Prototypes for Alternative Power

Presented by Singapore Art Museum as part of its Open Systems online exhibition series, Prototypes for Alternative Power presents artworks that question how technological infrastructure shapes our lives and imagine provisional or radical alternatives. These infrastructural systems carry histories of labour, extraction, displacement, and erasure that reinforce existing power structures. They also present opportunities for improvisation, resistance, and reimagination of the world around us.

In American Artist’s Don’t Boil Your iPhone in Coca-Cola! and Jen Liu’s Pink Slime Caesar Shift: Gold Loop Chapter 2, digital devices are exposed as sites of economic and ecological power. The former playfully considers the destructive potential of repeating a viral gesture against corporate hegemony, while the latter traces the toxic afterlife of e-waste, revealing the global labour and environmental exploitation embedded in electronics production. Ryan Kuo’s File and Bani Haykal’s Sifrmu transform procedural and algorithmic systems into relational spaces: the wiki and the encryption system become instruments of self-reflection and interpersonal connection. Herdimas Anggara reimagines traditional Javanese rituals as performative occupation of digital platforms in RASUK, framing possession, or hacking, as a form of resistance.

Other works draw attention to the politics of surveillance and territorial control. MORAKANA’s Cumulus uses satellite imagery to follow clouds drifting across the Mexico–US border, revealing how infrastructures of observation both enforce and obscure boundaries. Similarly, Samson Young’s Liquid Borders captures the sonic vibrations of fences and rivers along the Hong Kong–Shenzhen frontier, demonstrating how borders rely on physical infrastructures that are not absolute. Alice Yuan Zhang’s Enantiodromia traces tensions between local networks and centralized infrastructures in rural India, showing the interdependence and friction of different technological approaches.

Several works consider the historical and information biases embedded in the act of standardising content: Ryan Clarke’s Shirley Sound documents how Black musicians’ sonic contributions are erased in compressed audio, while Or Zubalsky’s Request Deferred exposes archival processes that obscure histories of dispossession. Chia Amisola’s SQUATTING renders dispossession visible by reimagining informal settlements throughout the Philippines as sites of occupation within the browser. Through the lenses of the dashcam and first-person view (FPV) drone, Ho Rui An’s DASH and Rimbawan Gerilya’s What Little Control Remains Has Been Taken Away present alternative perspectives on the neutrality of imaging technologies. Together, these works operate as proposals or prototypes, revealing the fragility, arbitrariness, and embedded power of technological and state systems, while offering moments of resistance, reinterpretation, and radical possibility.

The exhibition website, designed by Yehwan Song and developed by Mark Beasley, extends this inquiry through Song’s practice of “anti-user-friendly” interface design, which invites users to question the dominant logic of seamless web experiences by introducing small frictions. The website design references the sunshine recorder, a meteorological instrument used to measure the daily duration of bright sunlight, while the site itself is hosted on Solar Protocol, a web platform distributed across a network of solar-powered servers set up in different locations around the world. This artist-founded experiment in DIY server technology models a renewable and decentralized approach to digital infrastructure as a counterpoint to the vast server systems controlled by major technology corporations. By orienting internet protocols towards a natural intelligence based on earthly dynamics (rather than towards an artificial intelligence), the exhibition website turns infrastructure into both subject and experiment, extending the exploration of subversive technological alternatives to the conditions of the artworks’ display.

Curator

Celine Wong Katzman

Artists

Alice Yuan Zhang
American Artist
Bani Haykal
Chia Amisola
Herdimas Anggara
Ho Rui An
Jen Liu
MORAKANA
Or Zubalsky
Rimbawan Gerilya
Ryan Clarke
Ryan Kuo
Samson Young

Website

Yehwan Song - Designer and Developer
Mark Beasley - Developer and Technical Support
Solar Protocol - Web Hosting

Special thanks

Duncan Bass
Anisah Aidid
Eugene Poh
Imran Abdul Latiff
Muhd Syakir Juraimi