Foundin is an interactive, public art installation of tiny figurines placed in public spaces to be found by passersby. A month before the installation, Foundin asks participants to choose a figurine online and tell us what they might be waiting for -- in Singapore or in life.
Foundin is a Fringe commission and world premiere at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival from 8 - 19 January 2014.
When a figurine is found, the finder can keep the figurine and access the unique URL or QR code printed on the wooden card on which the figurine stands. The Finder will get to read the message left by the Participant and respond to it. He or she also has the option to contact the Participant by email, if available. Summarised on www.foundin.org, all figurines are updated 'live' on their statuses, namely "Found", "Lost" and "Waiting". All figurines are hand-painted and no two are the same.
The heart of Foundin is the online count of "Found" figurines, which hopefully inspires a growing audience to head out and actively explore the city in detail; to notice art in a different scale and perspective.
Foundin seeks to close the gap between Art and the People by challenging the pre-conceived notion of art and the space that art occupies. Bringing art from exhibition spaces to urban streets, the figurines disrupt one's preoccupation in the metropolis and ask city dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings and notice the small details. All figurines in Foundin are individuals seeking to be found in one way or another, just like every one of us. By shrinking human figures to miniature plastic models, the project places a miniature city within a city and explores how we, the higher and larger beings, interact with much smaller counterparts. Foundin is a city installation showcasing each of us and all of us: as we find each other and as we are found in our society.
Download the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2014 press release here.
Tan Wei Keong
Artist
Wei Keong's animated short films White and Hush Baby received the Special Achievement and Special Mention awards respectively at the Singapore International Film Festival in 2007 and 2009. Granted a Media Education Scholarship by the Media Development Authority of Singapore in 2007, Wei Keong holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Animation from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
He was the Chair of the Student Volunteer Program for SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 in Seoul and was a committee member for the SIGGRAPH Asia conferences in Yokohama (2009) and Singapore (2008).
Samuel Woo
Producer & Designer
To overcome his tendency for paranoia, Samuel turns to imagination to create stories, often through photography, illustration and writing. The need to dispel his fears has transformed into creative skills and thought processes he now practises on a daily basis, mostly evident from his Instagram @fakevampire. IRL he is human and has a Bachelor's degree in Photography from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, two certificates in Product and Graphic Design and an impossible addiction to making things pretty in strange ways. All because he believes #yolo.
Ryan Tan
Technical Director
Ryan is an autodidact with a passion for creating. He has been developing applications professionally for the last decade and his Bachelor of Fine Arts drives him to derive satisfaction uniting technology with art and design. He headed games and television production at a local startup in his uni years and co-created the Angel’s Gate television series - the first Singapore-made television format exported overseas.
He now runs Red Airship, a digital consultancy specialising in mobile and web product development, and manages the Animators in Singapore group in his free time.