Adv 1. Singapore: the Trip of a LIFETIME!!

This trip to Singapore was incredible, by far the coolest and most beneficial thing i have ever done. I experienced differnt cultures, i pushed my body to the limit, ive created art that is now in the realm of the public, i meet so many cool people, i learnt a lot of new things about the design world, and made a lot of contacts which will be helpful in the future.

A couple of months ago, i entered a design competition to create an installation in a hotel room.

about 5 weeks ago i found out i had been selected as a finalist, this was AMAZING!!!
I was so estatic!! this is the most excited ive been, and the first time ive ever been selected to be a part of something so big in the art field, after all the competitions i have entered.

I got flown to Singapore, all expenses paid to live in a hotel room and create the design of my entry proposal. There are 16 finalists from around the Asia Pacific region. I am the only one from New Zealand and with no Asian decent. The finalists range from the age of 17 to 27 years, and are from Thailand, China, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand.

The competition was for youths to exchange ideas and meet our peers in art and design from around this region, and to each create our own rooms. The programme was for two weeks. In the first half of the first week, we had lectures and workshops each day, professors from Nantang Technological University of Media, Art and Design (NTU) gave lectures on space and colour and form and drama etc etc. A number of designers and artists have talked about their work and we've had one on one sessions. We had a very interesting introduction to the world of intellectual property from a top lawyer here.

By the end of the first week, we had about three days to 'finish' our individual rooms, for pitching (selling) to the hotel management. When i say finish, i mean realistically they could not be finished in 3 days but the more finshed it was the better you could show your ideas to the judges. An average day here consists of working up to 22 hours and sleeping 2 or 3. So it is a huge deal, a huge amount of work to get done in such little time. We had each $1000 budget, and had to source most of our own materials, not knowing my way around the good places to shop in Singapore added to the stress of trying to work fast. (i spent a lot on taxi fares)

The room i created in the first week is titled 'Optic' its to do with pushing boundaries of what a designer hotel is, and creating more of an 'art' experience, where the room is a difficult place to live in. It aims to break down the space of the room and the function that it has. I painted all the walls in this black and white pattern, and made all the manchester and curtains in the same style. The picture on the left is of me and Johnny Lau, the creative director of CYX, this is from the opening of the exhibition on the last night.

So the judges selected a top 6 at the end of the first week. of which i was one of them!!!!!!!!

okay the second week....

the top six were put into pairs to design a new room, based on us ranking from the 16 who we want to work with. I was incredibly blessed to get my first pick. If you can apprectiate that it is very difficult for me to communicate on artistic intellectual levels with over half of the finalists because of language differences, and all of our designs are quite difffernt , so to integrate a lot of them would require great insight and compromise.

I was paired with Eugene Tan from Singapore. We got on very well, even when very tired and working all night, we were both very focused and got a basic concept in two hours, and so immediatley set about executing it. We had four days, and $3000 budget. He is very intelligent and can talk conceptually far better than i can, and i have more practical experience, so i think it was a good mix. Our ideas are very similar in terms of concepts and how we think things should look, so it wasnt too hard to integrate our deisgn styles. Added bonus was that he was from this country!!!

We worked 20 hour days for four days straight and on the night before judging we worked straight through. Our room was not 'finished' but it was enough. We titled our room 'Defining Boundaries', conceptually it was to do with, breaking down the form of the room and integrating the exterior and the interior

There were 6 judges from different creative fields, architecture, graphic design, media, lecturers etc. Well our presentation, did not go to plan..... we did a very risky performance, where we body painted our selves to fit into the environment, upon reflection it could have been easily 10 times better and could have included some very clever mime. But there was not much that can be done, we were very tired. I was very upset and angry at myself for being so stupid, and knew that it would only be by the Grace of God if we were to win, but we have had some good comments.

i think our room holds up far stronger conceptually than the other two rooms if you are to think about it from the field of fine art, but of course these things are very subjective and this was a more 'design' orientated competition.

All the rooms were on exhibition for a week and are being finished to commercial standards so they can be used by guests.

The experience has been a lot differnt from what i had half expected, and new things kept developing each day. From getting to know the organisers and a little bit of the social situation of Singapore, ive realised waht an incredible risk this event has been. I think one of the main objectives is to really push the media and design industry in Singapore because its only starting to become a big thing here. Animation and gaming is getting very big. Arts and media, is only really starting to kick off in this country, traditionally arts here is viewed as a trade that people who are brainy enough for science get into. and so is nowhere near as higly esteemed as in New Zealand. We are living in The Gallery Hotel, they've given over more than 25 rooms for us to stay in and develop, so they are losing business from that, and they've pretty much given us complete freedom to alter the rooms how we want.

A lot have people have been very nervous about this project, from what i hear... i mean we are 16 youths who have never done this before, and there was no knowing what the standard would be like. There has been a lot of hard work into getting funding and sponsers, lets just say a lot of money has been put into it... But i think it has paid off, this event is getting A LOT of media and press coverage!!!!

The 16 of us each have our own room and we had to sleep with our doors open, to allow tv crews to come in and lots of important people keep coming through on tours to see our progress. They will be screening a kind of reality tv documentary of the CYX experience, which will be interesting to see.

I feel so blessed, this experience has been very amazing and looking back over the two weeks ive been here, although we've had to work incredibly hard, i have really tried to introduce myself and get to know some key people contacts. We have done so much in such a little amount of time. Although winning would have been nice, and it would have been great to get a scholarship to NTU, it has been much more inportant to be exposed to this industry , and to meet so many contacts, who are all going to be very important for me to utilise in the future. As i was saying before, things are developing every day, the organisers were always on the phone trying to get us as much exposure as possible with news media and television and they are always bringing groups of designers and contractors and architects through to see our designs and potentially buy them. I have done so many interviews, and have been in chinese and thai newspapers!!!

The hotel has already started talks of recreating one girls design in some more rooms.

Our rooms are being promoted as prototypes i think, i mean commercially the standard just isnt there, but i was talking to johnny, he is the creative director of this event, he started talking about the top six staying a few extra days after the comp to talk to contractors and manufacturors to see how we can best reproduce and sell our rooms, im astounded that potentially i could launch into a design career in the space of two to three weeks!!! it doesnt quite compute in my brain yet.

So this was an amazing adventure for me. I was in Singapore for nearly 3 weeks, because i stayed a few extra days after the comp so i could actually get the chance to have a look around and do some shopping! I really like Singapore as a place, it is lively and has depth even though its only been about 50 years since its independance, the culture of this place is rich and diverse, and they've mixed alot of it together and are starting to establish their own identity. I will definitely be back again.

" Art and Design are the fields of intellectual property, regulary grazed by unoriginal people, of which the world is 99.99% composed"