Maghrib at Kampong Gelam

There is no better time of day than maghrib, or sunset, to take in Kampong Gelam. The winding down of the day in Singapore’s old royal quarter is accompanied by an air of calm brought by the strains of the azan – the Muslim call to prayer, and, as it was the case last evening, made a much greater joy by a colouring of the evening sky.

Masjid Sultan against the evening sky.

Viewed against that dramatic backdrop, Masjid Sultan – the area’s main landmark – looked especially majestic. The golden dome topped National Monument, Singapore’s principal mosque, stands just a stone-throw’s away from the former Istana Kampong Gelam. Erected by Sultan Hussein Shah’s heir Ali, the istana or palace, served little more than a symbolic seat of power which Hussein had all but relinquished in signing the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance in 1824. Now the Malay Heritage Centre, the istana is a showcase of the Malay world’s culture and a reminder perhaps of the last days and lost glory of a once mighty Johor-Riau-Lingga Empire.

Istana Kampong Gelam.

More on Masjid Sultan and Istana Kampong Gelam and the Johor Empire can be found at the following posts:

• A Ramandan trail at the Sultan’s Mosque
• The palace of an Empire lost
• The mysterious peaks we sing about in Di Tanjong Katong

 

Masjid Sultan.

 

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Days of despair, rays of hope

Seeing out the storm, the evening after, 12 September 2001, Ostend.

More northern light

Another dramatic show of light captured along Singapore’s northern coast, this one after sunset at 7.18 pm on the 15th of June 2014. The view is towards the Shell Woodlands jetty and across the Straits of Johor over to Johor Bahru. The point at which this was captured is in the are of Woodland Waterfront where the Royal Malaysian Navy maintained their main naval base, KD Malaya, until 1979.

A peek at i Light Marina Bay 2016

The sea of light that descends once every two years on Marina Bay, i Light Marina Bay, is back for a fourth time.

The 2016 edition of i Light Marina Bay, following which the festival will make its return on an annual basis, runs from 4 to 27 March. With 14 out of its 25 installations created locally along the lines of the festival theme ‘In Praise of Shadows’, this edition sees the largest turn out of local artists to date.

As with previous years, the festival invites visitors to take a walk of discovery around the futuristic Marina Bay area around which the installations are scattered. There will also be much to do beyond admiring the artwork with lots of fringe events and activities on offer, including the opportunity to indulge in one of Singapore’s favourite pastimes, eating.

Fringe events to look out for include a craft beer festival, CRAFT Singapore and the Singapore International Jazz Festival – both of which run from 4 to 6 March, PasarBella Goes to Town from 11 March to 3 April, flea markets, activities for kids including a kids fiesta and fairground rides with Uncle Ringo. Workshops and community activities will also be held during the period. More information on all of this can be found on the festival guide which can be downloaded at http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/-/media/Files/i-Light/Festival-Guide.ashx and also at http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Festival. More information on the festival and installations can also be found at the i Light Marina Bay event website.

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Some i Light Highlights

What a Loving, and Beautiful World by team-Lab (Japan)

‘What a Loving, and Beautiful World’ – a projection on the ArtScience Museum, which invites viewers to ‘swipe’ Chinese characters onto the museum’s facade using their mobile devices through a web application found at http://www.ilight.team-lab.com.

About the installation:

First carved in tortoiseshell, ox and deer bone, and bronzeware, Chinese characters were said to each contain their own world. Projected on the facade of the ArtScience Museum, viewers can participate by ‘swiping’ the Chinese characters onto the facade of the building using a web application. The result is a colourful, multi-sensory experience that continuously evolves as images are released from these Chinese characters, while influencing and changing each other within its own immersive, computer-generated world.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/What-a-Loving-Beautiful-World

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Lampshade by Snøhetta (Norway)

About the installation:

Lampshade is made of simple bamboo structures covered in photovoltaic cells to prevent sunlight from entering its interior in the day, while lighting up intensively at night with solar energy enough to power a thousand lamps. The installation challenges the perception of artificial light as an element that is dependent on its energy source, and invites visitors to discover links in harnessing sunlight and the eventual electric light.

Made to be both socially and environmentally friendly, the lamps used in this installation will be donated to off-grid communities after its display while the bamboo structure and its light fixtures will be recycled as construction scaffolding.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Lampshade

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Moon Haze by Feng Jiacheng & Huang Yuanbei (China)

About the installation:

Beyond its delightful representation of the full moon, Moon Haze also functions as a monitoring system for air pollutants, picking up and responding to the ambient air quality – the better the air quality, the brighter the installation. In the same space occupied by the moon, people and the environment, the collective effects of these individual parts on one another are integrated and expressed, showing their close relationship and inseparability.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Moon-Haze

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Shadow Bath by Loop.pH (United Kingdom)

About the installation:

Shadow Bath is a luminous inflated bathhouse with coloured light and air casting spectacular patterns inside and out, bathing visitors in dynamic patterned shades. The pneumatic form is a mathematical toroidal space, signifying the geometry of the universe.

During certain periods, visitors will be able to enter the bathhouse for a unique light show. During normal times, visitors can observe the form from the outside as it casts its patterned moiré shadows far and wide like a huge lantern.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Shadow-Bath

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Cycle House by Hafiz Osman (Singapore)

About the installation:

Cycle House is a mobile workstation combining temporary shelter and cycling. The mobility of this shelter represents a sense of nomadic livelihood of a wanderer, being adaptive to new environments and with a desire to search for new adventures. Two cycle houses have been created: the stationary house invites visitors to cycle to light up the piece while expressing their ideas of exploration by drawing on the canvas wall; the mobile house brings a more energetic, disco-themed performance to the bay.

About the More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Cycle-House

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TORRENT by Brandon Tay (Singapore)

About the installation:

TORRENT is a site-specific interactive installation that aims to transport users into a dreamlike landscape. As users walk past the screen, they find their movements reflected on a screen against an icy landscape, as if a virtual shadow with a swarm of trailing particles, with their motions mirrored but their forms vague.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Torrent

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Bolt by Jun Ong (Malaysia)

About the installation:

Inspired by the form and behaviour of lightning, the installation comprises an intricate network of LED tubes resting on steel legs that flare up when touched. Bolt not only mimics the ethereal nature of lightning, but also allows people to experience direct visceral connections, creating an emotional ‘spark’ that seems to be diminishing in today’s virtually-connected world.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Bolt

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Angels of Freedom by OGE Group, Gaston Zahr & Merav Eitan (Germany & Israel )

About the installation:

Five sets of giant, colourful wings invite visitors to come close and interact with the symbolic angels. This installation seeks to remind visitors of their true selves and to always remain connected to loved ones and those who matter.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Angels-of-Freedom

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Lightscape Pavilion by MisoSoupDesign (Taiwan)

About the installation:

Inspired by traditional Chinese lanterns, Lightscape Pavilion is made of simple, natural materials. Its bamboo lattice is designed to resemble a traditional lantern and its responsive glow serves to unite people under its canopy. The transparency and subtlety of the pavilion places emphasis and focus on the aesthetical beauty of its surroundings and inhabitants instead of its own self. As visitors move closer to its columns, its glow intensifies, as if to symbolically draw strength from the proximity of a human spirit.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Lightscape-Pavilion

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Groove Light by Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore (Singapore)

About the installation:

Groove Light generates geometric shadow patterns when a point light source is shone through five 3D printed lanterns, creating a carpet of light giving physical dimension – in the complex forms of the lanterns – to virtual projections. The suspended lanterns are positioned with precision to create a continuous lightscape which visitors can modify by moving the lanterns.

More at : http://www.ilightmarinabay.sg/Discover/Installations/Groove-Light

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Some other things to look out for:

Pop-up Royal Tea Salon by Häagen-Dazs at the Promontory

Must try at the Royal Tea Salon are Häagen-Dazs’ Spring collection of flavours including the Royal Milk Tea – a blend of fresh and sweet Darjeeling tea and strong, malty and honey-like Assam tea.

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KamPONG

An initiative by Innoverde that invites passersby to have a game of of ping pong on locally designed and custom fabricated tables. KamPONG is located at Mist Walk, close to where the Uncle Ringo rides are located. More information on KamPONG can be found at http://innoverde.com.sg/kampong/.

 

Northern lights

This evening’s spectacular show of colours over Johor Bahru at 7.19 pm, as seen from the north of Singapore at Woodlands Waterfront – a stretch of the northern coastline running from the former Royal Malaysian Navy (TLDM) jetty westwards to the Causeway. The stretch had once been part of the huge British naval base, within which the TLDM operated and maintained their main base. The TLDM continued to operate the base after the British pull-out in 1971 and up until 1979 maintained it as their main base, vacating it only in 1997. Since the opening up of the base this stretch of coastline has been left relatively untouched until it was redeveloped as the Woodlands Waterfront.

Light after dark, Lower Peirce Reservoir

7.50 pm 7 June 2014, a long exposure at twilight, taken at Lower Peirce Reservoir.

Light after dark: Twilight falls on West Hill

7.44 pm, Sunday 23 March 2014. Night falls on an area around where West Hill had once stood, at  the end of extremely hot day in Singapore.

The now forgotten West Hill was a relatively high point that rose above the swampy ground around Sungei Sembawang. It had lent its name to West Hill Village – a village that grew around the south-eastern fringes of the huge naval base that once dominated Singapore’s northern coast. The village that was in more recent times known to us as Chong Pang Village in which names of schools such as West Hill School and Si San (西山 – West Hill in Chinese)Public School served to remind us of the village’s original name. There is little that remains of this part of the area’s past and much of the area is now dominated by the public housing estate that has come up around the Sembawang area.

Reflections on the new world

The new world at Marina Bay, seen at twilight on 6 March 2014 from the edge of the pond at the ArtScience Museum. Built on land reclaimed from the sea that, the ArtScience Museum is part of the new Marina Bay Sands Complex that lies on top of the area where the detached mole that separated the inner roads from the outer roads once was. The complex looks across to what had been the old waterfront built along a bund, which did have some grand works of architecture to welcome the many who came ashore at old Clifford Pier. Much of all that has unfortunately been lost, replaced by the new world of glass and steel that does serve to impress all who set eyes on it.

Marina Bay, 7.42 pm, 6 March 2014.

The garden at Suvarnabhumi

The view of the garden oustide the passenger terminal building of Bangkok’s futuristic looking Suvarnabhumi Airport at sunset on 17 Feb 2014 that does perhaps resemble a scene from a sci-fi movie.

The sun rises on the year of the horse

Photographs taken as the sun set on the Chinese year of the snake on 30 Jan 2014, rising at dawn on 31 Jan 2014 in a golden welcome to the year of the horse.

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Colours of the sun setting on the year of the snake, 7.24 pm 30 Jan 2014.

Early light as the sun rises on the year of the horse, 6.46 am 31 Jan 2014.

A couple watching the changing hues at sunrise, 6.56 am 31 Jan 2014.

Colours of the sunrise, 7.01 am 31 Jan 2014.

The rising sun, 7.17 am 31 Jan 2014.

The rising sun, 7.22 am 31 Jan 2014.

The calm after the storm

Pink and purple tinged clouds, coloured by the clearing storm, seen just after sunset at 7.15 pm on 14 December 2013, over Sembawang Hills Estate. The private residential estate of mainly terrace and semi-detached houses dates back to the mid 1950s, when a semi-detached house there (based on a 1956 advertisement), would have cost $11,500; with terrace houses going between $8,000 and $9,425. The face of the estate is one that is changing and besides the newer and taller houses erected in place of the original structures, many of the original businesses occupying the shop lots including an old provision shop (Soon Huat) and a traditional bakery, have made an exit, replaced by businesses that seem to be more relevant to today’s society.

Light after dark: The Pier @ Peirce

Capturing the cloud painted twilight, 7.44 pm 21 December 2013, Lower Peirce Reservoir.

The magic of O Cebreiro

It was late on an autumn day at the tail end of a road trip with three friends which took me across the length of the varied landscapes of northern Spain that I found myself marvelling at this magical sight. The sight was of the gorgeous purple and orange hues painting the evening sky over the mountain top hamlet of O Cebreiro in Galicia in the far northwest of Spain.

The village is one which on its own is a magical place – it is where in an stone church set amongst narrow cobblestone streets, stone village houses and thatch-roofed pallozas, a miraculous holy grail is kept. The village, located midway between the León and the the pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela, lies along the French route of El Camino de Santiago or The Way of St. James, a medieval pilgrimage route and comes at the end of a steep climb and is place to rest and reflect for many pilgrims.

The pilgrimage route, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, can involve pilgrims walking along entire lengths of several routes, some with starting points in the south of France over distances that typically are in excess of 700 kilometres.

The routes have long been a source of fascination to me – and I hope to have the opportunity to walk at least part of it one day.

Silhouettes of times soon to be forgotten

The silhouette of a coconut tree along the shoreline at Sembawang is seen against colours painted by the setting of the sun at 7.09 pm on 22 September 2013. Coconut trees bending to the sea, once a common sight along the shoreline, are becoming less common with development which has taken away much of Singapore’s natural coastline as well as the manicuring of many of our coastal areas. The beach at Sembawang is one of the last natural beaches left on the main island and is one of the few places left in Singapore where I am still able to find bits of that wonderful Singapore I grew up in.

The area where the coconut tree is, just around the bend of Beaulieu Road leading to the jetty (we could once drive down to the jetty), is at the western end of the beach. The waters of the sea just beyond the little stretch of beach and rocks just below the tree was where, on the many nights I spent at the jetty fishing for crabs, I would had have a grand time in catching scooping pufferfish out of the waters and watching them inflate in the 1970s and early 1980s. The area is in the midst of change with both luxury residential housing just to the east of the beach and public housing developments fast coming up which will alter the area’s character. Another change which is imminent is the moving of the shipyard – a finger pier with its cranes and ships and floating docks moored along it is also seen in the photograph. The shipyard, Sembawang Shipyard, is a remnant of what was once a huge British naval base (the yard was the former naval dockyard)  which stretched all the way to the Causeway.

Light after dark (Lower Peirce on the rocks)

Twilight, 7.33 pm 21 September 2013.

Sunset over the strait

The setting sun over Johor Bahru, seen across the Tebrau Strait or Straits of Johor from Woodlands at 7.04 pm on 25 Aug 2013.

Light after dark (Lower Peirce Reservoir)

Capturing the beautiful light after darkness has fallen, this time at 7.43 pm on 7 August 2013 at Lower Peirce Reservoir …

Light after Dark (The lookout point)

A view from the lookout point along one of the more scenic roads in Singapore, Mandai Road at 7.43 pm on 4 August 2013. The view is one in which the foreground is partially illuminated by the street lamps, with the rest of what’s in the picture, lit by ambient light, captured through a fairly long exposure. The lookout point, provides some picturesque views of Upper Seletar Reservoir, and is one of my favourite scenic spots in SIngapore, having first taken in the views at the end of the 1960s.

Rebirth

The demolition of the former National Stadium in 2010 and the construction of a new National Stadium within the Singapore Sports Hub does bring to mind an art installation I stumbled upon at Sculpture Square back in 2010 – around the time the demolition work started. The work of local artist Ngim Kum Thong, Deconstruction, Destruction and Destination, examines the inevitability of deconstruction and destruction, the eventuality of which is a destination – much as what we have seen in the dismantling and demolition of an icon and the creation of another to replace it.

The sun sets on the National Staidum. The final stand as the old stadium built in 1973 was being demolished at the end of 2010.

The former National Stadium, was completed in 1973, playing host to Singapore’s very first mass participation international sports event. Through the years, the 55,000 seat capacity stadium (it did take in crowds as large as 70,000 during its early days hosting Malaysia Cup matches) played host to many sports events including the well supported Malaysia Cup football matches and also National Day parades. It’s demolition in the second half of 2010 was a long delayed one – work on the Singapore Sports Hub was originally meant to have started back in 2008. More recently an announcement was made by the Singapore Sports Council (SSC) on the occasion of  the Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth’s visit to view the installation of the highest truss of the new stadium – approximately 77.5 metres above pitch level, confirms that the project is on track and the stadium will be opened as scheduled in April 2014.

The sun rises on the new. The new National Stadium and the Sports Hub takes shape – seen in April 2013. The Sports Hub is scheduled to be completed in April 2014.

Light after dark (Upper Seletar Reservoir)

Light after dark at 7.44 and 7.50 pm on 7 July 2013 taken at Upper Seletar Reservoir.