Old is gold: nestled amongst the new skyscrapers mushrooming in our skyline, our familiar and beloved shophouses have now taken on an iconic status, reminding us of our heritage and providing a glimpse of life in pre-independent Singapore. Epigram Books’ latest addition to its colouring books series celebrates these nostalgic terrace houses with 20 illustrated images of Singapore’s favourite shophouses from Ann Siang Hill to Joo Chiat Road. Printed on high quality paper, the pages of this book can be individually removed and framed.

The experimental music scene in Singapore emerged in 1990s and grew out of the underground rock music scene of the 1980s. In this sense, the experimental scene has a shared history with the development of popular music in Singapore that occurred concurrently with Western popular music movements. Over the past 20 years, the scene has gained momentum and developed into a small, yet vibrant community.

The Movement of Things project is an exploration into the qualities and properties of movement. Through a range of exercises these movements are captured and translated by custom-built software and the use of an autonomous, tiny and wireless motion sensor. A series of Motion Sensing Extensions suggest different approaches of how to use a motion sensor within various physical environments to capture movement to better understand the materialization of movement and new forms of interactions through movement.    

Recent years have shown a gradual shift in apparel production from China to parts of Southeast Asia, allowing fashion designers to leverage lower labour costs and raw material resources during sampling and production. These cost-saving benefits have impacted the overall perception of quality, as designers frustratingly come to realise the poor levels of skills and pattern cutting knowledge within the region.

CellF is the world’s first neuron-driven synthesiser. It is a collaborative project at the cutting edge of experimental art and music that brings together artists, musicians, designers and scientists to create a cybernetic self-portrait. cellF is an autonomous, bioanalogue electronic musical instrument designed to operate independently and interact with human musicians. The instrument is controlled by a bioengineered neural network or ‘brain’ derived from skin cells using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology that is housed in a custom built synthesiser ‘body’.

Robert Casteels has composed a growing corpus of more than 100 musical works cross cultures, genres and disciplines. These range from miniature to large-scale works in the European tradition, as well as multidisciplinary works which combine European, Chinese and Indian instruments, as well as the gamelan, together with computer-generated sound and images. Instances of space for creative interaction between the performers in these compositions have been far and few between.

The aim of this panel session is to analyze and compare possible new venues, media, methodologies and forms that generative practices are taking today. We claim that a combination of analytical, playful and critical approaches in understanding and using technologies is important in today’s art world. The discussions will start by addressing the creative and cognitive aspects of procedural fluency in creating, reading or interpreting a generative artwork.

What does it mean to be a global designer of tomorrow? The framework of design education has to respond to the changes in the landscape. The characteristics layered by sequential, experiential and iterative learning, and pedagogical knowledge and understanding are not acquired passively but in an active manner through personal experience and experiential activities; and that learning is based on problem-solving and an exploration of a particular line of inquiry and an active engagement with ideas.

A theory of Cybernetic-Existentialism is proposed in the light of emerging themes within contemporary arts and performance that appear to relate simultaneously to both fields and to fuse them. Cybernetic-Existentialist ideas are also increasingly prevalent within everyday life and popular culture, and the Disney film Frozen (2013) is examined as an illustration.