Now & Again: Sound (Issue 02)

Alyshea Mo
Alyshea’s practice revolves around a variety of mediums, from interactive projections to sound installations and paintings. While studying fine art over the past two years in London and Stockholm, she has primarily worked with the notion of belonging, both in a physical space or place and within the body. Much of her practice stems from recording her daily routines, exploring the idea of the divided self and spending time with the perverse peripheral eye. This has led her to constantly engage with and question her religious upbringing, her love for horror and her interest in psychosis.

Beverly Chew
Between January and June 2019, Beverly has found herself existing in a limbo state. Having the luxury of purely existing, free from the shackles of reality and responsibilities, she travelled to 21 cities, spending her days stuffing her face and aimlessly exploring. Her survival upon her return to reality is now heavily uncertain.

Chen Yi An
Spending a little too much time observing common phenomena and wondering about the unseen aspects of the world, Yi An is an aspiring experience designer. Having a tendency to grow fond of the spaces he inhabits, his projects stem from a personal fascination with the subtleties in everyday occurrences. He likes to look at the factors that contribute to an individual’s involvement in an environment, and is always speculating about the ways that one can move and change these elements for new encounters in mundane scenarios.

Kin Leonn
Affectionately known among his peers as the “ambient boy from Singapore”, Kin Leonn is a composer and producer currently based in London. His music is sourced from a well of subconscious phrases and evocative meditations, often presented in the shape of nostalgia and other introspective qualities. In fact, one could probably fault his work as being overbearingly nostalgic, a criticism he sheepishly accepts. Nevertheless, he remains persistent in mapping out these very intersections between emotion, empathy, and art.

Leia Devadason
Leia is a full-time Music student who spends time she should have used to practise classical pieces to improvise songs on the piano. Although this compulsion has not made her a better pianist, it has certainly heightened her sensitivity to sound and compelled her to pursue a continual discovery, creation, and critical appreciation of art. Believing that discourse and practice are mutually constitutive, Leia’s endeavours are firmly grounded in her interests in musicology, sociology, language, and politics. While she does not comprehend many things in life, such as casual clothing and egg yolk, she is content navigating two time zones, two cultures, and two types of kopfee in the hope of realising the ever-practical dream of being an artist-academic in Singapore.

YY Liak
YY is an illustrator and art history nerd who likes working with bold, punchy colours, graphic shapes, and contrasting elements. She thinks and speaks in images, sometimes to the detriment of all other senses, but more often than not to allow for interesting intersections between different modes of perception. Other things she loves include literature, classical music, and video game playthroughs involving disconcerting, game-breaking amounts of destruction. She’s currently doing a brief stint at a publishing house designing book covers, and constantly fantasises about the day she’ll be able to retire to an old, secluded townhouse with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Nathaniel Soon
Nathaniel considers himself a visual storyteller, experimenting with an array of mediums such as film, imagery and everyday conversation to connect people with the natural world. He is the founder of the documentary collective and social enterprise Our Seas, Our Legacy, which uses stories to engage communities, communicate science, and amplify voices for the shared betterment of our oceans’ future. A prospective environmental anthropology major, he is curious about how humans perceive and interact with landscapes and resources, and how this influences behaviour regarding environmental sustainability. Mumbo-jumbo aside, he simply loves being outdoors and is also a divemaster and avid mountaineer.

Ong Kian Peng
Ong Kian Peng is an artist and designer based in Singapore. He is interested in presenting new perceptual perspectives that examine natural phenomena and cross-sensory modalities, often providing a space of contemplation that amplifies and focuses on these areas. Alongside his artistic practice, he also runs Supernormal, an independent arts space bringing together young emerging artists and alternative disciplines.

Safiah Noorhimli
Photography has played a large part in Safiah's creative process and perception of the world. With a routine of compressing her travel experiences and site visits into 32-gigabyte storage cards, her reality has become increasingly steered towards what’s displayed on the camera. Creating collages with her swelling volume of photographs to the sombre sounds of Oskar Schuster has become an outlet for her to amalgamate and reorganise her realities. When Safiah is not in her dorm making collages while contemplating the randomness of life, you will find her either serving Gnocchi at an Italian restaurant or sharing candid conversations under the guise of a gallery sitter, teasing out the snags of life.