Melvin Phua

Enquiries in Art and Technology

1st July, Friday 2005

at p-10, 10 Perumal Road

7.30 – 9.30pm



Synopsis

Art and its expressions have never been separated from the technologies of its times, whether it is sculpting tools, printmaking or photography. Technology, from its Greek root words ‘tekhne’ and ‘logos’, suggest a study of art/craft.



The forum will discuss Technology, not simply as specialized technical enquiry or tools in the hands of artists, but as cultural creator and commentator, much like Art. Given the brisk changes from industrialism to mass media explosion, to the information economies and globalization, technologies used to create art have changed rapidly.



Ultimately, both Technology and Art are invested with cultural values, ideologies, ethical concerns, which are at the same time shaped by political and economic determinants. The forum hopes to address the following questions and more:



How do Art and Technology mutually inform each other?



How do artist relate to the world of research, in particular with new technologies and how does the research further their own artistic agendas?



Where do technologists and artists get their ideas and how do they explore their ideas? How are art research and techno-scientific research different?



Does the process of enquiry differ in art and technology and how do they affect/influence the collaboration?

Panel
Moderator : Shirley Soh

Discussants :
Woon Tien Wei, Artist, tsunami.net
Melvin Phua, Scientist, tsunami.net
Xu Ke, Research Engineer, Mixed Reality Lab, NUS
Margaret Tan, Artist participant, Artists-in-Labs Project, Switzerland


For Enquiries

Web: www.p-10.org/exchange/

Tel: +65 62940041

Exchange 05 is a collaborative art event conceptualized and organized by p-10 and WITA and supported by National Arts Council Singapore.

Biography
Melvin Phua received his B.SC in Physics from Brown University, USA in 1996, with his thesis on Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation across the sky, building empirical data for deciding between competing theories on the structure and evolution of the universe. His research interests include differential geometry, holography, cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. A founding member of tsunamii.net, he returned to Singapore to work, first, for the Defence Science & Technology Agency in the R&D department (1998-2000) and then at the Defence Science Organisation (DSO) National Laboratories, where he is currently based as a research engineer in the field of information security. Melvin’s recreation is flying.

Margaret Tan is a practicing artist based in Singapore. She was awarded the Chen Chong Swee Arts Scholarship (Overseas), National Arts Council Singapore and now holds an MA in Interactive Media from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She was the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award in her Bachelor of Fine Arts programme, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology/Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts and has been Artist-in-Residence with the Cyberarts and Cyberculture Initiative, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore and Artist-in-Labs Pro ject (Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology, Alpnach), University of Applied Sciences and Arts Zurich, Switzerland. Her works have been showcased both locally and internationally in exhibitions such as the Nokia Singapore Art 2001, Singapore Art Museum; From My Fingers: Living in the Technological Age, Kaoshiung Museum of Fine Art, Taipei and ISEA 2002 (Oria), Nagoya, Japan.

Woon Tien Wei is an artist who works and lives in Singapore. He was the President of The Artists Village (2001), co-director of The Danger Museum (since 1998) and a founding member of a net art collective tsunamii.net (2001). His practice can be seen as collaborations between himself and other individuals/organisations/collectives. His exhibitions include Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002), SOFT, InIVA (2002), Post-Ulu, Substation, Singapore (2000), Dream Plan Project, Kwanhoon Gallery Seoul, Korea (1999).

Xu Ke received his B. Sc. Hons. and MA. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the NUS in 2001 and 2003 respectively. He is presently the Secretary of ACM SIGCHI Singapore Chapter, and the Program Committee member of First Australian Workshop on Network Support for Interactive Multimedia and Games (NSIM'04). As a Research Engineer in the Mixed Reality Lab at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NUS, Xu Ke has been working on research covering augmented and virtual reality, tangible human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, image processing and computer vision, specially exploring the robust natural feature tracking techniques for the wearable computers. He has also worked very closely with two Spanish artists from Polytechnic University of Valencia, and their new media art work, which was disp layed in Singapore Art Museum for half a year, won the prize in Murciajoven04 art competition.