Shame on you NDP 2008 music video

I read Mr Brown’s post on the National Day Parade 2008 music video today.

It’s a new low. This one pwnz the MDA MTV.

It’s also a total shame. This is one of the most blatant rip offs I have ever seen. Angle for angle. Color tone for color tone. And best, it’s on a national level. For the day we declared independence from the British. It’s pure irony, to celebrate our independence, we kowtow to a foreign TV ad.

There was a case of a NAFA student(s) that was expelled for plagiarism some time ago. Maybe the same rules should apply. Whoever came up with this idea should be expelled. If they want to save face now, they should reshoot. This video will probably make us the laughing stock of the entire world.

Interestingly, this video puts us in the same boat with the folks who produce fake milk powder. It’s also a bizarre twist of the Suzhou project where the Chinese the copied entire industrial city built by the Singaporean government. So, the next time I hear a Singaporean pronouncing judgment on our Chinese cousins up north for making fake stuff, I will point out that we are not much more different. They copy stuff, we copy ideas.

Mr Brown states that in our pragmatic ideology based society, the end justifies the the means. Mark this year of 2008, this video indicates a whole new level of the pragmatic ideal. The creators of this video knew that the original ad was successful, so by copying it wholesale, success was guaranteed. We as a nation, state that “In art, original ideas don’t matter as long as the results are worth it.”

The next few questions I am asking myself is “Is this just an ideology thing or does culture and society play a part?”. Why can’t we come up with our own stuff, are we ashamed of our own creative ideas?

Echoing a comment left on the his blog, it’s super sia suay man.

Bastille Day 2008 at the Eiffel

Paris had a free concert this year at Champs de Mars for Bastille Day. Our friends chope-ed our lot from 5pm and we reached the location at 8pm.

This was the scene at 8pm. Apparently 1/2 million people turned up. The singers at the concert were mostly french except for…

James Blunt!! Woohoo. One of Jo and me fav singers. Made the hustling and bustling completely worthwhile. He sang ‘Simona’ and another song. Then we waited till 11pm for the fireworks.

Rousing fireworks synchronized to opera music. Made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It was so good that it made some of us want to sign up for French citizenship. Just for that 5min. :p

After that we walked home.

L’Etranger – Ze Images

Hey all, I just updated the www.memphiswest.com website with the images from the photo installation. They took pretty long coz it was really tricky getting it just right for the web due to the black tones in the images.

I had an interesting comment from a french person, he said “…you like the time between the dog and the wolf”. i found out that it means “the hour or time(?) before sunrise”. Talk about idioms.

Things have been going pretty well so far, I am très content. It’s really my 1st personal work shown and it’s gotten a lot of responses. Most people who walk in do get a feel what the series is, and I get the feeling they either choose to connect to it or not. It feels good to be understood.

L’Etranger – Exhibition shots

Our friend Triston Yeo, came by the exhibition coz he was in town for a job. It was super cool of him to shoot the setup (it’s a very old cellar) and make it look like a million bucks. Here are some of the petite exhibition.

This is the underground cellar where it’s held. It’s dead quiet. Jodie designed the photo layout.

Jodie not only designed the layout but also constructed a soundtrack to enhance mood of the installation.

That’s it for the time being. We’ve been tied up finalizing some details. I’ll be posting up the exhibition images our site soon. We were thinking of using 20+ shots but ended up with approx 50+ images so I have to do them up. =)