������Ƶ

The Centre’s collaborations are broad and varied, both locally and globally. They continue to evolve around our current and future projects. Each collaboration represents a personal connection and working relationship with researchers at leading Universities, Centres and Media Labs that add to the capability and outreach for SCDHCH and the ������Ƶ University School of the Arts. This endeavour has built an enduring transnational, transregional as well as a transdisciplinary research approach for us across time and space, in both the real world and the virtual ones we are developing.

Looking Ahead

Image

SCDHCH is unique in Malaysia, in both its form and function, at a time when research-creation in digital media has taken hold in universities. This centre has been pivotal in showcasing digital cultural heritage and creative media artworks in Malaysia. Our undertakings cannot be created by one person alone but are instead a collaborative effort of a transdisciplinary team from the humanities, anthropology, media arts, technology, design and digital production practices.
In SCDHCH, the cultural imaginary is the embodiment of the intangible nature of much of the world’s cultural heritage. It resides in the minds and hearts of those from whom it originates and is passed down from generation to generation. How that can be preserved and how it becomes codified into sustainable digital forms are key research-creation questions in this latter half of the twenty-first century. The materiality of the digital, its embodiment, agency, performativity and the resulting impact on the audiences it seeks to inform are key concerns of the Centre for our projects going forward into 2024, empowering a new generation of researchers, creators and scholars to advance our field in innovative ways.
 

In order to build impact within the public exhibition of our projects - a very strong and often critical form of “publication” - the concept of virtuality is tied to viewing conditions in physical space and embodies the character of the visitors’ aesthetic experience presented via technologized conditions. It operates on an intuitive, even subconscious level of audience engagement using various techniques that showcase the interdependence between the physical and/or virtual objects, space and perceptual process of mediated digital culture and heritage content. This is heretofore an unconventional approach in Malaysia. Each of our exhibitions, described briefly below has been iterative. We continue to add to each version and push the boundaries of creating meaningful ways to showcase the content and expand storytelling using new presentation techniques in the gallery, library, archive, museum (GLAM) environments. Each one functions as a living-experiment integrating technology with content in transformative ways. It has also serves to reveal new modes of communicating the meaningfulness of university research to broader audiences, using fresh expressive modalities via an exhibition in the public space.

Image

PureLand Exhibition

September – October 2016

PureLand AR employs iPad screens that visitors use as mobile viewing windows to explore the magnificent Buddhist wall paintings inside Cave 220, a cave dated to the early Tang from the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang in Gansu province, China. It is a pioneering augmented reality installation whereby the paintings and sculptures of the caves are rendered virtually within the architecture of a room which shares same dimensions to those of Cave 220. It creates a space for the conjunction between real and virtual formations that gives transacted aesthetic expression to Dunhuang’s Buddhist art treasury of mural paintings and sculptures. The exhibition ran in the Gallery at ������Ƶ University, for nearly 2 months (Sep-Oct 2016). PureLand exhibition was a collaboration with Professor Sarah Kanderdine (EPFL eM+) and Professor Jeffrey Shaw (City University of Hong Kong), and the Dunhuang Academy, China.

Image

MALAYSIA 2050 MEGA SCIENCE 3.0

November 10, 2016: MATRADE Centre

The Mega Science exhibition was held on November 10, 2016 at Level 3, MATRADE Exhibition and Convention Centre (MECC). Hosted by the ACADEMY OF SCIENCES MALAYSIA (ASM) to show the participants where technology and science are headed in the next 35 years. It was attended by a large crowd. As the invited representative of ������Ƶ University, the CRCDM team showcased creative content comprised of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 3D printing, and immersive museology. The event was officially launched by YB Datuk Seri Panglima Wilfred Madius Tanga, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation who was keen to experience the CRCDM showcase at our booth.

Image

Transmedia Exhibition 2017
November 2017

CRCDM for the second year held its research-creation exhibition in the University. Titled “Transmedia”, it was a collective presentation of eight ongoing collaborative research-creation artworks produced by the Centre’s members. It ran for 2 weeks in the School of Arts, level 9 facilities and was experienced by an enthusiastic crowd of staff, students, and invited guests.

Image

The Hainan Boatbuilder of Pangkor Island (Exhibition)

October 10-25, 2017

As a tribute to The Boatbuilder of Pangkor Island, the team at CRCDM decided to present the project research output in different forms of digital media from 3D modelling, 3D printing, augmented/ virtual reality, etc. The exhibition was held in the Gallery, ������Ƶ University for 2 weeks (October 10-25, 2017). The exhibition also included a 12-minute documentary shot in HD documenting the entire building process of the wooden fishing boats. It was nominated for best documentary at the Canada-China International Film Festival in Montreal, Canada.

Image

Digital Heritage 2018

October 2018

As a result of the CRCDM research-creation exhibition and participation at the Digital Heritage Congress 2018 in San Francisco, we caught the interest of the GOOGLE Arts and Culture Institute. Our exhibit was right beside theirs. In follow-up CRCDM further shared some of the digital heritage content we have created over the past four years. This lead to the signing of an agreement. With this in place CRCDM now has a presence on the Arts and Culture platform and the ability to access to GOOGLE technology for creating and showcasing Malaysian cultural heritage content, with worldwide recognition.

Image

Finding The Face Of The Other In Photography

Obscura Festival, Georgetown, August 2018

This exhibit asks what is at the core of photography? What makes it unique and why do we always return to it? It posits that what makes photography unique is what we find in amateur photography and specifically the act of photography itself. We will see how the act of making an image puts us in relation to the other that we see in front of the lens. With amateur photography we find that our relationship with the subject has more significance than the image made and yet it is this relationship that fuels how we have come to understand fine art and journalistic photography.

Image

Seen an exhibition at Wei-Ling Contemporary

May-June 2018

Associate Professor Dr. Ken Feinstein was a featured artist in this exhibition about the changing state of surveillance and security in contemporary culture. His work It Not a Vicious circle, It’s a Downward Spiral was exhibited there along with many other innovative media artworks. CRCDM sponsored the exhibition with a loan of our high-resolution projection equipment.

Image

Taken From the Water: audiovisual work. Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival, Malaysia.

November 2018

“The name Moses ... means, taken from the water, and so shall we be taken out of instability, rescued from the storm of the world-flow.” Meister Eckhart. Using images reflected on the surface of water and sounds from above and beneath it, this audio-visual work is an expression of Eckhart’s ‘storm of the world-flow’ and of how spiritual practice can be understood to modulate its ‘instability’. It is a translucent suggestion of such process: change amid stasis, progressive cyclical transformation, interplay of form and knowledge – seen/unseen, known/unknown.

Image

Park Bench Sojourn: the installations

1 ~ Aural Diversity Conference. Attenborough Arts Centre, University of Leicester, UK (Nov-Dec, 2019)

2 ~ DigitalHERITAGE 2018 New Realities: Authenticity & Automation in the Digital Age. 3rd International Congress & Expo, San Francisco Art Institute, USA. (November 2018)

3 ~ Transmedia // A Digital Storytelling Exhibition // School of Arts, ������Ƶ University, Malaysia. (November 2017)

4 ~ SONOLOGIA’16 OUT-OF-PHASE, International sound studies conference. NuSom – Research Centre on Sonology, University São Paulo. (Oct 22-25, 2016)

Image

Paralogical Machines at Wei-Ling Contemporary in Kuala Lumpur

January 2019

In January of 2019, the CRCDM co-sponsored with the Geothe Institut, Malaysia the exhibition Paralogical Machines at Wei-Ling Contemporary in Kuala Lumpur. The exhibition presented works by leading media artists from around the world. It focused on questions of how media art is developing in an age where the image can become more environmental. It asked what happens when the image leaves the frame to engage with us in a more direct fashion. Kenneth Feinstein curated the show as well as exhibiting his work - Post Box Cinema, a project first developed through a grant. This exhibition comes out of continuing work focusing on media culture and how it has been developing in contemporary culture.

Image

World Indigenous Day Celebration, Center for Malaysian Indigenous Studies, (CMIS), University of Malaya

August 2, 2019

CRCDM was invited by Dr. Welyne Jeffrey Jehom - Director of CMIS - to exhibit our work during the World Indigenous Day Celebration, at the University of Malaya,. The event was officiated by Director General of JAKOA (Department of Malaysia Indigenous Advancement) Prof. Juli Edo. Later in the evening, the exhibition was visited by Deputy High Commissioner Carissa and team who witnessed out projects on site.

Image

PNC 2019 Annual Conference

PNC 2019 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings Regionality and Digital Humanities: South-South Connections, 15–18 October, 2019. NTU, School of Art & Design, Singapore

Exhibition: The Malay Woodcarver of Kelantan The Master Woodcarver of Kelantan: installation (4-channel audio with HD video).

This digital multimedia work explores the possibility of advocating cultural heritage and communicating its value and meaning through contemporary artistic modes of presentation. Based on fieldwork in Kelantan and Terengganu, it seeks, in particular, to present the philosophical approach to woodcarving of the master-carver Nik Rashiddin. In an interview shortly before his death in 2002 he speaks of an intuitive inner guide (guru asal) that bonds craftsman and craft with tradition and ancestry, and of the profoundest connection with the earth as the legacy of civilisation to the craftsman.

This research-creation project, driven by a sound-based narrative with video imagery and by virtue of its special communicative qualities as arts practice, seeks to evoke such a ‘meeting with the craftsman.’ A meeting determined by an experience that, through immersive sound and vision, draws out our shared sensibilities that are in sympathy with the earth, with soul and spirit, with water, wood, and stone … that we ‘may enter’ to experience the meaning and value of Malay woodcarving in a new and vital way.

1. STR-IRNGS-SOA-CRCDM-01-2023, (RM200,000)
   Merdeka Textile Museum - Creative Digital Media Exhibition Components, Collaborative Research Creation. Funded by PNB Malaysia.
2. STR-IRNGS-SOA-CRCDM-01-2021
   Virtual Augmented Reality Research Network (VARRN) INRGS Grant, RM50,000. ������Ƶ University 2021.
3. INT-2019-SOA-CRCDM-01
   The first Large Scale Full Immersive Virtual Reality Experience Targeting Cultural Heritage of Malaysia: Researcher Approach to the Future of Museum in Malaysia.
4. INT-2019-SOA-CRCDM-02
   The Unseen Arts in the Malay Culture and Heritage.
5. EXT-2018-SOA-CRCDM-01
   Past the Window, 2018. Pro Helvetia, Switzerland.
6. EXT-2018-SOA-CRCDM-02
   Paralogical Machines: 2018. When Images Meet Us in Space and Time, Goethe Institut, Malaysia.
7. INTS-2017-SOA-CRCDM-03
   Possibilities and Outcomes of Technology Involvement in Household Waste Management in Malaysia, Targeting ������Ƶ Group High-Rise Residential Buildings.
8. INTS-2017-SOA-CRCDM-01
   Malaysian culture and heritage folklore stories repository.
9. INT-FOA-CRCDM-2016-01
   The Pangkor Boatbuilder.
10. INT-FOA-CRCDM-2016
    Post Box Cinema, 2016.

1. 2017: SEG TV Commercial for Branding Department.
2. 2017: SEG 30th Anniversary Event Video Montage for Branding Department.
3. 2017: MARDI VR360 Workshop for IT Department.
4. 2017: ������Ƶ TES Audit Simulation shoot and Video Promo for Conference.
5. 2017-18 Prof Matthew Sansom ������Ƶ Pyramid Mall – Car Park Escalator Stack Art consultant, Audio and Video design Oasis rainforest design for multi-level multimedia installation 14-channel audio and video wall concept, design and implementation
6. 2018: ������Ƶ Pyramid Mall – Main Entrance Art consultant, Audio design Ambient transition space for new ‘air-lock’ zone 6-channel audio concept, design and implementation
7. 2018: RHB Bank Video Production Workshop for Corporate Communication Department.
8. 2018: IT Department Desktop / Laptop Video Guide with AR. 2018-2019:
   Consulting service to Centre for Asia Leadership in setting up their video production team and workflow.
9. 2019: ������Ƶ Pyramid Mall – Car Park Escalator Stack Advisory art consultant for 2019 remodelling.
10. 2019: ������Ƶ University Augmented Reality Academic Prospectus and Research Prospectus for Branding Department and SU Press.
11. 2019: Augmented Reality Workshop for ������Ƶ Education Group - 100 Staff, organized by HR Department.
12. 2019: IT Department ThinkB4Print Campaign
13. 2019: Consulting service for School of Science and Technology Section: Department of Biological Sciences, in VR Lab Simulations for their teaching and learning programme.
14. 2019: ������Ƶ Foundation Programme Mini AR workshop for Foundation Students with Preedha R. Govindasamy of SFP Programme.
15. 2019: ������Ƶ Property Management - Section: Implementing a VR showcase instead of physical real size property units currently being used in their gallery.