the singapore river as a psychogeographical faultline

I did a radio interview on "The Living Room" on 938LIVE last week - much thanks to the Substation for arranging this. You can stream it from that link or download it here (18MB).

Meanswhile, due to work overload, things have been going a bit slower than I would have hoped. So far, I've sketched out the shape of what the setup will be like and the carpentry will be done soon.

I'm waiting for the PS3 Eye that I've ordered to arrive and after that I will need to find someone more nifty with disassembly to help me / guide me in removing the IR filter. Perhaps it is idealistic to hope that we can do this entirely with guides and information found on the internet, but CAN WE DO IT PLEASE!

• Code Laboratories: PS3 Eye Disassembly
• CDM: Trick out your PS3 Eye
• PlayStation EYE Driver Research/Info/Download Thread

In other news, there have been heavy rains here, with apparently 60% of the entire month of June's rain within a 3 hr rainfall occurring on 16th June - resulting in flash floods in Singapore, in unlikely places such as Orchard Road. thus causing it to be dubbed as "Orchard River".



Now it has become clear why underground MRT stations here have raised entrances - to prevent flooding! Also, in videos on youtube, you will notice that the water was flowing in the direction of the cars or away from Delfi. Here is a map from Stomp explaining the location of the blocked drain:



This is a picture of the singapore river later that evening, the same brown colour as "orchard river", instead of its normal army camouflage green. I contemplated going down to town to see how wet it was in orchard, but, seriously... no.

last month, i went to take colour samples of the river, and on the bus ride there, i met a cycling geographer, who also pointed out to me that the colour of the river depended on the time of the day. which was very true. the sun started off bright and blazing hot, which made for unusually bright and vibrant colours. however thanks to our erratic tropical weather, by the time i'd walked from the marina bay to boat quay, it suddenly began raining, so i also got the darker, duller grey shades of overcast days - which was particularly apparent at the shallows near the steps, where we also discovered little fish doing peculiar little horizontal swims across flat steps (to eat stair algae?), and nervous kingfishers pacing along the stone path (to eat stair fish?).

its difficult to say what colour river water really ought to be. i've been told the singapore river used to be the colour of Coca Cola, before the cleanup of the 1980s. right now, it seems as if the Singapore River is usually in camouflage army green colours, with mottled brown, grey, and white spots, to blend in with the skyscrapers and ornamental riverside foliage. the sneaksy thing, trying to slip right past us without us noticing...

Welcome to a blog about "The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline".

I intend to build a speculative and generative map of the Singapore River. I chose the Singapore River because of its personal and historical significance, and I describe it as a "Psychogeographical Faultline" because the Singapore River is a site at which memories of spaces, fictional (imagined) spaces, and dream spaces interact, merge, or drift apart - like a series of tectonic plates...

This blog serves as my own record of the process of developing this work, which is being produced for The Substation Open Call 2010.