Lightkeeper — lololol

2025
Three-channel video (colour, sound), 7 min 58 sec

Singapore Biennale 2025 Commission

Light Keeper: Signal explores the concept of technological consciousness through a fictional story of wayfinding, drawing on lololol’s personal experiences of navigating contemporary technological life, as well as on their encounters with lighthouses, their keepers, and crypto-linguists. The work reflects on the dynamics between humans, their tools and our environment in order to project towards a present-future in which humans must recalibrate mind and body to co-work with new forms of technological approaches, approaches, and relational orders. The work serves as a companion to Light Keeper, situated at Fort Canning Park, comprising a site-specific Sound Walk and a light installation at the Fort Canning Lighthouse.

Installation view of Light Keeper: Signal (2025)

Still of Light Keeper: Signal, 2025, Courtesy of the Artist.

Light Keeper: Signal, 2025, Three-channel video (colour, sound), 7 min 58 sec.

When we were approached by the biennial for a commissioned work last year, the landscape of navigational tools on the internet were rapidly changing with the arrival of AI. We grew up with internet tools that often borrowed from maritime motifs. This inspired us to draw closer to Asia’s history of navigational technology, and human’s innate need to move between the known and unknown. We took the opportunity to personally visit many lighthouses and their keepers to learn first hand on close relationship between human and machine.

During our visits to lighthouses in Taiwan, we were in awe to learn about the intimate relationship the lighthouse keepers had with the lights that which they guarded. Their daily lives revolved around the maintenance of the light and keeping it always on at night. This bond between man and machine truly reflected a modern vision of technological consciousness. One lighthouse keeper shared to us that he would dream of lighthouses so pristine and beautiful, ‘like lanterns on buddhist altars.’ The transcendence of this relationship inspired the narrative of our three-channel installation, which speaks of navigation from a fictional keeper’s point of view.

2025
GPS-enabled sound walk and light Installation

Singapore Biennale 2025 Commission

Light Keeper explores the poetics and politics of navigation in an evolving technological landscape. The project guides audiences through sound, video and light, offering an experience of technological consciousness which reveals the dynamics between humans, tools, and environment. The project features a sound walk through Fort Canning Park and a light installation at the Fort Canning Lighthouse. Together, they extend the site's history of maritime and message encryption by transforming the park into a journey of discovery and exploration. Visitors are guided to five sites via a GPS-enabled app, immersing themselves in a narrative shaped by the artist's encounters with lighthouses, their keepers and crypto-linguists. These sonic vignettes evoke reflection through memory, instinct, and curiosity. At the Fort Canning Lighthouse, a programmed light cycle presents a looped sequence—which builds upon a lightkeeper's dreams of perfect illumination and the artist's encounters of illuminated awe. The light shimmers in the sky like a continual rewrite of a secret scripture written through air.

Installation view of lololol's Light Keeper (2025) at Fort Canning Lighthouse. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Our interest in creating Light Keeper at the Fort Canning Park grew from the idea of 迷航 — the state of being adrift, or navigating through uncertainty. The network of paths in the park offers a nonlinear journey and encourage the audience to utilize their innate motivations to seek and explore trajectories of their own. The experience of city parks has always been an inspiration of us, especially as a site of staging mind and body practices. At Fort Canning, what also drew our attention was its historical relevance to Singapore’s maritime history as a site that overlooked the Singapore river. We wanted to create a journey for the viewers to bodily move through and encounter as an augmented reality of the park.

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Artist / Writer and Director: lololol
Sound Composition: Sheryl Cheung
Camera and Video Editor: Xia Lin
Lighting Software Coordination: Xin Yu Zhang
Administration Support: Chieh-Ting Liu

Portions of this video include licensed footage provided by the Maritime Port Bureau. MOTC, as well as sound recordings from the BBC Sound Effects Archive.

Thanks to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), Maritime Port Bureau. MOTC, Lu Hsueh-Feng, Liu Shao-Chi, Yang Ya-Liang, Chang Wei-Lun, Mao Ling-Long, Chi Yong-Teh, Tyson Liu, Francesco Perono Cacciafoco, Hsu Fang-Tze.