Finding adventure in a limitless world
my parents told me
when i was a toddler i hated being
buckled in a stroller
and as soon as i could walk i never
ever sat in a stroller again i’ve always
craved adventure
and i think even as a child i expressed
the desire to explore the world
by rejecting limits why limit yourself
we buckled and ferried around in a
stroller when you could be free
to wander the world on your own two feet
as a child every new location i
discovered was always fresh and exciting
a simple trip to the local aquarium our
hike
up the mountain it always felt like this
great grand adventure
and then i grew up and i began to
realize that the world wasn’t as wild
and
fantastical as i had hoped it would have
been
every exciting location i discovered as
a child grew to become boring and
mundane to me as an adult
and unless i had the financial abilities
to buy myself a ticket to bali every
week
my days of adventure had come to an end
and i had reached the limits
of exploration but if there’s one thing
all of you here know about me
it’s that i hate limits and it just so
happened
i found the key to breaking the limits
of my reality
my name is sean i’m a digital artist and
i would like to share with everyone a
story
about finding adventure in a limitless
world
i take the train to work daily and i
come home very much the same way
i sit on a cold bench and i look across
the even colder broad faces of my fellow
passengers
i place my hand on the frosty metal pole
and i look out into the darkness that is
the subway tunnels
it is honestly one of the most boring
experiences i have to go through
every day of my life but you know where
else is cold
and requires you to travel through a
duck beyond
outer space because going to work
is boring but when you travel from your
home planet of earth
to the far-fetched colonies of the
galaxy on a spaceship now that
that becomes an adventure i see the
lights outside the trains
and i don’t just see them as led
electronic lights i see them as stars
asteroids and meteorites i see
travellers in their spacesuits
entering the trains only to take out
their protective gear
and store them in compartments below the
seats which have now by the way been
elongated
so that travelers may put their feet up
and take a nap across the galaxy
you see another thing is that traveling
through space
can take months if not years so i think
it would be wise if we could cultivate
agriculture
on the train the plants we grow below
the main deck
they can provide us food and oxygen on
the long journey through
space you see if a bit of creativity
even an ordinary train ride to work
can become an epic space adventure and
if you apply this simple process to your
daily life
you will come to realize that you can
find adventure
even in the most ordinary of places
and while the locations of these
ordinary places inspire me to look for
adventure
i am equally affected by the amazing
works that already exist out there
by other artists some artists they paint
on canvases
some they scout on white marble but few
realize that video games
are a work of art in itself how many of
us
have played video games only to be
mesmerized by the beautiful worlds
behind our computer screens
these are worlds locations and
experiences that cannot exist
in our reality but when various artists
come together to create these
video game worlds it gives me the chance
to discover to explore and experience
a whole new universe and i am forever
changed by it
inspired by these video game worlds to
look at the real world around me
differently and the real world around me
is a
concrete metropolis everything here is
made of glass and steel
some people would even say that
singapore is the epitome of a modern
futuristic world and the best example of
this is marina bay sands
overlooking the central business
district
whenever i walk past the fleshy
boulevards i cannot help
but re-imagine myself in one of my
science fiction video game worlds set in
an underwater city
you see the mall is a layer of glass
that covers it
as a ceiling it’s absolutely beautiful
but what if that layer of glass was
built for higher purpose
what if it was built to keep seawater
out and to sustain a driving city
below the ocean now that that’s the kind
of city
i would love to live in and if you apply
this
this idea this concept to the many other
futuristic architecture in singapore
perhaps many other locations were built
for this exact same purpose
and i drew that comparison to the
orchard gateway tube that links two
shopping malls
across a busy street because as simple
as the tube looks and functions on dry
land i think when placed in my
underwater city universe
it suddenly becomes a vital
transportation path
allowing travelers and citizens to
transverse the city freely
without getting wet of course now
i’ve always enjoyed playing video games
video games gave me the freedom to
discover
and explore worlds and universes that
could never exist in reality
but i was always told from a young age
that video games were a waste of time
that i would accomplish nothing sitting
in front of a computer screen
but this world and the adventure that
just brought you on
it was inspired by a video game and
completed with photoshop
both behind a computer screen
many people have asked why are most of
my works based in singapore
and the answer is simple i look for
adventure in my daily life
and my life is here in singapore as a
born and bred singaporean another
inspiration for my ideas
come from my own upbringing here in
singapore
an example as a child i would visit a
temple during a chinese new year with my
family
while the grown-ups prayed in the inner
sanctum i would curiously wonder the
temple grounds
the temple i visited it was old it was
dark
there were only small oil lamps giving
faint flickering lights
the interiors were thick with incense
smoke and you could clearly see the
various life-sized
statues of the various gods and
goddesses in the temple i
always felt like an explorer discovering
a long lost
forgotten temple the atmosphere was so
dark and mysterious and moody but i
absolutely loved it
even though all the new temples in
singapore these days are all big
bright modern and filled with large airy
spaces
i have always hoped that all temples
should look like the one i visited
as a child so i sought to bring that
mysterious that dark that moody
atmosphere
into even the brightest temples i visit
now by placing it
in my underwater city universe the
temple
would still be dark but the images of
the gods are brought to life with
science fiction neon lights
there is a single little kitty cat
acting as a guardian to this sacred
shrine
and you can clearly see the cryptic neon
scribbles written by devotees on the
wall
now this this is the kind of temple i
would love to rediscover
all over again
but don’t worry not all my experiences
in singapore was
dark and mysterious like most
singaporeans young and old i was told of
a time before
sunny singapore was a city of
skyscrapers
a long time ago most people used to live
in what you would call a kampong
the kampong was basically a local
village where small shanty houses were
clustered together many of these kampong
villages were located next to waterways
where they were lifted up by wooden
stilts mere inches above the waterline
of course no one these days live in the
kampung village these anymore
and most people including myself would
have grown up in government-built flats
known as
hdbs many of these government-built
flats are usually described as
very modern organized and clean
in complete contrast to the small
unorganized kampung villages of the past
so i thought it would have been a fresh
idea to combine the concept of the
rising sea waters of climate change
the old kampung villages of the past and
the new modern hdb flats of the present
to create an urban environment that was
entirely
new when the rising sea waters finally
come in and gout our cities
many people whose home homes are now
submerged underwater
they may find it easier to return back
to a kampung village lifestyle
many of these kampung villages would
then begin to cluster around
existing buildings signs of commercial
activity
billboards and advertisements in the
local languages they would all spring up
and add to the chaotic but beautiful new
urban mess we see
now and of course the public bus service
would become a public boat service
linking communities as they would have
on dry land
now i’ve talked a lot about the ideas
that inspire me
and you can see that they mainly come
from three places one
the ordinary locations around me two the
video games that i play
and three my own upbringing
and what i do is to combine these three
ideas together with technical programs
such as photoshop to bring my ideas to
life
now it may sound hard to bring a
made-up world into from from a made-up
world from scratch into place
but i had the advantage of using what
the real world could already provide
which was the actual locations of the
places i wanted to recreate
let me take you on a journey of the
process i go through when creating these
images
i usually start with a base image that i
take with a camera
i chose this image for example because i
felt that the
gap between the two buildings they would
make for an interesting
story what if there was a waterfall
going through that gap
so naturally for that to happen i would
have to flood the streets with water
and if the power invested in me by my
lord and savior photoshop
i drag a waterfall into the image and
you can see that the image has been
almost completely transformed
but still this is an urban environment
and it looks devoid of life
so i go ahead to add in various signs of
habitation
such as shop signs and even a bus boat
at this point i try to bring in ideas
from around the world
i’m particularly inspired by the canals
of venice
and the chaotic streets of hong kong so
what i try to do is to merge the look
and feel of these international places
but also maintain a uniquely singaporean
and southeast asian identity
to the image but with the main elements
all put in place i further dramatize the
composition i have wires that hang
precariously across the buildings
birds that soak under and i even add
rubbish into the water
because you wouldn’t expect the river
passing through such an urban
environment
to be entirely clean and there you have
it
the complete image now i’m really glad
that
i have the chance to explain how my
works are created because many times
when i try to tell people how my works
are made
without the visuals many people they
don’t seem to understand how it’s
possible
how it’s possible for a street to become
a river how it’s possible for train to
be blasted off into outer space
and i don’t blame them this world we
live in is limited by the walls of
reality
it constrains us to think only according
to the laws of physics
and society would have us believed to
think otherwise
is wrong as a child
i was always in vain pursuit of a wild
epic adventure in
worlds and universes that could never
exist
only to realize that the worlds the
adventures that i’ve always wanted to
see
they were merely just an idea away
there is a saying that resonates
strongly from me and perhaps
our generation we are the middle
children of history
we were born too late to explore earth
and born too early
to explore space but for me
i’m always born just in time to explore
the furthest reaches
of my own imagination thank you