film x music
Using silent home movies featuring a family’s gatherings, birthday parties and outings filmed in 1960’s Singapore through a father’s eyes, artists Darren Ng and BALBALAB will create live sound accompaniment in response to the excerpts. Following the performance of their pieces, the artists will share their creative processes as well as their sonic interpretations of the film text with the audience

co:lab, the library@esplanade’s new Signature series co-organized with the Asian Film Archive, is an experimental platform where cross-disciplinary encounters between Film and Performing Arts can occur. Using the theme of "memories" as a focal point, artists from varying disciplines will be invited to create new live works in response to selected films. Experience new perspectives with the moving image through these new layers of artistic interpretations.

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Admission is Free, but limited to 40 registered participants only. Should the programme be fully booked, kindly email your name and contact number to eppl@library.nlb.gov.sg with the subject title ‘co:lab series’ if you wish to be placed on the waiting list.

About the Artists 

BALBALAB

BALBALAB is a collective of experimental musicians from Singapore, comprising of Shark Fung, Dennis Tan, Zai Tang, and Wu Jun Han. The group evolved through the Openlab sessions at The Substation (2014), and have since been exploring a variety of strategies towards electroacoustic improvisation, DIY instrumentation and combining sound & moving-image.

Each member of the collective brings their individual practise into the mix:

Shark Fung (aka Awk Wah) is a veteran of the Singapore experimental music scene whose shifting musical outlook draws on an array of styles and influences in a compellingly unpredictable manner.

Through the making of objects, installations and performances, Dennis Tan’s projects engage with the environment, perception and communication patterns of sound.

Zai Tang’s work navigates the terrain between sound, space and the body, through his collaborative projects as a composer, sound designer and field recordist for film, contemporary dance and multimedia installations.

As a video projectionist for a variety of music collectives in Singapore, Wu Jun Han explores notions of viscerality, vernacularity and the future, drawing influence from visual music and live improvisation.

BALBALAB have played at Findars, KL (A/V#5); Pink Noize, SG (Sound Steady Saturday); Artistry, SG (Ujikaji Presents); Platinum Music World Disco Bar, SG (Inuka Anno Doomini Launch); (CON)TEMPORARY OSMOSIS, Taipei (AudioVisual Media Festival); and SGIFF 2015, SG (Unidentified Film Ontologies).

Darren Ng

Darren has sound designed and composed music for over 200 arts productions over his 17 years career and has received multiple Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards for Best Sound. As a music composer, he is signed to record label Kitchen. Label, going by the pseudonym – sonicbrat, and was invited to perform solo in numerous prestigious international music and arts festivals across Europe and Asia. He has been Associate Sound Artist and Music Composer for The Finger Players since 2004 and is a cofounder of the design collective INDEX. He was conferred the Young Artist Award (music; multi-disciplinary practice) in 2012 by the National Arts Council.