Unless you’ve intentionally carved out time in your schedule from 7:30pm to midnight, chances are you won’t be able to cover all of the Singapore Night Festival 2018 happening this weekend in one leisurely walk. While this year’s edition of the festival includes new elements like cross-disciplinary installations, the artworks are also a tad more spread out compared to last year. Stretching from Dhoby Ghaut Green all the way into Raffles City, 14 installations make up the Night Lights segment peppered around the Bras Basah.Bugis precinct. Here’s our take on what’s most worth your time.
An underwater forest
Aquatic Dream by Lekker Design and Auditoire
Easily the most eye-catching of the installations in this year’s line-up, Aquatic Dream sits on the lawn of the National Museum of Singapore—a mesmerizing, aquamarine-hued set-up complete with a school of koi, suspended jellyfish, and glittering corals dancing in the breeze. Built by design practice Lekker Architects and experiential marketing agency Auditoire, it doesn’t photograph as nicely as you’d hope; but it’s the closest you’ll get to living like the Little Mermaid.
A cloud of dancing lights
Pulse by Galina Mihaleva, Hedren Sum, Pat Pataranutaporn, Kathrin Albers and Audrey Ng
The area around the Armenian Church might be a little hidden with scaffolding, but it’s worth seeking out Pulse for an experiential walk-through. The main event is a massive, dreamy awning stringing together 10km of cloth, on which colorful lights are projected; they change when activated by sound and voice. The entire surface is meant to look like a living membrane that beats with a spontaneous pulse (to reflect the pulse of our quick-changing, digital society)—the artists even studied the algorithm of how cells divide, as inspiration. Come by on the weekends to watch a dancer in a dress of the same textures move sensuously in time with the changing lights and music.
Life-sized Lego on steroids
Hyperbands by kopI/O
Motion-sensor light design seems to be the theme for this year’s Night Lights. Located aptly at the LTA Walkway next to SMRT headquarters, this Lego-like structure of digital light masses aims to physically embody the energy of our fast-paced city through the dynamic movements of light. The group of students who created it carved out an archway too, to apparently make it even more Instagram-friendly. Admire it from afar and you’ll see a single flowing ribbon of light that feeds through the work like a bolt of electricity—now where’s that kind of lightning efficiency when it comes to our stalled MRT trains, huh?
Word vomit actualized
Before The Word by Pierre Ranzini and Cristina Di Pasqual
The lawn of beanbags at CHIJMES has a new addition—a pile of 60 light-up letters. A motion-sensor stand lets visitors control how the lights of the various letters blink and change via Airbender-type movements. The French artist duo are questioning how we as a civilization use language to convey our version of reality and seek harmony—but somehow we think all people will be seeking here is the best angle for the ‘gram.
2 minutes in outer space
Odyssey by Arnaud Pottier and Thimothee Mironneau
Did we not call it when we predicted projection mapping wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon? End your Night Fest rendezvous with a moment at the Singapore Art Museum, which may be wrapping up its restoration works, but proves an ace façade to project art. This particular work is a seamless, trippy loop with a cosmic theme spanning the explosive Big Bang, Mars, and the galactic wonders of the Universe. We could spend hours re-watching and discover a new detail each time.
And it only gets better. 54 performances and a buzzing Festival Village will be up next weekend (Aug 23-25), so be prepared to head back down to the area then.
Singapore Night Festival 2018 happens Aug 17-25, 7.30pm-12mn, at various locations around the Bras Basah.Bugis precinct. More information here.
