Goodbye Substation Gallery! Thanks once again to all those who made my first solo exhibition possible and gave me so much help and support with this - The Substation, my parents, Effendy, Annabelle, Tania, Asylum, Emily & Chris and the rest of the team at Substation, Dominic, Hongda, KK, Steve Black, Lu Jia, Ah Fu, and all my colleagues at Redworks. Thanks must also go to everyone who gave me invaluable advice along the way - Martin, Andreas, Vladimir, Yanying & Bin! And thanks to my gallery sitters for their patience in monitoring the equipiment and helping to set up the somewhat complicated map table every single morning - Vicknes, Nell, and Marc.

\\ is now packed off and rolled up, hopefully to find another venue at which to exhibit again in the near future! Thank you to all who came down to see it! If you've left memories by the riverside, be sure to check back in a few days to see if your card is online at psychogeography.sg/river



Two days ago, one of my fan blades spontaneously broke apart after working tirelessly for almost a full month. The thing about computer fans is that if one blade breaks then the fan is rendered completely useless as a missing blade will cause too much vibration. So I had to amputate it. Poor thing. It does take a heavy toll on all the equipment...



I'll be updating the FULL documentation of all the memories in the next day or so, along with more on the technical setup while its still fresh in my mind! I will be drawing up some models of my setup on sketchup, which I am trying to learn to use properly for once. It is good to be working from home once again.

---

on a geeky sidenote: after spending so much time at Substation,
I became Mayor of Substation on Foursquare....
come and oust me if you dare!

Yesterday Jiekai and his crew popped by to film some things at the gallery, including Debbie rambling on about Singapore River - he's working on a project about Singapore's prehistory. We were talking IP rights where historical material/maps are concerned, and he mentioned a book that sounded pretty interesting: The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History. I want to read that!

Later in the evening, I also recorded a video of some of my ex-colleagues playing with the table. Ridz, Leeyen, Jess and Michele were amongst the first people whom I asked to draw their impressions of the river - more than a year ago. Inbetween working intensively on all those flash banners and microsites, I decided to start collecting sketches from people around me. Some of my renderings were based on their sketches, so it was really interesting to see their responses to it!

\\ from Debbie Ding on Vimeo.

One full month of operating has taken its toll on the poor ancient Macbook inside, which was already slow to begin with, and now suffering a lag of a few seconds. Even Marc (who has been gallery sitting for me recently) has begun to recognise its quirks, like its habit of shutting down suddenly when its too hot. But at least it is still running!

LAST THREE DAYS!

LAST FOUR DAYS of The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline
at the Substation Gallery, 45 Armenian Street, Singapore 179936
Open from 12-9pm, until Sunday

Do come by and see it if you haven't been able to yet! I'll be there on most afternoons.

《新加坡河: 人们心中的断辰线》
xin jia po he: ren men xin zong de duan chen xian



This is the chinese translation of my exhibition title. I gave a short talk about my work at a session called "Re-inhabiting the City" recently and the audience turned out to be more chinese-speaking than initially expected. Siew Ching and others helped to provide a running chinese translation for the session and this was their translation of the title!

I am also thinking that "心理地理学" might be an appropriate translation for "psychogeography". Would any superior chinese speakers like to comment on this!

Last night I spent a considerable number of hours wrestling with Drupal, Views, Location, Gmaps, and the confounding CCK. I dont think I fully understand Drupal's taxonomy yet, so maybe that's why its still a struggle to edit Drupal. And so this morning I woke up early, deleted Drupal off my server, installed Wordpress and WP Geo - AND GOT EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED UP AND RUNNING IN LITERALLY HALF AN HOUR. With simply Wordpress and WP Geo!

Nuff said.

ITS UP AND I'M READY TO DOCUMENT IT ALL!

http://psychogeography.sg/river

---

Site building

I'm no web developer, but a peculiar thing happened again which I don't really understand. Each time I create a new database, it seems to suggest to me that the hostname would naturally be that string of numbers that appears behind it - in this case, the 209 number. In fact, the EVIL, evil MySQL Manager even says that its the Hostname.



But it is not! I actually have to go into phpMyAdmin to find out the real server hostname, which in this case is actually a 216 number as reflected on top. The last time I installed Drupal, I vaguely recall the exact same thing happening? WHY? WHAT IS THAT FIRST MYSTERIOUS NUMBER FOR THEN?



NON COMPRENDRE. Can anyone explain this?

---

psychogeography.sg/river was built with:
Wordpress 3.0
WP Geo Plugin
Foliogrid Template

Flipbook Catalogue

for \\ : The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline

Featuring an essay by Tania De Rozario
Designed by Asylum
Other Writing by Debbie Ding

Available at $16 from The Substation

Flipbook images depict the historical changes in the Singapore River from 1819 to present day, and also projects it into the future, into an imaginary flatline.

THE SHAPE OF THE SINGAPORE RIVER

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september

a series of 20 illustrations of the map of the singapore river, based on collected sketches made by people and what they think the shape of the Singapore River looks like, without making reference to anything else.

HERE THE RIVER LIES

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september

a psychogeographical game in which visitors can leave both real and imagined/mythic memories on locations by the riverside - a 1.5metre x 3.75metre handdrawn map of the Singapore River (with an isometric projection) and its surroundings - where visitors can also indicate which memories they collectively believe in, with small stickers. see what memories lie by the river, or add your own to the map!



after opening night



map of the river



memory cards



a bit like skyscrapers



in the gallery



"LKY Sighting"



"I BECAME A GOD" (at St Andrews Cathedral)



"Monster Creeper taking over the world one creep at a time"



"A Memory of Grandfather"



"She wouldn't come, but..."



"UFO LANDING" (mmm yes, that thing which landed opposite funan)

---

Opening Night, 2 September 2010

Kevin Lim (Whattheart) took some great photos on opening night.
Click on the image above to see more images from his flickr set.
Thanks for sharing these pictures, Kevin!

interactive map table installation

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september
speculating on the shape of the singapore river and city around it
come on down and see it!

equipment used:
15" macbook pro on opening night/13.3" macbook on all other exhibition days
modified ps3 eye camera with m12 mount, 3.6mm lens, 850nm IR filter (from peauproductions)
panasonic PJ503D viewsonic projector
aluminium profiles for projector mount
two mirrors (85cm x 85cm, 40cm x 30cm)
two surveillance camera infrared lights (850nm)
wooden box (80cm x 100cm x 100cm)

software:
reactivision
udp flashlc bridge
flash (coded up in flash builder, as3)
safari + saft (fullscreen mode)

concept, design, and flash programming by debbie ding
hardware construction and mounting by dominic ho and zhuo hongda

BUILT WITHIN TWO MONTHS FTW

if anyone else is interested in this sort of interactive tables, i would love to find other collaborators (in and around singapore) who would like to build other interactive/touch table setups, especially with music and sound.

---

PS: better quality video coming soon

from the drawing board:



to the interactive table:



thank to everyone who came down specially to the opening earlier today! proper thanks are also in order to Substation for believing in me and letting me do this rather ambitious installation under their annual Open Call, and everyone who helped along the way.

within the next week i'll start compiling all the contributed memories from the psychogeographical game, and collate them on a site at psychogeography.sg/river... which currently points to this blog for the time being. so come back in a few days time to see the update on that part of the installation!!

a more detailed update is in order soon, after i finally have some sleep...

---

Debbie's exhibition is ongoing at The Substation from 2-26 September 2010!

my little visitor at the gallery, while i was setting up

edited by jared keh
photography by keshav sishta
audio composed by simon petre



jared and keshav shooting the video

Some people have asked me really good questions while I've been in the gallery setting up. Effendy asked me: "What is the scale of your map?"

After some calculation with the rulers on Google Maps, I have confirmed that the approximate scale for my 3.75metre long map is about 1:1000. (In case you are wondering how I managed to fit a 4.1km river in a representation of a 3.75km stretch, it is simply because the river is CURVY)



The ruler/line function is not automatically switched on in Google Maps, you'll have to click on the green beaker icon on the top right corner to see this feature!



Meanswhile, I must admit that it has been a steep learning curve to use Flash Builder and AS3. Somehow I just could not get a certain offending child object to pass variables to the main document class, even after flagrantly abusing public variables. In the wee hours of this morning, I finally solved the problem, but resultantly it has all become SPAGHETTI CODE. WITH MEATBALLS ON TOP. But it doesn't matter, as long as it works tomorrow...