Category: Design

April 25, 2012

The City is Her Playground

Artist Debbie Ding invents games, solves mysteries and seeks adventures to cope with the banal everyday life her city of Singapore

Daily travels in a city is a boring journey most of us endure. We distract themselves by catching up on sleep, reading a book, watching videos or playing games on our phones or media players. So does Debbie Ding, except the city itself is the text she reads and her playground for fun.

While working in a creative agency inside Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD), Debbie invented games to entertain herself during her lunchtime travels and when she needed to walk to her clients’ offices in the neighbourhood.

“I had a map where I outlined roads I walked before, and I would try to walk roads I had not every time I had to get to places. It’s kind of like the game Pac-man, where I had to walk through every single road,” she says.

It was during these walks that Debbie also began noticing circular symbols with random numbers and letters painted on the floors and buildings in the CBD. What began as a few random photographs grew into another “game” to discover what they were. Her search for these mysterious symbols even got her colleagues hooked, and they often reported to Debbie on new “sightings”. The “game” was completed when Debbie solved the mystery, correctly decoding the symbols as a language used by building contractors working on a new mass rapid transit railway line running underneath her work place.

Such playful views of the city has been a defining element in Debbie’s approach to her art and projects, which she has often described as “psychogeographical games”. These investigate the city, challenging how we see, understand and even navigate them. Her inventive nature has been with her since a child, says the English Literature graduate from the National University of Singapore says who made herself believe ‘green’ was her favourite colour when she was 10-years-old because she thought it was strange she didn’t have have a favourite. It was only when she started working in London in 2009 as a copywriter for a creative agency that she started taking an interest in cities. Despite London turning out like how the self-professed Anglo-phile had expected, Debbie felt the city was special and it while attempting to make sense of the place that she began devouring books and academic texts about cities, opening her eyes to a new way of looking at her surroundings. At the same time, she was also taught herself how to use multimedia tools like Flash.

In 2010, she brought this vision and skills back to Singapore and carried out her first major art project “\\:The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultine”, which explored a landmark of this city as a “site at which memories of spaces, fictional (imagined) spaces and dream spaces interact, merge or drift apart”, explains the exhibition catalogue. Held at The Substation, Debbie’s project had had drawings and an interactive multimedia booth that examined the shape or the river. There was also a game, “Here the River Lies”, which visitors could write their memories — real or not — of the Singapore River on to a physical map, transforming it from a geography of the urban landscape to that of a community.

The game was inspired by a lawsuit happening then between the Land Transport Authority sued Streetdirectory.com. The latter had been sued for infringing the copyright of the transport authority’s maps, using them to run an online map service. Reading about the case, Debbie learnt that map makers often created fictitious locations on their maps as a way to protect their copyright. In the 1950s, one such location on a map of New York became real when someone set up a store there and named it after the location. “A place became real because of the map, which is quite a nice idea. That’s why I thought having people write on a map would be interesting,” explains Debbie. “It’s almost like things don’t exist unless you archive or write them down.”

As if to prove the city around her exists, Debbie has become its compulsive recorder, often walking around the city in search of her next game. While she used to draw maps of these travels on her notebook, she now does so with just her iPhone, snapping pictures and recording audio samples. Recently, she was featured in a short documentary by Singaporean filmmaker Tan Pin Pin where she talked about her discovery of a mysterious set of graffiti in a stairwell of the disused Yangtze Cinema in Singapore. What she chooses to record is largely based on intuition, she says. A fragment here and a fragment there, but eventually, Debbie puts together the pieces to make sense out of them, constructing a narrative for her projects. It’s a process she terms “psychogeoforensics” — another one of her inventions. This builds upon her playful approach to the city, turning it into a space of mystery encouraging people to let their imagination run wild, piecing together elements of the city to tell stories. It’s an approach she hopes more Singaporeans will take up, and she has set up the Singapore Psychogeographical Society and published a free guide online on how to look at the city in a manner that will help people have fun in the city again. “When you’re on holiday, you would think a place is fun, but when you’re living here, you don’t think like that at all even though a building is new,” she says. “But being able to imagine you’ve never seen something before, that would make the city interesting even if you’ve lived here all your life.”

It is at this juncture that Debbie reveals that this is how she has been coping with life in Singapore, a city which she feels lacks a sense of playful adventure and random possibilities. “Everything here is almost predictable, when you go out to meet people, they already band together based on what school they come from. I got friends who have settled down and you can almost trace their lives and chart where it is going. There’s a plan in life, and I feel like I need more than that,” says the 28-year-old. She herself was set to become of the Singaporeans she rejects now. Debbie was once enrolled with the rest of the country’s elite students in the Gifted Education Programme. But she did not do as well in her examinations and ended up in a junior college she had never heard of. It was there, without the weight of expectations, that she had the freedom to explore and think of other possibilities in life, beyond one measured by what school one was from or how good one’s grades were.

“I always thought that it is in spite of the education system that I became like that,” she says. “A lot of things I’ve done are all self-taught and I enjoy teaching myself more than being in school. So I guess the whole idea of teaching yourself is that you don’t lose the child-like curiosity of things and playing is a way of keeping it going.”

Although such a playful mind has kept Debbie occupied with Singapore all these years, she says it is become increasingly challenging to stay in such a small city.

So will there be a game over soon? Will she find another city to play in?

In what people who have spoken to her will recognise as classic Debbie-optimism, her eyes light up at these questions. “There won’t be a game over,” she says. “But there will be new games.”

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A feature written for FIVEFOOTWAY magazine’s issue on PLAY

April 18, 2012

Ethics Can Feed You Meh?

That the project “Ethics for the Starving Designer” is named as such challenges how most designers see ethics in their profession: a non-issue when you need to finish a project to earn your keep. That is the dilemma which got David Goh, a final-year design communication student at Lasalle, started on this final-year project. After months of research and interviews with students, lecturers and practitioners in Singapore’s design industry, he has come up with a 21-point code of ethics for designers that you can now view online and at his on-going exhibition at Lasalle till Friday.

I checked it out this afternoon and was surprised to find it less contentious that it sounds. To me, the word “ethics” connotes some kind of expectation of saint-like behaviour, but David’s code is open and allows a certain degree of interpretations on how ethical you want to be.

That is a realistic approach, considering how we each have different beliefs, but I was disturbed by point 13 of the manifesto:

“Where my financial, professional and personal commitments would allow it, I will say no to all projects that I deem to be overtly immoral and harmful to society.”

Such a clause almost allows one to get away with almost anything, and in my discussions with David, we concluded that this is a pragmatic response to surviving in the profession. But on second thoughts, I think it also sends the wrong message that ethics is a luxury designers can think of only they have made it financially and professionally.

It is exactly such thinking that probably explains why this project has received little attention from Singapore designers thus far — why rock the boat with ethics when you’re doing well as a designer? David said most responses he has gotten about his project have come from overseas thus far, although he hopes more Singapore designers will engage him on this issue.

But that said, I don’t think Singapore designers aren’t ethical. Many of the manifesto’s points are gut instinct decisions that designers often make, but it’s never been really framed here in the issue of ethics. However, I do agree with David that designers should start this discussion on ethics, and one reason is because it tacitly acknowledges what David points out in point two of his manifesto:

“I recognize that graphic design is a powerful tool… for communication, behavioural change and manipulation. As such, I will treat it with utmost respect and care.”

This validates David’s call for “Ethics for the Starving Designer”, keeping the profession ethical is how to ensure designers will continue to be trusted to solve problems and provide services for the world it operates in.

April 18, 2012

The rides of their lives

Once a common sight outside stores in Singapore, kiddy rides have lost their space in the city

They come in all shapes and designs, but whether it is a swan, a horse, an elephant, a car, a boat, a scooter, or a spaceship, these machines offer children a ride of their lives. For a few minutes and a small fee, a child would be taken on a journey full of ups and downs (or lefts and rights) and cheerful music music as they made their way to… nowhere. This was the promise of a kiddy ride, a toy that brought joy to children, and relief for parents, as they went about the city.

For over three decades, Woo Hock Trading Co. has been supplying such kiddy rides to businesses in Singapore and the region. Mr Lee Kim Leng, started the business in 1980 after taking over six machines from a previous owner. Starting from a space outside a shop in Toa Payoh, he built up a fleet of over one thousand kiddy rides all across Singapore. Mr Lee’s daughter, Catherine, began helping her father when she turned 20, and over the last two decades, has witnessed the family business ride through the good times and the bad.

“During the golden age, each machine could make a 4-digit sum a month. Now one whole year, maybe I’ll only get fifty dollars,” says Catherine, who is certain the business will end with her.

The iconic round-headed swans on the top right were designed by Woo Hock, according to its owner.

According to Catherine, the first half of the ‘90s was the heydays for kiddy rides. Before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Woo Hock’s rides were commonly seen outside neighbourhood stores and supermarkets such as NTUC FairPrice, Sheng Siong, and Oriental Emporium. Many also found their way to Indonesia, Hong Kong and even Mauritius. Businesses either bought these rides for a few thousand dollars or let Woo Hock place one outside their storefronts and shared the profits.

As the industry was very competitive then, Woo Hock started designing its own rides to stand out from those usually imported from Britain, Germany, Taiwan and Japan. One signature Woo Hock design is the duckling, which still appears on the company’s name card and its fading shop signage. However, this design was later copied by competitors who bought the mould from the manufacturer without their permission. Other rides designed by Woo Hock include models resembling a Vespa scooter and a boat, both which have been very popular with children.

Besides appealing to children, the rides also have to be designed to be safe. Woo Hock only supplies rides made of fibreglass, which last longer and are safer than those made of PVC. Catherine is proud to say that no accidents have happened on Woo Hock’s rides after all these years. Their designs have failed in other ways, however. Inside its shop, where the rides are serviced and stored, sits several rejected models. There is a race car so shallow a child may fall off, and there is a rabbit whose height is such that a child might hit its head on it during a ride. As we pass by another animal-shaped ride, Catherine asks if I could guess what it was.

A Merlion-shaped ride that looked more like a pig, turning away Muslim children especially.

“A Cow? A Pig?”

“Aiyoh, you cannot tell?” she said as she giggled embarrassingly. “It’s a Merlion! Don’t look like meh?”

This is one of Woo Hock’s design that failed. After investing S$30,000 to create the mould for manufacturing this ride, they found that nobody dared to ride it, especially the Muslim children, who thought it resembled a pig, an animal considered taboo in their religion.

While Woo Hock kept on designing new rides to appeal to children, it did not stop its business from declining post-1997. Children had more alternatives for play, and clients also preferred rides featuring global cartoon stars like Mickey Mouse instead of Woo Hock’s designs. But what really killed the business was after an incident in 2007 when two siblings were killed in a fire at their public housing home in Hougang, says Catherine. When the brother and sister tried to escape, they were trapped by the stockpiles the businesses downstairs had left outside their shopfront overnight. The tragic incident led the authorities to clamp down on shopfront clutter, and as businesses found less space, kiddy rides no longer had a place in the neighbourhood.

Today, Woo Hock’s shop along Lichfield Road is a forgotten abode for its remaining kiddy rides. Once bustling with 6 workers and three vans, the shop floor has become the extended home of Mr Lee and his family who live upstairs this shophouse. A single van is now parked outside. While they used to work from morning to night with no holidays and off days, they struggle to find something to do now. Recently, Catherine even had to throw out some 300 pieces because there was not enough space for these rides, which used to call the city outside their home.

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A feature written for FIVEFOOTWAY magazine’s issue on PLAY