Introductory Statement

National Museum of Singapore 25 July, 9pm to 2am 26 July to 3 August, 10am to 6pm Free admission

Alongside the conference, a crucial component of the symposium is an exhibition that premieres 16 artworks that have been developed specifically for ISEA2008 by international and local artists during their time as artists in residence in Singapore.

These projects were selected by an international jury from an open call for submissions in 2007. Media artists were required to submit proposals of works that they wished to develop and that took their inspiration from the Symposium’s five themes: Locating Media, Reality Jam, Wild Wild, Ludic Interfaces, and Border Transmissions.

The artists whose projects were selected have had the opportunity to work intensely for up to three months as artists in residence of a number of new media and technology labs based at the National University of Singapore. They have created the artworks within the lab environment, gaining access to advanced technologies and the expertise of researchers. This confluence between art, research, science and technology has opened up many possibilities for further exploration in these fields and has benefited the artists and the research labs/centres they collaborated with.

The resulting exhibition is an exciting glimpse into the questions and concerns of new media artists in 2008. Eclectic, restless and always surprising, the artworks in the ISEA2008 Juried Exhibition take on a wide range of subjects from the refiguring of surveillance; body language and communication; mapping electromagnetic fields; the flow of water and information on the internet; and addressing civic spaces and the natural environment, along with the immersive qualities of sounds and smells, and much more.