Abstract
Light projections have become an increasingly popular form of public art in Singapore and around the world. Often featured in night-time public art events known as ‘light festivals’, these large-scale works of moving light and sound play nightly across the facades and architectural details of large buildings, mesmerising audiences and transforming building exteriors and their surroundings into otherworldly spaces for a time. The ability of light projections to transform the experience of a place as well as ascribe new meanings to it has resulted in the increasing implementation of light projections alongside other top-down, professionally designed practices of shaping places known as placemaking. Despite its popularity, there has been a dearth of research that engages the creators of light projection events and extends inquiry into their intentions with regard to light projections and places. Considering the turn towards placemaking in Singapore, this study, involving eight light projection event creators as interviewees, critically examines their intentionalities with regard to their light projections and places in Singapore. Through their works, these creators sought to historicise places, engage heartland audiences and represent everyday lived places, and finally depict an individual’s process of place-making. Utilising Kristy H.A. Kang’s (2019) concept of the ‘urban interface’ as an analytical starting point, this study illustrates how projections that historicise places communicate top-down narratives of what a place means. Conversely, projections that engage heartland audiences, represent their everyday lived places or depict individual processes of making places meaningful communicate alternative, organic and bottom-up narratives of places.