Exploring the Urban Environment through the use of custom-built tools

The Urban Explorations project began in 2012 as an investigation on the ordinary happenings and encounters in the Singapore heartlands and stems from an interest in documenting the various phenomena of the urban landscape.

Now in 2015 we are holding an open call for artists, designers and scientists interested in exploring the city of Paris between May 2 and June 6 2015. More details can be found on the open call website.

Through the retrieval of sound, colors, smell or merely collecting objects discarded by people, this project aimed to investigate what ordinarily goes on in the urban environment of Singapore. Through a strategy called urban sensing, the team of 8 explorers utilized custom-built tools in which recordings and observations were visually translated. With these data, they then provided a deeper but preliminary understanding about the activities and the locations that were visited. The objects and artefacts that were then created and exhibited at 5 HDB void decks around Singapore not only provided a glimpse of the explorers’ perceptions and observations, but were also intended to ignite questions and generate dialogues.

Custom-built temperature sensing device, 3 types of temperature could be measured: environment, body, perceived temperature.

With a low-tech driven approach in collecting data rather than making use of digitally available big data sets to make sense of the urban environment, the participants were required to conceptualize and design their own methods and strategies to collect and categorize data.

A number of field trips across Singapore were conducted to collect small but diverse data sets. These include samples taken from areas of reclaimed land, 3 types of temperature samples including body-, environment-, and perceived-temperature, a set of smell samples inspired by the Hennig’s Odour system, or a table of location based color-codes captured and processed by a mobile phone.

Data recordings: here soil samples are taken from various sides of reclaimed land in Singapore

All collected data samples and findings are translated into static or dynamic artefacts using traditional methods including prints or paintings and new technologies such as computational design or digital fabrication.

The format of the exhibition was developed with mobility and low wastage of materials in mind. With the use of stacked euro pallets to present exhibits, these industrial materials could eventually be returned after the roving exhibition was completed. This approach ensures a low waste footprint and allows the project to easily adapt to the changing characteristics of exhibition spaces.

The presentation of these findings in the void decks of HDB buildings allows for these data and artefacts to be brought to the suburban areas and thus encourage the communities to engage with the outcome of the project and to motivate ongoing dialogues between the researchers and the communities.

The mobile exhibition which traveled around Singapore over the period of 2 weeks to 5 different locations.

The Urban Explorations project utilizes a scalable approach that makes use of data collected in physical space through field trips and an approach that combines conceptualization, prototyping and the use of technology in an artistic way to make sense of the qualities and characteristics of our surrounding environments.

Guided tours for school classes were conducted.

It aims to present alternative approaches in sensing an urban environment by actively participating in the data collection process within a larger physical space to perceive and understand the environment through a wide range of sensory outcomes. More importantly, instead of purely presenting statistical data that narrates the outcome of the field trips, this project adopts the methods of evaluation, documentation and presentation of data to generate dialogue — and can be adapted to other urban environments as well.