Since forming in 2020, the collective ToNewEntities (TNE) has made a name for itself both in the digital and physical art spheres. A multi-national quintet with a studio at Pearl’s Hill Terrace, it comprises the visual artist Tristan Lim; the arts and cultural worker Rafi Abdullah; graphic and motion designer Darius Ou; 3D visuals specialist Nghia Phung; and Vu Long, a graphic designer who documents their projects.
Last year, the group was behind the inaugural edition of Crossroads – an annual festival meant to spotlight new media art using electronic billboards in commercial spaces such as Ion Orchard and the newish Ten Square building – conceptualising and curating the line-up of artists.
Other times, it advises those looking to work with digital art and creates such art itself. (Their trippy animated visuals have turned up at events by the music, art and party collective Strange Weather or as part of the latest campaign by the Singapore clothing label See You At One, for example.)
So if there’s anyone who can shed light on this art genre and how it impacts the art world and culture, it’s them.
First up, what exactly does ToNewEntities do?
Tristan Lim (TL): “We are a studio that aims to create novel experiences and push for new ideas using art and technology… Back in early 2020, we were frustrated with the lack of opportunities and avenues to embark on creative projects that were conceptually or visually less mainstream. So we got together to create these opportunities ourselves, hoping we could open doors for like-minded peers and individuals too.”
Rafi Abdullah (RA): “I’d say we are a very loosely defined creative collective that produces not only visuals centred around digital and contemporary cultures, but also the platforms, projects and experiences to contain and present such visuals in… For example, for a digital exhibition that we had curated, we not only came up with the digital environment for the presentation of the artists’ works, but also digital avatars of the artists as proxies that presented said work.”
What draws the team to digital art?
TL: “As a team, we have always gravitated towards boundary-pushing or genre-bending artists, designers and creatives, and many of them work within the digital sphere. We’re hungry for things we’ve never seen before, and a lot of that sits in the digital with the futurity it implies and the possibilities it entails.”
Darius Ou (DO): “We never specifically set out to create digital works. Our conversations just happened to revolve around the things we found interesting; whether a campaign video for Mugler or giant animatronic faces by Gentle Monster – those were some examples I can remember chatting about while hanging out at Rafi’s.”
RA: “Being a digital native and very immersed in such cultures, I naturally gravitated towards digital art as it resonates with me more than, say, a classical painting. My early personal encounters came from the electronic music scene in the mid-2010s when digital art was very much married to music videos and live performance sets. Notable names from this time include the local music and art collective Syndicate and the London-based electronic music record label Night Slugs – the music videos and album art of the latter’s artists always had a component of ironically bad computer graphic imagery (CGI). This visual language and vernacular later bled into contemporary fine art circuits – often with much-loaded contexts and socio-historical underpinnings – sealing my love for the medium.”
Pictured: Visuals created for a party thrown by the music and art collective Strange Weather, inspired by a brief of “Umbrella Corporation”, aka the corrupted multinational conglomerate at the heart of the zombie series Resident Evil.
Digital art has been around for decades, yet it’s only really exploded in recent years. What accounts for that?
TL: “For good or bad, NFTs? Also, a lot of digital art-making software has become really accessible and powerful – the barrier to entry as a digital artist is getting lower and lower. Furthermore, the younger generations that grew up alongside the web have a natural aptitude for picking these things up. You can do many things now that you couldn’t even five years ago.”
Nghia Phung (NP): “For myself, the rise of digital art reflects how powerful and accessible computers – including smartphones and other personal devices – are nowadays. It is hard to believe that the small device we hold in our palms daily is more functional than the massive IBM supercomputers of the ’60s.”
The art world has traditionally seemed resistant to digital mediums. Does this attitude persist?
TL: “The perceived intangible nature of digital art will always be contentious, but I would like to think that their widespread adoption reflects a wider societal acceptance of change and uncertainty, especially given how our reality is nowadays.”
RA: “Indeed, there has been a significant change of attitude towards digital mediums. However, this shift might be a kneejerk reaction driven by trends or a culture of fear of missing out. This means that interests or efforts in the field might not necessarily be well thought-out, considered or sustainable.”
What are some common misconceptions about digital art?
RA: “That digital art is easy to make and doesn’t require much talent. Also there are those who think that digital art is meaningless and without context or provenance.”
Can any artwork created with a computer be classified as digital art?
TL: “I feel nowadays you can call anything something. The art is in the delivery.”
NP: “For me, ‘digital art’ is a term that we now use to categorise works that might belong to this particular field. However, imagine if digital works are the only art we have left in the future. Should they still be defined by the same term? I think we all have our definition of everything.”
Pictured: ToNewEntities was behind the trippy campaign visuals for Singapore fashion label See You At One’s latest collection, Waveforms.
Digital art also seems to suffer from a reputation of being cold and impersonal – thoughts?
TL: “We can create the unfamiliar and speculative in the digital realm, be it configurations, forms or mindscapes. Perhaps these are seen as cold because such things can be quite unrelatable and far removed from what we see daily. However, it’s also in the unfamiliar where interesting things happen.”
DO: “Digital is simply the medium on which the work is made or interacts. To me, the way we engage with creating digital work is no different from painting on a physical canvas. We put the same effort and passion into working on a digital canvas.”
How do you curate a digital exhibition for audiences that might be new to the concept?
RA: “I’ll be honest and say that we haven’t quite deliberated this as we’re still at the nascent stage of coming together as a collective and are at a very experimental phase. However, I’ve noticed folks like the curator Tulika Ahuja of the independent art consultancy Mama Magnet approaching it from an angle of making the experience immersive and relatable to a physical space.”
How do you think the digital art world will progress in future?
TL: “This is probably speculative, but I think we’ll see people finding their identities in artworks – artworks becoming human and vice versa. If people can already relate to anime characters, it’s possible for artworks too.”
NP: “Obviously, a lot of things are a work in progress, but definitely, the future is bright!”
RA: “The future is always uncertain, but I’m at least certain that it will not overshadow or take over a physical experience of art. Instead, digital art would be experienced in tandem and as something that elevates or supplements it. Most things are cyclical anyway. In time, there will be the fatigue of all things digital – art included – and experiences in the physical realm will be considered novel and desired again.”
Pictured: A virtual avatar of a curator that the group conceptualised for arts organisation’s OH! Open House’s For the House; Against the House exhibition from last year.
Who are the digital artists in Singapore people should know about?
TL: “Brandon Tay. He was already doing some pretty insane stuff way back, and I feel his work has carved a niche in people’s imagination… He’s recognised in the media arts scene, but I think even more people should know about his work even if he might disagree with me on that statement.”
RA: “Not everyone would agree with me here, but it is important to point out that the digital art landscape is very male-dominated, so people should give more credit to local non-male digital artists. These include Debbie Ding, Priyageetha Dia, Jo Ho, Elsa Wong, and Kimverlyn Lim – some might not identify as digital artists, but they’re doing great work.”
Can we expect another edition of Crossroads this year?
RA: “At this point, we’re hosting Wassim Z. Alsindi – a visiting artist from Berlin and Milan – for a playthrough of a game art he’s developed, which will be live-streamed and open to the public at our studios. It’s part of a new project called (M)across Cultures that looks at anime as a space for critical inquiry and test-bedding new knowledge and experiences. What follows is a live music score performance of a short anime written and produced by a local artist to be released within an open-world and public game server. And then, it’s strategising the best way to move forward with Crossroads and how to secure resources for it…
Besides continuing to become a platform for emerging artists, I hope the festival can become self-sustainable and expand beyond being a platform to present digital and new-media art. It should also fork out into other activities such as workshops, symposiums, special commissions and performances, and so on, in turn hopefully heightening the appreciation for digital art.”
DO: “I think Crossroads was one of those projects where some of our favourite artists could showcase their work to a wide range of audience, given that these digital billboards are situated in public places, and anyone could chance upon it. This has the potential to foster a community. That idea was really exciting to us and will remain core to what TNE strives to do.”
Pictured: A view of Contemporary Gestures, a digital exhibition curated and designed by the collective that was hosted on The Upside Space platform last Dec.
This article first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2023 Art & Music Edition of FEMALE