About Urban Screens—

Exploring the rapidly evolving landscape for digital arts and culture, NFT Asia presents Urban Screens, in partnership with Singapore Art Week 2023 and Falcon Media. This showcase will feature six digital and new media artists in Singapore, highlight the multiplicity of the medium and shed insights into the artistic practices and experiments at the frontier of new technologies.

This programme is also accessible as a physical digital billboard activation at Fortune Centre from 6—15 January 2023. To find out more about the physical activation, please click this link. 
 

Artworks—

1. The Shimmering Veil III 
by Shavonne Wong

Medium: 3D Animation
Runtime: 22 secs
Year of Creation: 2022 



This is an exploration of self-expression through a mask that embodies all the facets of our life. The Shimmering Veil is a series of works filled with moving gemstones covering a face like a mask. This work explores the idea of how we often hide behind the highlight reels of our lives. We put the best and most glorified side of us forward, ever shining and changing according to the trends, just so as to protect the things we wish to be hidden.

Learn more about the artist's works: Twitter | Instagram

2. At Dusk, We Thread the Earth
by Arabelle Zhuang

Medium: Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) Moving Image
Runtime: 3 mins, 25 secs
Year of Creation: 2022 



Inspired by the Sanskrit word “godhūli”, which refers to the beautiful illumination of dust particles sweeping into the air as grazing cows return home at sunset, At Dusk, We Tread the Earth denotes an imagery of vastness and stillness, where earth and sky meet at the horizon.

The GAN artwork has been trained with the artist's images of Singapore's botany and landscape, seeking to enkindle the innate desire and need within our inner self to touch, feel, and experience what lies beneath our feet and beyond. What does it mean to see the world with our hands, and hear the ground with our feet?

From aboveground to the earth’s womb, from the visible realm to unknown possibilities, from moments of contemplation to powerful bursts of energy, we are pulled into a deeper state of consciousness. At the end of it all, At Dusk, We Tread the Earth is a homecoming— a returning to nature, and to the ground where we came from and tread on.

Learn more about the artist's works: Twitter | Instagram

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3. One Pearl Bank—Loading Loading
by Ernest Wu

Medium: Moving Image
Runtime: 25 secs
Year of Creation: 2022 

One Pearl Bank, formerly known as Pearl Bank Apartments, is a residential development in Chinatown that was slated for completion in 2023. Despite attempts to conserve and protect the building, a key landmark of Singapore modernist architecture, it was officially demolished back in 2019. 3 years on, it is set to become a prominent addition to the skyline of Chinatown.

Loading loading is a series of images stuck in the perpetual state of loading. The series is a record of our time and will continue to be updated as the world continues to change.

Learn more about the artist's works: Twitter | Instagram

We take on different shapes, different forms, sometimes. Depending on where we are, who we're with. We try to adapt the best we can just so we can be seen a little longer in an attempt to be remembered. But at the cost of forgetting who we were before.

Learn more about the artist's works: Twitter | Instagram

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This piece is constructed from personally harvested data collected in a neighborhood of District 15, a region of Singapore where the artist grew up in. Each ring represents a loop made within the neighbourhood and each cylinder the intensity of the light captured on a homemade lux sensor. Using Python, the light data, coupled with GPS data was mapped and generated into the 3D cylinders that comprise this chandelier/space station-like form. Displayed as a parametrically generated 3D model, D15 presents a differentiated representation of the walk experience. 

D15 is part of the Path Project where real-time luminous intensity (lux) readings coupled with GPS data collected on personal walks across familiar and unfamiliar environments. Data is then mapped and manifested into alien or abstract landscapes taking viewers on a metaphysical journey that visualizes the intangible elements of space and the natural or urban environment.

Learn more about the artist's works: Instagram

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6. First Light III
by Wyn–Lyn Tan

A collaboration between artist and machine. A dance between digital and analog. StyleGan algorithms are trained on images of the artist's own physical paintings made over the past decade. 

The shape-shifting landscape orbits between the real and the surreal, the digital and the sensuous textures of painting. Imaginary peaks morph and evolve as the machine builds and discovers its own mirage of latent spaces. We traverse an endless landscape through time, seeking out new dawns beyond the cosmos.

Learn more about the artist's works: Twitter | Instagram

Urban Screens is presented and curated by NFT Asia, in—partnership with Singapore Art Week 2023, supported by Falcon Media. 

About NFT Asia
NFT Asia is an artist-led collective centred on supporting Asian and Asia-based artists in Web 3.0. We are focused on sharing resources, creating opportunities and fostering close connections. Since our founding in March 2021, we have exhibited in Singapore, Dubai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York, and Bangkok, and shown the works of over 80 artists. Through our digital channels, we have over 4,500 members on Discord and close to 20,000 followers on Twitter.

To learn more about NFT Asia, please visit NFT Asia's Website | Twitter | Discord | Instagram