia.

Fared's doing our programme.

Ooh! And we get to pick our photos for publicity!

VISTA Lab 2.0: Interference

noreply@blogger.com (Ng Yi-Sheng) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:23:00 +0000

Didja hear? We have a title!

Second installment of workshopping: we've been joined by a new artist: Lim Woan Wen, who'll be taking over from Andy as lighting designer. So far she's been working with Torrance to recycle the gazillion fluorescent light tubes from 120.

Unfortunately I didn't bring my obtrusive ol' camera at this session, so I can't capture everyone's faces while Ka5 shows 'em the mess of conceptual writing I did while they were away. I feel guilty for not being lucid.

Pat's hair has mostly grown back, but Fared will still have to trim his top to become her clone. (Ka5 has a soft spot for clones, I think.)