Republic Poly Annual Report 2006/2007

At the end of AY06-07, STA had an enrolment of 379 students and 45 full-time and associate staff members. Approval was given by MOE for two new STA diplomas - the Diploma in Design for Interactivity and the Diploma in Games Design. The former will see its first intake of students in AY07-08 while the latter will be deferred for a launch in AY08-09.

STA’s High-Definition (HD) post-production facility, codenamed Vista, was finally completed at the end of March 2007. Work also began on the development of the STA HD Studios (known as Hangar), as well as purpose-built spaces for the DSA.

Achievements

In 2006, STA took part in Design Studio with Toyo Ito, organised by Design Singapore Council. For over six months, two staff from STA – Kiew Sen Lieh, and Soh Ee Shaun, and two students from STA - Florence Wang, Malvina Tan, together with a fellow colleague from CCC, Kong Chee Chiong, teamed up with Colorzip to create a series of designs for a sculpture that would shape annotated spaces and redefine the tourist experience in Singapore. Using the Singapore Visitor Centre as a platform and case study, both students and staff were involved in researching semacode, colorzip technology, local culture and architectural studies, and were mentored by Dr Erwin Viray from NUS’s School of Architecture, and Ng Huimin from DP architects

STA staff and students produced a 15-minute video that was screened at the first RP graduation ceremony held at the NUS University Cultural Centre for our pioneer batch of students. The celebratory photo and video montage brought back fond memories of the graduands’ three-year journey and offered good wishes for the future.

STA staff made their contributions both locally and overseas in art, design and animation for events and projects. These included an art collaboration with Shin Tanaka from Japan, Zouk ‘Fresh’ Hip Hop Party, Youth marketing Forum 2006 in Shanghai, Singapore Fashion Festival 2006, 1819 Supermovement’s Majulah Stickapura Series 3 in Tokyo, San Diego Comic Con 2006, Converse-Bugis Street Wall Mural project, as well as the concept and design of presentation material for the internal marketing of iDA’s master plan.

STA staff member, Soh Ee Shaun, created a GIRAFFE (Get up, reach out and act fund for the environment) logo for North West CDC and National Environment Agency. Shaun also collaborated with local fashion designer Nicholas Wong in creating a doll house seen at Raffles City Marketplace for Cleo Fashion Awards 2006.

RP’s Electronic Music Production (EMP) crew made waves across Singapore, performing at the National Day Parade and in venues such as the Home Club, Tampines Mall and Orchard Cineleisure, amongst other venues. On the production front, EMP built basic to advanced electronic music production capability with Garage Band, Cubase, Logic and Reason. It provided entry level digital music production courses for the RP students and produced numerous tracks for use amongst student groups. To date, EMP members have competed at the internationally-rated Heineken Thirst studio competition, with Vice-President (Production) Guo Yuan and EMP advisor and STA Academic Associate Sam Yap emerging first runner-up and champion, respectively. In March 2007, an EMP Production Workshop was conducted by local legend Case Woo and featured Sam Yap. The event was supported by Steinberg.

STA’s student IGs exuded effervescence throughout the year and made their presence felt, despite their youth. Campus Arts Production (CAP) IG staged a total of 18 lunch time concerts, CE talks and tours for the first semester, the highlight being the RED Month special in August to celebrate National Day.

Operating as RP’s film and television production arm, Film IG lent its expertise in managing studio equipment and production during RP’s Open House and EMP’s performances, and produced a 30 minute video project for the Airport Police Division. It also helped to produce two documentary projects for two Service-Learning trips (Chiang Rai and Kerala), and produced corporate DVDs for a presentation workshop.

STA staff participated in music/sound design projects, including ‘live’ sound performances at Fort Canning, Esplanade Theatre Studio, Guinness Theatre at the Substation, and music/sound design for a theatrical performance at Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany. Collaborations included Toy Factory Ensemble, sound artists Evan Tan, Zul Mahmod and Ang Song Ming, visual artists Donna Ong and Matti Braun, as well as choreographer Henrietta Hale.

Events

STA staff conducted 20 show and tell sessions for STA first year students to help them develop relevant skills in preparation for their 2nd year modules, including Introduction to Digital Imaging (using Adobe Photoshop), Basic Sound Design (using Logic Pro), Basic Script Format (using MS Word), 2D Animation (using Toon Boom) and Motion Graphics (using After Effects, Motion, and Livetype).

STA, in collaboration with Apple, organised and conducted a series of eight technology workshops for STA second-year DNM students. The software and environments shared with the students are of industry standard and are platforms that the students will use in their curriculum as they progress through their course. Specialty workshops, including a back-to-basics drawing class focusing on one/two/three-point perspectives were also conducted for interested students.

STA participated in OneDotZero Singapore, a travelling UK animation film festival. STA staff and students attended the festival, supported a live performance with United Visual Artists, and were involved in poster design and installation.

In December 2006, six staff members from RP (STA: Graham Perkins, Edward Wong, David Cheng, Chong Li-Chuan, Damien Lock; CED: Ridwan Othman) took part in the internationally acclaimed digital media think-tank and creative workshop organised by X|Media|Lab (XML). The theme of the two-day workshop was “Learning from Games” and a host of industry experts and academics were on hand to give invaluable advice to our RP delegates. Our team’s proposal, entitled “Campus Universe”, aimed to utilise the campus ground in its entirety, and not just confined to the classrooms, as an interactive game arena for knowledge acquisition and problem solving. And as an extension to the physical environment, part of the proposal was to develop a virtual platform whereby the students would have an opportunity to observe and self-critique the process of learning in its process.

STA was given an opportunity by MICA in March 2007 to participate in a polytechnic wide pitching competition for the 2009 APEC video. Despite not being picked as the winning pitch, we were commended for coming in a close second out of the five other polytechnics. Having exposed our students to a “real” pitch, the students returned richer from the experience.

STA staff David Cheng was one of the committee members overseeing the video production for Poly Forum 2006. As the producer overseeing the production of Temasek Polytechnic’s video teasers, he was involved in the pre-production planning for the launch of the Poly Forum 2006’s website. He was also the supervising producer of the opening and closing ceremony videos produced by RP’s Film IG and RP staff, Faith Png.

Outreach

STA staff made numerous visits to secondary schools across Singapore to highlight STA’s current and new diplomas. Assistance was also extended to such institutions as SMU, on the setting up of a student-run AV interest group.

STA also played its part in reaching out to the community. STA students put their talents to good use by helping to design souvenir booklets and posters for a Singapore Disability Sports Council fund-raising project.

Two STA staff, Bob Tan and Varian Lim, performed at a fund-raising concert organised by Music for Good. Entitled Migrant Voices, the event was part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2006. STA staff also mentored, coordinated practices, arranged music and brought on seven students from RP to stage their 45-minute concert at the Esplanade Outdoor Theatre.

Organised by Magdalena Singapore, Project Joy was a youth outreach programme of the Crossroads International festival. Under the mentorship of four established arts practitioners, namely Tan Cheng (Writer), Christina Sergeant (Director), Annie Pek (Producer) and Ng Hui Leng (Production Manager), about 40 first-year STA students actively participated in a three-month production process of conceptualising, scripting, and marketing and promotion. The students not only learnt how the different aspects of a theatre production complement each other, they were also better able to reflect upon their own strengths and shortcomings as theatre professionals. They collectively performed at three different venues - The National Museum, Woodlands Community Club and RP - reaching out to a combined audience of 5,000 people.