Is this really Geylang? See the red light district differently through the lens of these local artists

What will you notice, if you slow down to appreciate the little moments?

The lack of travel has left most of us feeling a little jaded. Being confined to this island for almost year, the same sights and sounds have gotten rather repetitive. Many can't wait for the day when we can finally book a plane ticket out of here.

On the other hand, there are some Singaporeans who view this differently.

Not wanting to take for granted the beauty of our small yet bustling city, this group of nine friends banded together to work on their project called 'Wallflowers: Sights and Sounds of Singapore'.

Their aim: to encourage Singaporeans to rediscover the often overlooked beauty in their everyday lives. This is done through an audio collection, videos, art installations and music tracks by local music producers.

"My friends and I had been thinking of doing something related and explore the hidden sides of Singapore," sound artist and producer Cheng Jin An told AsiaOne, when asked what inspired them to work on this. "So we just decided to combine forces and make a project out of it".

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT-QciZX5XU[/embed]

The idea had been in the pipeline for quite some time and the team have been working on it since August last year.

"We wanted to do something that is multi-faceted so that we can present the idea in different ways to reach more people," visual artist and co-producer Elisa Liu said.

As the group of them had different creative backgrounds in music, art and videography, they decided to pull all their various talents together to create something worthwhile.

"[Though] we were all friends, but we've never worked with each other on a project like this before. So we were thinking, is it possible to do something that combines sound, music, video and art?" Elisa added.

Ideas were one thing, but putting everything together was another. The team took around one to two months to scout the locations, prepare the artwork, create a storyboard and shortlist areas they wanted to record audio.

Filming was time-consuming too. They filmed the videos in a total of four locations across Singapore between November and December last year.

While some people may have a negative impression about the Geylang as the infamous red-light district, the team were able to unveil a different side to the area in their very cinematic video. 

The video and audio were all painstakingly recorded in one day, and the instrumental soundtrack you hear in the video is actually the result of processing and collating the collective audio on site during the shoot.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC7vJrNV1Oo[/embed]

Another location that they filmed at was the hipster Tiong Bahru, with the video being simply titled "Mornings in Tiong Bahru".

Similar to their Geylang video, this short clip features a special instrumental soundtrack created from their surroundings and all components were filmed in one day.

"By doing the recording of both [audio] and video in one sitting, it makes the whole video more cohesive and I feel that it better represents the place," Jin An remarked, describing the entire filming process.

She also mentions that as a musician herself, she finds it challenging to find audio samples that are distinctively Singaporean. As such, they have decided to make these audio clips available for free too.

On the other hand, their art installations were done on-site and these have to be presented digitally via the video series or in stills and pictures as the filming took place with Covid-19 restrictions.

[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/CLd71Whl7dT/[/embed]

Some examples include the adorable spray painted Kopitiam mug and laundry lines which you can attempt to spot in the videos.

Apart from this tedious process that spanned several months, the team encountered other hurdles along the way.

"We had a bit of a trouble getting the filming permit for our fourth location, Sungei Buloh, a Wildlife Reserve. [We] dropped an email to NParks and had to talk to the conservation team before our filming permit was approved."

The team shared that people would give them suspicious looks or reject them when they sought permission to record audio of them at work.

"Some of the shop owners shooed us away [because] they thought we were [from] NEA or AVA. Especially the sound team, because they were holding the sound recorder and mics and ear pieces," Elisa shared, when working on the Tiong Bahru video.  

She also shared this photograph of their boom microphone, which we admittedly find highly intimidating too.

"Oddly though, they were very happy with the video team, [because] they want to be featured in a video. That's why you see a lot of smiling faces in the Tiong Bahru video

When asked if they plan to do another similar series in the future, Jin An tells us that they hope to be able to do so if they can secure funding.

If you're keen to follow creative journey of this group of friends, you can check their Instagram for updates.

melissateo@asiaone.com