As the multimedia installation visitors first experience when entering the National Museum of Singapore’s History Gallery, Singapore Today has to make a big impression… and that, it does.
The space in which the multi-projector installation is shown consists of a 23-metre high drum into which visitors enter, crossing a bridge spanning the interior, before descending two levels down a spiralling ramp to the rest of the History Gallery space.
Singapore Today’s seamless high-definition images span the entire 360-degree glass surface of the drum’s interior, providing the visitor with a unique and breathtaking point of view.
The juxtaposition of rural/traditional and urban/modern images conveys a day in the life of Singapore. Set to a musical background of excerpts from Vladimir Martynov’s symphony Singapore, A Geopolitical Utopia, sequences illustrate the culture’s efficient and meritocratic work habits, its love of technology, its need for ceaseless updating and change, and its frenetic communication and transportation networks. These are contrasted with more personal portrayals of Singaporeans engaged in their daily routines.