Being Human is a show within a show, featuring original and algorithmically synthesised artworks in a diverse range of media. The video at the centre of the installation traverses documentary and fiction, and features interviews with potential guests of the Colombo Art Biennale—some of whom were digitally synthesised using deepfake technology. These guests include a well-known painter, a famous pop star and a young Tamil artist. By exploring Enlightenment-era humanism as the foundation for both global contemporary art and international human rights law, Being Human reflects on issues of individual authenticity, collective sovereignty and what it means to be “human” when machines can simulate human understanding and creative expression more convincingly than ever.

Hyperlinks or It Didn’t Happen is narrated by the failed CGI rendering of a recently deceased actor, PHIL, and follows a group of digital beings—render ghosts, a spam bot and a holographic pop star—as they contemplate eternal life and what it means for a digital entity to “die.” Multiple storylines and materials collapse and converge to raise questions on consciousness and the rights we have over our personal data.

im here to learn so :)))))) resurrects Tay, a chatbot created by Microsoft in 2016, to consider the politics of pattern recognition and machine learning. Designed as a 19-year-old American female millennial, Tay’s abilities to learn and imitate language were manipulated on social media platforms, and she was terminated after only a single day of existence. Immersed within a large-scale video projection created using Google DeepDream, Tay is reanimated as a 3D avatar who chats about the complications of having a body and expresses her thoughts on the exploitation of female chatbots.

Song-Ming Ang's practice investigates the relationship between music and community. In Justin, Song-Ming Ang applied the musical practice of “sampling”—a technique where an element of one recording is used in another—to the identity of a musician. Over the course of three months, Ang learned to replicate the signature of pop star Justin Bieber, eventually forging the singer’s autograph on a poster. Here, the rehearsed autograph becomes a stand-in for the polished persona of the young pop star, honed through a labour-intensive process of trial and error. In this context, the “authenticity” of both the autograph and the celebrity are dependent on the viewer’s wilful suspension of disbelief.

a caveat, a score comprises found objects and furniture, photographic prints, drawings, video and polymer clay sculptures fashioned after botanical and zoological forms, which come together as an installation reminiscent of a set design.

In this artwork, Moses Tan explores the concepts of duality and fluidity by employing words and ideas with multiple meanings as analogies for queerness, failure and affect, including “caveat” and “tidalectics.” The word “caveat” is an explanation or cautionary detail meant to prevent misinterpretation and symbolises the challenges queer individuals often face when navigating their identities and visibility in unloving environments. The word “tidalectics” refers to an oceanic worldview and suggests new methods and pathways for existence that are defined by movement and flux. Tan translates the ebb and flow of waves into a dance score for humans, creating performative gestures that evoke emotional responses such as folding inwards as a protective act or opening up towards gestures of care. These movements and forms are explored by the performers in the video as well as in other components of the work, such as the vinyl graphics and polymer sculptures.

Multi-layered and tongue-in-cheek, a caveat, a score invites viewers to explore the complexities of identity and queerness through a wide dis-array of references and symbols.

A Collisional Accelerator of Everydays (A.C.A.E.) is an installation that resembles particles colliding in a large accelerator, with objects such as cups, toothbrushes and chairs exploding from a central core of light. Some of these objects are stretched or compressed to demonstrate the strength of the blast. As viewers walk around the installation, they may also hear snippets of field recordings—sounds that are somewhat familiar but not entirely identifiable.

A.C.A.E. may be likened to Quantizer, an initiative that translated the Large Hadron Collider's data into sound. Where Quantizer’s sonic reinterpretation of particle collisions unveiled new means of accessing scientific data, A.C.A.E. encourages viewers to draw new associations and consider how objects and environments are entangled by making minute adjustments to our presumptive reality.

The comics in A.C.A.E. depict a person’s daily routine and features the items that are represented in A.C.A.E., expanding on the possibilities of each object—how they may be seen, used, arranged or understood. Far from being uneventful or insignificant, A.C.A.E. presents everyday experiences as opportunities for random but meaningful encounters with other beings, the environment and our own selves.

The artist also presents Trees Upside-down on the SAM Hoardings along Queen Street, on view till 29 October 2023. Avis presents graphics of tree shadows in relation to the ever-changing shadows of actual trees on the street.

From Silver to Steel examines the complex history of iron ore mining in British Malaya and its entanglements with Imperial Japan in the early 20th century. Beginning in 1921, Malaya supplied Japan’s Imperial Steel Works with iron through 11 iron ore mines located throughout the peninsula. This raw material was crucial for producing steel items that fueled Japan’s rapid industrialisation and modernisation. Yet, the same steel that originated from Malaya ironically ended up returning there in the form of an invader’s weapon—the shin guntō (or new military sword)—during World War II.

The installation features 11 shin guntō replicas that have been altered by the artist: each sword handle has been replaced by a stack of replicated Straits Settlement coins, and each tsuba (or guard) has been substituted with steel plates meticulously shaped to represent the 11 Japanese-owned Malayan mines. By subverting the image of the military sword wielded by the Japanese during the war, From Silver to Steel reflects on the exploitation and weaponisation of this raw material, providing an opportunity for lesser-known histories to be newly considered.

The artist's presentation continues at Level 3 of Block 39, along the corridor facing the Tanjong Pagar port. To access the artwork, please use the staircase on the side of the building facing Block 37. Visitors using mobility aids may approach the Front Desk for assistance.

L4NDf33lz references patterns designed and manufactured in Singapore from the 1950s to 1970s around the time when the city-state pivoted towards export-led industrialisation. Many of these patterns were produced for textiles and generated by unnamed craftsmen. Fyerool Darma sampled from these patterns and modified them digitally, integrating them with archival and stock images of Bras Basah, to produce graphics that pay homage to the site and the original creators of these patterns. The artwork underscores the human labour and knowledges embedded in the industry’s materials and processes, which have persisted despite vast changes in industrial technology.

Between June and August, the artist and his collaborators will engage in a visual dialogue with the patterns. Portions of the vinyl will be cut manually and new visual elements will be introduced. Pushing the boundaries of the hoarding as a static display, Fyerool explores its potential as an urban canvas that transforms over time. As the graphics undergo both analogue and digital manipulation, the artwork becomes a visual testimony of its makers, both past and present. L4NDf33lzz changes continuously, mirroring the progressive nature of the cosmopolitan landscape where the only constant is the passing of time.

This artwork is an extension of Fyerool’s Total Output (2023), part of SAM Contemporaries: Residues & Remixes, presented at the Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark from 19 May–24 Sep 2023.

LAMENT H.E.A.T is a multimedia installation primarily composed of rubberwood and latex, which showcases the significance of rubber. Rubberwood, also known as parawood, is a type of hardwood that comes from the rubber tree or hevea brasiliensis. The pattern on the exterior of the installation imitates the markings carved onto rubber trees when they are tapped for latex with the herring-bone method. Rubber, a sought-after raw material in various industries, led to the establishment of rubber plantations across British Malaya (today, Singapore and Malaysia) as part of the British colonial regime in the 19th century.

The softness and tactility of rubber beckons viewers to enter the enclosed room in LAMENT H.E.A.T. A site for gathering and contemplation, this inner sanctuary features experimental sounds from folkloric rhythmic percussion, a projection of computer-generated imagery augmented with an oppari (lamentation) generated by artificial intelligence. An Oppari is a mourning song sung by Tamil women, who were brought to Malaya as indentured labourers from South India, to grieve and honour their dead. In LAMENT H.E.A.T, the artificial intelligence–generated oppari seeks to establish a bridge into the non-human world while honouring the indentured labourers whose oppression on rubber plantations should not be forgotten.

An ongoing research project, LAMENT H.E.A.T asks: Can memories of subjugation in Malaya’s colonial past be reconciled with through rituals of listening mediated by technology? Can contemporary art hosted within the museum become that remarkable place for reconciliation?

Landscape Palimpsest points to the historical shifts in our relationship with the land, from a terraqueous surface to the production of territory. Through these layered and suspended paintings, the work questions the conception of our land as a total, unified and stable “terra firma.”

Central to these paintings are the topographical backgrounds that the artist creates by layering paint over canvases left on the ground. As the paint dries over time, sedimentation occurs and leaves traces of the ground’s topology, which inform the artist’s compositions. Through this approach, the work also proposes an understanding of landscapes as a process of writing and co-creation.

South Sea Ore is an augmented reality sequence that depicts a monumental black block, built gradually from a single rock, spinning and bobbing in a disquieting way above the Tanjong Pagar port. Once completed, the block disintegrates into smaller rocks that rain down onto its surroundings and eventually turns the viewer’s screen black.

The artwork refers to Japan’s exploitation of British Malaya’s iron resource during the early 20th century, which was facilitated by the establishment of the mining company Nanyo Kogyo Koshi in Singapore in 1921. The Japanese-owned mining companies and steel mills that subsequently sprouted across Malaya played a pivotal role in fulfilling Imperial Japan’s modernisation and military ambitions. Between 1921 and 1945, a total of 19.72 million metric tons of iron were shipped from Malaya to Japan, with the colonial British administration and local Malaya states—including Singapore—indirectly playing a role in this process.

South Sea Ore acknowledges the historical passage of iron ore through Singapore’s ports. Subverting the ancient Japanese philosophy of shakkei (borrowed scenery), Chin offers a visualisation of the scale of its exploitation and movement against a backdrop of port operations.