Organised by Supernormal, Adaptations features artists who work with technology in different capacities and formats. These might include high-tech implementation of Artifical Intelligence, or low-tech mechanical devices but the works featured demonstrates the poetics of using tech as an artistic medium.
The exhibition will showcase diverse practices ranging from video art, device art, computational art as well as hybrid practices combining digital and traditional media. Key highlights of the exhibition include programming such as technology based workshops by artists and a survey of new media practices in Singapore.
Poetic Motions
Dates : 8/8/17 – 22/8/17
Opening Hours : Tuesdays – Sundays, 11 – 8pm
Supernormal presents Poetic Motions, a solo exhibition by Matthias Hillner. Images are fast replacing words in our daily conversations. We speak in emojis and memes, and our love for image-driven social media, such as Instagram and Snapchat, point to the inadequacy of the written word in our increasingly visual world today. Faced with an information overload, reading texts is seen as too tiring—a process of analysis that is too slow, static, and simply out of sync with the times. Through typography, Matthias Hillner has been exploring ways to revitalise the written word through design. His series of prints, sculptures and digital installations are “typographic gestures” that sit in-between image and text, abstract and figure, as well as real and virtual. They can be seen, could be read, may be understood and certainly questioned. They are words, and they are not.
Introduction text by Justin Zhuang
Artist Biography
Having started out in advertising photography, Matthias Hillner, who is of German origin, subsequently studied Visual Communication. In 1999 Matthias Hillner relocated to London, UK, where he graduated with MA in Communication Art and Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA) two years later. He then worked for a range of design agencies including Pentagram Design in London, until he returned to the RCA in 2004 in order to investigate what he termed as virtual typography.
Whilst studying digital communications, and the pace thereof, Matthias defined virtual typography as that which appears almost typographical. In line with his investigations, he experimented with quasi-typographical letterforms on screen and in the context of fine art. His MPhil thesis was published in book form in 2009. Meanwhile, in 2005, Matthias had secured a business development award from NESTA (The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts), and set up Studio for Virtual Typography, a design consultancy that specialised in time-based multimedia communications.
He started to teach design in 2005, and in 2009 he shifted his design research towards the areas of innovation strategies and design business management. In 2012 he started a part-time PhD in this subject area at the RCA, and in 2015 he moved to Singapore in order to work for LASALLE College of the Arts, where he is now Head of School, Design Communication.
Opening Hours : Tuesdays – Sundays, 11 – 7pm
Supernormal is an independent art space that strives to present experimental and offbeat works and projects, ranging from design to artistic practises, and the in-betweens. Housed in the characteristic building at 333 Kreta Ayer Road, Supernormal hopes to create a creative and experimental platform for new possibilities in Singapore’s creative and artistic landscape.
Singapore Arts Festival
Not too long ago, the National Arts Council of Singapore organized the Singapore Arts Festival which is an annual arts event in the country. This would be one of the most important and significant events on the art calendar both in Singapore and abroad. The month long event is one of the most celebrated event which is observed and enjoyed by people all across the country.
One would be able to learn more and appreciate the art scene of Singapore at the festival as there were all types of activities and programmes that include exhibitions by fine artists, visual artists and sculptors, performances like stage plays, theater and music as well as many others. Local Singaporean artists were heavily involved with the festival while many from the international scene too were involved in showcasing their works during the festival.
The first festival was launched in 1977 and this was widely regarded as a national event where the local arts and culture are showcased and celebrated. Since then, it has been held each year and the widely anticipated event allows artists the platform to show the world their artistry, techniques and body of art work. Today it is considered as one of the catalysts of the Singaporean art scene which is positioning itself as the cultural and arts hub of the region and the world.
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