HAVE YOU FOUND YOUR SPACE IN THE CLOUDS?
About
PLURITOPIA
Pluritopia is a part of the joint initiative between the National Arts Council Singapore (NAC) and the Arts Council Korea (ARKO) under the signed Memorandum of Understanding in promoting arts and culture exchange between artists, creatives and technologists of the two nations. Pluritopia - produced and curated by Spang & Lei, is centred on the idea of pluralism. Pluritopia is a portmanteau from “plural” and “universe”; where multiple universes exist, collide, and merge. Pluritopia aims to address the current “crisis” & post-pandemic art and technology landscape through a multi-tier Cloud platform.
ABOUT PLURITOPIA CLOUD STUDIOS
Cloud Studios is the first tier of Pluritopia Cloud platform. Cloud Studios invites Singaporean and Korean artists, creatives, and technologists across different geographical locations to build virtual environments in the Cloud that will grow into a larger Pluritopia multiverse overtime. These environments are virtual versions of artists' studios dedicated to remote online dialogue, collaboration and experimentation. Pluritopia Cloud Studios is a glimpse into the possibilities for future online remote artistic practices, and collaboration beyond the post-pandemic world.
OPEN CALL INTRODUCTION SESSION
Register your interest to join us in ZOOM
Saturday, 9 Oct 2021, 4:00 PM (Singapore time: GMT+8)
For Pluritopia Open Call Introduction
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
The inaugural Open Call has now closed. We are now in the process of evaluating all proposals plans. Open Call results will be announced soon. Stay tuned for the latest update.
TIMELINE
24 Oct 2021 Open Call for Cloud Studios
8 Nov 2021 Evaluation of Cloud Studios Applications
Cloud Studios Virtual Tours
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 1
Day 2
17 Oct 2021 Open Call for Cloud Studios
7 Nov 2021 Evaluation of Cloud Studios Applications
Cloud Studios Virtual Tours
ABOUT THE PRODUCER/CURATOR
Spang & Lei is a Singapore-based duo composed of Serena Pang and Ng Wen Lei.
Their practice engages the performativity of participatory experiences while examining the interstices in creation and regulation of bodies and places brought about by digital and emerging technologies. Spang & Lei’s research in frameworks for collaborative dynamics and technology has led them to produce and curate multiple local and international arts and tech programmes.
Serena endeavors to be a perceptive performer-archivist; unpacking everyday performativity as a reification of the socio-political Self. She holds a M.A in Performance Studies from NYU and was awarded “2014 Performance Studies Emerging Scholar Award” by NYU’s Department of Performance Studies.
Wen Lei is an artist and educator and hopes to initiate a dialogue between the state of Singapore’s digital art and technology with participatory politics. Wen Lei is a graduate of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program (ITP) and was awarded the Tisch School of the Arts Scholarship from NYU, New York in 2012 - 2014.
PLURITOPIA VOYAGERS


Urich Lau, born 1975, is a visual artist, independent curator and art educator based in Singapore. Focusing in video art, photography and media art, he has presented works in Singapore and internationally. Graduated with a Master of Fine Art from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2004, he is a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts. He is also the founding member of the art collective INTER–MISSION and the studio Hothouse.


Based in Singapore, Goh Chun Aik is interested in the human mind and how we perceive the world. He believes that reality is built upon perceptions. Graduated with a degree in psychology, he turns to art as a form of self-expression and a platform for the exchange of narratives and ideas.
Goh's works are inspired by a variety of subjects; from emotions to experiences, the mundane to the absurd, the insignificant to the critical. His practice strives to investigate our relationships with each other, with art, and with the world by looking both within and without.


Jo is an artist working with digital and physical spaces that question the role of presence, agency, and creation of meaning and value in our increasingly automated world, where views of "machine as tool" and "machine as creator" are being challenged. She also works with emerging digital technologies to practice a range of modes in space-making, some of which include speculative fiction and visuals using machine learning, virtual reality, and large-scale projections. Her recent work explores perceptions of digital media today and attempts to reveal the tangibility beneath digital works in today’s world of rapid content production.


Bryan dabbles in experience design in the form of interactive art, installation, and devices. His works are often speculative, investigating alternate or absurd interpretations of reality through his vision. Using his training in product design, experience design, and interactive media, Bryan strives to create meaningful and novel engagement for his audience by incorporating the use of senses, emotions, and thought to process his works.
Bryan graduated from Nanyang Technological University, School of Art, Design, and Media with a BFA in Design Art, specialising in Interactive Media. He previously graduated with a Diploma in Experience and Product Design from Singapore Polytechnic.


Jake Tan (b.1994) is a New Media Artist, Adjunct Lecturer at Nanyang Technological University and Temasek Polytechnic, and Co-Founder of SERIAL COMMUNICATION, a studio that focuses on Research & Development of proprietary digital assets in the fields on Creative Technology, Blockchain and Extended Reality(XR).
Jake's artistic practice focuses on the intersection between nature, technology and society, where he has exhibited and was part of artistic residencies in Singapore, Austria and Germany. To create Jake's New Media Art, it typically involves technological research & development in the following realms: physically through microcontroller and electronics programming, 3D printing and scanning. Digitally through programming, AR/VR/MR production through game engines and intangibly through projection mapping and XR focused user interface and experience design.
His studio, SERIAL COMMUNICATION, was selected for an incubation grant by Nanyang Technological University, School of Art, Media and Design, Singapore, where he also received his BFA degree in Interactive Media(2020), and MiniMasters™ in General Management(2021) in Nanyang Business School.


Spacetime is a multi-disciplinary art collective, whose work spans the physical and virtual worlds, and the interstitial spaces between. Using various media, encompassing sculpture, photography, illustration and speculative digital design, the collective’s objective is to materialise the magic immanent in our built environment. The long-standing collaboration between Spacetime members Finbarr Fallon and Claire Goh has most recently yielded the multimedia work Flat Earth, which was shown at The Private Museum’s 3+3+3 exhibition (2021).


Avik is a composer and sound designer obsessed with non-linear and interactive media. He embraces the use of space as a tool for musical structure and storytelling through his sound installations and electro-acoustic works. His latest works focus on ambience and space, and takes a calm, meditative approach to rhythm, with pieces such as i’ll be there for you and memories.
His music has been performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Transient Canvas and Eureka Ensemble, as well as been used in online and mobile video games such as Covidopoly. Avik studied at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee under Tina Tallon and Felipe Lara, and currently leads Liria Music Prep, a music preparation service, while working as an orchestral librarian at the Singapore Symphony.
His main aspirations are to create a video game audio company, and thus finally create a soundtrack for his own life, all while converting his beautiful Minecraft home into a real one.


Established in 2007, Ding Yi is Singapore’s most prodigious Chinese chamber ensemble and the pioneer of the two major local Chinese music events, the Ding Yi Chinese Chamber Music Festival and the composition competition and symposium–Composium. The ensemble has captivated audiences with its distinctive approach to music-making and dedication to showcasing a vast repertoire that ranges from traditional Chinese music to contemporary interpretations and cross-genre works, and collaborated with prominent Chinese musicians including Min Huifen, Lu Chunling, Gong Yi and Feng Shaoxian in many concerts, receiving accolades from critics and audiences alike.


Rachel Nip is a choreographer, performer and arts manager based in Singapore. Her practice includes the exploration of bodies and movement in relation to architecture and public spaces by creating site-specific dance works. She has created original works at City College of San Francisco in San Francisco, The Theatre Practice and The Substation in Singapore. As part of “Hello, How Do You Move?”, with Ammar ‘Ameezy’, a Deaf choreographer and filmmaker, Rachel co-creates projects inspired by Deaf culture, language and perspectives. She was recently seen in "Where Are You?”, a devised theatre work with W!ld Rice Theatre.


Timothi Lim (Timothi Ellim) is a Creative Director (Augmented Reality) at The Doodle People.
As a Creative Director, Timothi leads The Doodle People to develop AR effects and standalone apps to empower brand awareness, inspire clients, and support AR R&D for their business.
As an individual, Timothi is an interactive media developer who seeks to connect generations through the union of physical and digital lifestyles. Timothi has developed interactive media works for a wide range of platforms from physical card games to the Hololens and Magic Leap headsets. His work has received awards and has been showcased at IndieCade, E3, and GDC. In his time as an interactive media developer, Timothi has worked with a wide range of firms including Grab Games, Sony Santa Monica, Riot Games, Marvel Entertainment, and Seagate Technologies.


A visual creator for both dance and film, Ammar believes in creating experiences that integrate the relationship between the deaf and hearing world. He is an Associate Artist of Access Path Productions and co-founder of Hello, How Do You Move?, a movement collective that has created works and research inspired by deaf culture and experiences. As resident choreographer and instructor for Redeafination, Singapore’s deaf dance crew since 2011 and trainer for Singapore Repertory Theatre’s Inclusive Young Company, he aims to spread the passion of dance to youths with disabilities.


Debbie Ding (DBBD.SG) is a visual artist and technologist whose interests range from historical research and urban geography to visions of the future. Using interactive computer simulations, rapid prototyping, and other visual technologies, she creates works about subjects such as map traps, lost islands (Pulau Saigon), World War II histories, soil, bomb shelters, and public housing void decks. She reworks and reappropriates formal, qualitative approaches to collecting, labelling, organising, and interpreting assemblages of information – using this to open up possibilities for alternative constructions of knowledge.
SINGAPOREAN PLURITOPIA VOYAGERS


Urich Lau, born 1975, is a visual artist, independent curator and art educator based in Singapore. Focusing in video art, photography and media art, he has presented works in Singapore and internationally. Graduated with a Master of Fine Art from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2004, he is a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts. He is also the founding member of the art collective INTER–MISSION and the studio Hothouse.


Based in Singapore, Goh Chun Aik is interested in the human mind and how we perceive the world. He believes that reality is built upon perceptions. Graduated with a degree in psychology, he turns to art as a form of self-expression and a platform for the exchange of narratives and ideas.
Goh's works are inspired by a variety of subjects; from emotions to experiences, the mundane to the absurd, the insignificant to the critical. His practice strives to investigate our relationships with each other, with art, and with the world by looking both within and without.


Jo is an artist working with digital and physical spaces that question the role of presence, agency, and creation of meaning and value in our increasingly automated world, where views of "machine as tool" and "machine as creator" are being challenged. She also works with emerging digital technologies to practice a range of modes in space-making, some of which include speculative fiction and visuals using machine learning, virtual reality, and large-scale projections. Her recent work explores perceptions of digital media today and attempts to reveal the tangibility beneath digital works in today’s world of rapid content production.


Bryan dabbles in experience design in the form of interactive art, installation, and devices. His works are often speculative, investigating alternate or absurd interpretations of reality through his vision. Using his training in product design, experience design, and interactive media, Bryan strives to create meaningful and novel engagement for his audience by incorporating the use of senses, emotions, and thought to process his works.
Bryan graduated from Nanyang Technological University, School of Art, Design, and Media with a BFA in Design Art, specialising in Interactive Media. He previously graduated with a Diploma in Experience and Product Design from Singapore Polytechnic.


Jake Tan (b.1994) is a New Media Artist, Adjunct Lecturer at Nanyang Technological University and Temasek Polytechnic, and Co-Founder of SERIAL COMMUNICATION, a studio that focuses on Research & Development of proprietary digital assets in the fields on Creative Technology, Blockchain and Extended Reality(XR).
Jake's artistic practice focuses on the intersection between nature, technology and society, where he has exhibited and was part of artistic residencies in Singapore, Austria and Germany. To create Jake's New Media Art, it typically involves technological research & development in the following realms: physically through microcontroller and electronics programming, 3D printing and scanning. Digitally through programming, AR/VR/MR production through game engines and intangibly through projection mapping and XR focused user interface and experience design.
His studio, SERIAL COMMUNICATION, was selected for an incubation grant by Nanyang Technological University, School of Art, Media and Design, Singapore, where he also received his BFA degree in Interactive Media(2020), and MiniMasters™ in General Management(2021) in Nanyang Business School.


Spacetime is a multi-disciplinary art collective, whose work spans the physical and virtual worlds, and the interstitial spaces between. Using various media, encompassing sculpture, photography, illustration and speculative digital design, the collective’s objective is to materialise the magic immanent in our built environment. The long-standing collaboration between Spacetime members Finbarr Fallon and Claire Goh has most recently yielded the multimedia work Flat Earth, which was shown at The Private Museum’s 3+3+3 exhibition (2021).


Avik is a composer and sound designer obsessed with non-linear and interactive media. He embraces the use of space as a tool for musical structure and storytelling through his sound installations and electro-acoustic works. His latest works focus on ambience and space, and takes a calm, meditative approach to rhythm, with pieces such as i’ll be there for you and memories.
His music has been performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Transient Canvas and Eureka Ensemble, as well as been used in online and mobile video games such as Covidopoly. Avik studied at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee under Tina Tallon and Felipe Lara, and currently leads Liria Music Prep, a music preparation service, while working as an orchestral librarian at the Singapore Symphony.
His main aspirations are to create a video game audio company, and thus finally create a soundtrack for his own life, all while converting his beautiful Minecraft home into a real one.


Established in 2007, Ding Yi is Singapore’s most prodigious Chinese chamber ensemble and the pioneer of the two major local Chinese music events, the Ding Yi Chinese Chamber Music Festival and the composition competition and symposium–Composium. The ensemble has captivated audiences with its distinctive approach to music-making and dedication to showcasing a vast repertoire that ranges from traditional Chinese music to contemporary interpretations and cross-genre works, and collaborated with prominent Chinese musicians including Min Huifen, Lu Chunling, Gong Yi and Feng Shaoxian in many concerts, receiving accolades from critics and audiences alike.


Rachel Nip is a choreographer, performer and arts manager based in Singapore. Her practice includes the exploration of bodies and movement in relation to architecture and public spaces by creating site-specific dance works. She has created original works at City College of San Francisco in San Francisco, The Theatre Practice and The Substation in Singapore. As part of “Hello, How Do You Move?”, with Ammar ‘Ameezy’, a Deaf choreographer and filmmaker, Rachel co-creates projects inspired by Deaf culture, language and perspectives. She was recently seen in "Where Are You?”, a devised theatre work with W!ld Rice Theatre.


Timothi Lim (Timothi Ellim) is a Creative Director (Augmented Reality) at The Doodle People.
As a Creative Director, Timothi leads The Doodle People to develop AR effects and standalone apps to empower brand awareness, inspire clients, and support AR R&D for their business.
As an individual, Timothi is an interactive media developer who seeks to connect generations through the union of physical and digital lifestyles. Timothi has developed interactive media works for a wide range of platforms from physical card games to the Hololens and Magic Leap headsets. His work has received awards and has been showcased at IndieCade, E3, and GDC. In his time as an interactive media developer, Timothi has worked with a wide range of firms including Grab Games, Sony Santa Monica, Riot Games, Marvel Entertainment, and Seagate Technologies.


A visual creator for both dance and film, Ammar believes in creating experiences that integrate the relationship between the deaf and hearing world. He is an Associate Artist of Access Path Productions and co-founder of Hello, How Do You Move?, a movement collective that has created works and research inspired by deaf culture and experiences. As resident choreographer and instructor for Redeafination, Singapore’s deaf dance crew since 2011 and trainer for Singapore Repertory Theatre’s Inclusive Young Company, he aims to spread the passion of dance to youths with disabilities.


Debbie Ding (DBBD.SG) is a visual artist and technologist whose interests range from historical research and urban geography to visions of the future. Using interactive computer simulations, rapid prototyping, and other visual technologies, she creates works about subjects such as map traps, lost islands (Pulau Saigon), World War II histories, soil, bomb shelters, and public housing void decks. She reworks and reappropriates formal, qualitative approaches to collecting, labelling, organising, and interpreting assemblages of information – using this to open up possibilities for alternative constructions of knowledge.
KOREAN CURATORS
Jyeong Yeon Janice Kim is an independent curator based in Seoul. Her most recent project is Invisible Cities, the 2020-2021 Korea-Singapore Joint Funding Exchange Program. Prior to this, Kim was the chief curator of the exhibition and art programs for Hyundai Card Storage and Design Library in Seoul. She created a performing art series called the Hyundai Card Art Talk, and successfully launched the Gapado International Artist Residence in Gapa Island, Korea. She also participated in the Gillman Barracks Project in Singapore, a contemporary art hub in the Southeast Asian region, and ran Space Cottonseed as the establishing director.
Seungah Lee is a curator, educator and researcher, with a BA degree in Fine Arts from Ewha Womens University, Korea and an MA degree in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. She also did her PhD course work in Media Design from Ewha Womens University, Korea. Seungah Lee is currently working as a director of Urban Art Lab in Seoul and a creative director of space TYPE. She has extensive experience and has curated many experimental projects and international exhibitions in various countries like Korea, Singapore, and USA.
ASSISTANTS TO KOREAN CURATORS
Malgeum Kim is an independent curator and writer with a Science of Art and B.A. Architecture & Arts and Art Theory from Hongik University, Seoul. She is now pursuing an M.A degree in Art Theory in the same university. Her major interest covers architecture, the city, the space, and recently it is focused on how humans sense virtual reality. Kim has curated several exhibitions based on her interest in the city and space, she also has several publication projects underway. Kim is located between Architecture and Art, trying to find the interdisciplinary possibility.
Hyun Jeoung Moon is an independent curator and researcher. She pays attention to cutting-edge technology and media such as posthumanism and bioart, and works with interest in how art can mediate the gap between humans and technology. Hyun Jeoung received a B.A degree in Art Theory from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea, and completed her M.A with the same degree.
KOREAN PLURITOPIA VOYAGERS


Kira Kim is a graduate of Kyoungwon University of Fine Art and Sculpture in Sungnam, South Korea, and Goldsmith College, University of London (U.K.). He actively expresses the social responsibility of art and artists through video and photography. His work has been shown internationally, with the intent to deliver messages of political and historical controversy. He also examines the operational mechanism of capitalist society, through understanding the eccentric phenomenon of Korean society with consumerism and exploitation, excitement, and sarcasm. As an artisan of capitalism, Kim's work reveals the everyday life of Korean society in a simple but intense way.


(KCTI-GIST)
(KCTI-GIST)
Anna Kim is a prolific multi-media artist currently based in Gwangju, South Korea. Originally from Los Angeles, California, she fundamentally operates from a hybrid identity, through which she freely explores issues of ontology and ‘ecosophical’ perspective upon humanity's relationship with technology and nature in recent times. As a Korean-American, she was deeply influenced by the horrific 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars that came afterward. Her work addresses coping with various psychological traumas of violence, both from personal and societal perspectives. Anna also contemplates art’s potential to offer up modes of subjectivization that are an alternative to the dominant narratives.


nosestudio is a new media art studio founded by the digital creator, Hyunjoon Cho. It began with electronic music in 2012 and expanded into a digital visual studio that mixes 3D animation and real-time rendering technology in 2018. Their solo exhibition Digital Humor in 2020 showcased various forms of 'Digital Particles', interactive sound, digital painting, and installations, also the release of their dance number music Delusions Come True and the game The Great Adventures of Hemeko & CH0_CH0. nosestudio is currently developing "Ideology", an online multi-play game in which communities with different ideologies confront each other in a virtual space.


JeongHo Park is an algorithm artist working with code. He writes a number of interactive sonification applications by data and images. His works are based on interactive design and interactive installation done by creative coding. JeongHo studied design at Hochschule Trier – the Trier University of Applied Science in Germany, where he received his M.A . He also obtained M.A in Music Technology at the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul, Korea. JeongHo’ creative works have been exhibited in New York, Sao Paulo, Cologne, Munich, and many more.


Ga-young An produces multimedia work emphasizing the coexistence of humans and nonhumans in virtual worlds such as on- or offline cultures and games. She makes alternative narratives using Character hacking and SF simulation, reconnecting the obsoleted virtual bodies into the current discourse of technoculture and gender issues. An has directed numerous art game projects and films, and in 2021 she held a solo exhibition Iridium Age: Making New KIN at the Seongbuk children’s museum and at the same year participated in group exhibitions Set up your profiles at Coreana Museum of Art and ONOOOFF at Busan Museum of Art.


Through several individual exhibitions, Sungseok Ahn uses historical records, the situation of reality, and the point where personal experience intersects with his generation, times, countries, and systems. He talks about the 'gap' between individuals and history that creates a variety of landscapes. His explorations studies the landscape of the gap, and the attitude of seeking ways to overcome it and think about what form it is and what people can do when the world's force majeure, mind, spirit, and body are applied and mutated. Sungseok Ahn participated in Young Korean Artists 2019: Liquid Glass Sea at MMCA with his new film <When I Was Born in, Cried and the World Rejoiced>.


Jinseung Jang works with an interest in human prejudice and discrimination, and the possibility of mutual understanding to overcome it. He uses various media such as digital and analog data visualization, audio-visual archive systems, video works, and sculptures to experiment with human perception and cognitive structures. A graduate of Goldsmiths University in London, Jang participated as a Creator in ZER01NE, an open innovation platform. In 2020 Jang was selected for the Public Art New Hero of Public Art Magazine and the Korean Art Creative Academy organized by Arts Council Korea. In 2021, he held his solo exhibition Réalité Simulée.


Based in Berlin and Seoul, TZUSOO envisions a near future in which all human souls are uploaded to computers, and how the virtual world drives the physical world from an anthropological perspective. TZUSOO dreams of a space where various beings can coexist through her art practices that focus on the queerness of the human body, gender, and human rights in the digital generation. TZUSOO is also well known as a music video director who collaborated with rising star musicians. She is a symbol of the first generation of digital natives that freely cross the border between traditional and popular art.


Eun-sol Lee creates a virtual character named Kimberly Lee, who lives on a digital network, spending her time maintaining and repairing it. The name, Kimberly Lee, comes from her experience of not noticing that someone hacked the artist's Instagram in 2017 and changed her name to Kimberly. Eun-sol Lee contributes to Kimberly's survival in the network by exploring the value of digital objects within the digital value system, while planning and executing tasks on various computing platforms in subsequent residences and living environments.


Honam Kim has participated in numerous exhibitions and performances to create an interface by musicalizing various information. He works by utilizing various computing technologies as an open-source and collaboration conduit with artists in various fields. Recently Kim has been focusing on creating a context between sound and material by creating devices.
Gwangmin Hong is a music composer who works with sound and technology based on various possibilities of media and sound. He shows his artworks as a sound & media artist based on electronic music. In addition, he works on soundscapes and playback devices across the boundaries between virtual and reality.
POP A MESSAGE
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