KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — If you happen to be in Singapore right now or over the weekend, maybe make some time to visit the ArtScience Museum.
What's happening? A free exhibition that is a little cool, a little fun and in some ways more than a little enlightening.
ArtScience in Focus: MeshMinds 2.0 #ArtxTechforGood is a collection of various installations that combine art with technology to help build awareness about the challenges facing our planet.
What is there to see? If you're into virtual reality experiences, Our Ocean Life by Warrior9 creates a simulation of being in the ocean with one mission: to collect all the plastic refuse you can.
The VR experience, while being fairly simple to learn, is a sobering reminder of just how much plastic lies in the ocean — with the player being faced with just how daunting the current plastic pollution situation is.
As far as affecting experiences go, Hold My Gaze by Andrew Loh is an ingenious use of Apple's True Depth camera.
The installation uses the camera to help you control, with your facial movements and expressions an avatar, pictured against a backdrop of a constantly changing forest.
Loh said it was an attempt to express how we get too easily used to the effects of, say, the haze — going from being indignant to a creeping apathy. The True Depth camera can be set to respond only with direct eye contact — reflecting the artist's intention; for us not to look away from the destruction of our forests and the toll we cannot keep paying.
A more hopeful view of the world's possibilities can be seen in André Wee's A Better Tomorrow — an exhibition of art on canvas that is more than it seems.
Using a smartphone camera, QR codes will unlock hidden AR scenes on the art and you will see digital, living drawings of buildings in Singapore re-imagined, to create a greener, more sustainable vision of the future.
Wee worked on an iMac Pro as well as the Procreate app on the iPad Pro to create this unique visual experience.
These are just a few of the exhibits on show that promise to give you more than a passive look at the artists' work.
The exhibition will run until March 17, 2019 (Sunday) at the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Admission is free.
