WAKE

Dimensions: 2m x 1.5m, 1920 x 1080 Medium: Video Projection, Mirrors , Film Photography Year: 2023

Inspired by the topic of perceptual awareness, WAKE explores how our environment influences how we see ourselves. The work is executed through two stages - with the first medium of capturing places with analogue film photography, to having them developed and eventually warping these pictures in Adobe After Effects into a animated image sequence. As an Singaporean artist born in 1997, I have lived through a unique space in time where the way of life in Singapore transitioned between manual efforts into the digital. The mediums chosen for these processes seek to highlight the process of time and our consumption of image culture, whilst being unawareness of how things around us have changed.

To complete the piece, a mirror is placed right in front of the projection, with the projection's reflection beaming down on audiences who come chose to take a glimpse of their own reflection. This creates a loop of perspectives, mimicking the constant exchange of energy between what we perceive and the world around us through time.

WAKE was exhibited at Photographic Society Singapore as part of the exhibition "Sonder" in 2023. Throughout the exhibition, postcards of 4 still images from the animated image sequence were made available for audiences, allowing them to bring a memory of the artwork back home with them.

Image taken from the exhibition Sonder, 2023

WAKE is a speculative observation of our world today and all the phenomenon and tendencies of image culture. Human beings are intertwined with our perceptions of the world from the beginning of our lifetime, arriving to this world as part of it's ecosystem and not a separate entity. This piece highlights the loop of constant energy exchange between our inner consciousness and environment around us, acting as channel of self-awareness in understanding how we perceive of own being, despite the influences and alterations done in our spaces, with or without our knowledge.

When the moment of perceptual awareness is genuinely experienced, would we then feel awake in our own living. This piece serves as a channel of self-awareness to audiences, giving them a space to spend time with their own being.

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Image of audience interacting with the installation

Image of Artist Ng Jia Xi with the artwork

Prior of the distortion of images in after effects, these pictures were taken with a 35mm analogue film camera, over a span of two months. Images below show chosen pictures that were used in the distorted animated image sequence. These images consists of places where people spend time with communities or perspectives of what they see when they commute.

Postcards of video stills from the artwork

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Developed images from a 35mm analogue film camera