11 September 2008 – 16 November 2008

Synopsis

Sky Duet is an audio companion designed for and inspired by the Singapore Flyer. Listeners access the work on the Singapore Flyer through headphones and an mp3 player, as they embark on a thirty-minute journey into the sky and back.

The Flyer is a dreamcatcher, spinning wheel, Jacob’s ladder, a giant radar tuning in on peoples’ thoughts and conversations about death, clouds, city lights…and all the small wonders that make up a life. The listener hears voices that move in and out of sync with their own thoughts: sometimes coinciding, sometimes dissenting, always wondering.

Unlike the other audio works that we have created, this one does not involve walking and interacting with the environment, the streets or objects in a gallery. Held “captive” in the enclosed space of The Singapore Flyer capsule, it is the listener’s view that moves, changing in scale and scope, peaking in the orderliness of the urban planner’s top-down perspective and the timeless human dream of flight, before curving back down to earth.

Listen to Sky Duet here.

Text: Paul Rae, Kaylene Tan

Sound/ Music: Evan Tan
Voices:  Esther Leong, Rodney Olivero, Kaylene Tan, Tony Yeow

(Source: spell#7 Website)


credits

Paul Rae
Playwright
Kaylene Tan
Playwright, Voice
Evan Tan
Sound Designer, Music Composer

artefacts

Sky Duet (2008), Review
Sky Duet is uncanny. Taking the form of a 30-minute mp3 audioguide, it transforms the touristic experience of riding the Singapore Flyer into an unsettling synopsis of the Singaporean condition: claustrophobia, paranoia, nostalgia and amnesia. Evan Tan's instrumental music is beguilingly beautiful, underscoring the grandeur of the wheel's ascent - yet theatremakers Paul Rae and Kaylene Tan undercut this with a disorienting verbal soundscape, spoken by a man and a woman whose ages and identities keep shiftin
Ng Yi-Sheng
Reviewed: 31 October 2008