We are delighted to announce that our group’s artwork “Digital-Tropical: Breathing the Waves” has won the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) ArtScience Prize for 2020. The prize recognises “outstanding creations in the nation’s fields that showcases the fusion of art and science.” Watch videos of the artwork here. The work continues to evolve, a book and more videos are in the pipeline. Due to the Movement Control Order, we have to postponed some parts of the work but watch this space! Get to know our group members here.
We are accepting commissions for public artwork or proposal for collaboration. Contact: hbaharin@ukm.edu.my
Digital-Tropical: Breathing the Waves
Artists’ Statement:
Digital-Tropical extends scientific explanations of how things are to an artistic-scientific amalgamation of how things could be. In this environmental artwork, oceanic wave heights data, collected from a location near Tioman Island for two years, are represented using lights which illuminate the underside of a traditional tropical house. The wave heights data were collected for a big data and renewable energy research project, which aims to predict oceanic waves to be converted to electrical energy.
The house used in this artwork is a 300-year-old Istana Puteri Bongsu at Taman Pantun UKM, which was built on stilts to withstand the ebb and flow of floods. The architecture of the house ‘works around’ the natural environment to enable it to function in the uncertainties of nature, unlike many technologies which arose from scientific advancement that ‘subdue’ the natural world by making irreversible and detrimental changes to it. Renewable energy technologies, such as those that use oceanic waves to create electricity, is dependent on the uncertainties of nature by ‘working around’ it. We need to know the patterns of oceanic waves to harvest the energy efficiently, but we cannot control oceanic waves to produce electricity. Thus, this work juxtaposes the architecture of old, with new technology paradigm, both that ‘work around’ nature in order to preserve it.
Another major part of this work is the archival of knowledge, produced from an iterative multidisciplinary discourse, that revolves between the creation of new meanings and new forms.
Videos:
Group members:
Hanif Baharin (Interaction Design, Physical Computing, Interactive Art)
Nasir Baharudin (Visual Epistemology, Aesthetic)
Hafiz Mastro (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
Puteri Nor Ellyza Nohuddin (Big Data Analytics, Data Science)
Anwar Suhaimi (Fine Art, New Media)
Afdallyna Fathiyah Harun (User Experience, Sensorial Experience, Participatory Design)
Shureen Faris Abdul Shukor (Restorative Landscape)
Mohd Shahrudin Abd Manan (Architecture)
H. Baharin 