David Koh

In Singapore, the only constant is change. In the eternal development of the country, buildings and land are changed overnight. Every year, a new mall comes up and a not-so-old building goes down. This has created an ever-shifting mode to the Singapore landscape, history, and identity. The Singaporean national anthem is titled "Majulah Singapura", in which "majulah" means "onward". In "<-- o n w a r d -->", I challenge the notion of onward progress and development in Singapore. The artworks use AI-generated videos to reflect Singapore's hypermodern and ever-changing culture. Using a curated dataset of photos, the AI is trained to reinterpret these datasets to create new artificial imagery based on the original photos. <-- o n w a r d --> uses two image datasets - one of Singaporean flora mixed with the country's hypermodern buildings - the other of historical drawings and photos of Singapore from the 19th and early 20th century. These images morph endlessly, onward, reflecting the country's living history in the present and its own identity as a garden city that feels, at times, rootless.