Olafur Eliasson* and Demos Chiang* at SAM

We looked for some cultural activities last week instead of our weekly outdoor adventure, to break away from routines and to rest a bit more from our 9 day 160km TMB. 

Lily and I were attracted by the a special exhibit of Olafur Eliasson - "your curious journey", at Singapore Art Museum (SAM). The exhibit involved sculptured and large-scaled installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience. It was immersive and sometime interactive as well.

The first art piece was right at the entrance, yellow corridor, which used mono frequency yellow light to change what we saw. One's skin color turned greyish.

yellow corridor

We then went into a dark room, with a fountain under a constant flash of lights - strobe light, which was mysterious and dizzy at the same time. We wonder if the water fountain was optical illusion or not, I extended my hand to the fountain, and it was real. The official name of this exhibit is "Object defined by activity (then)"

water fountain under strobe lights

Another interesting exhibit is "life is lived along lines" - 3D wired objects were projected on a flat screen and still gave a sense of 3D.

the side where the 3D objects are

the other side of the 3D objects

One interactive exhibit was "beauty", a cloud of mist under spotlights. Depends on where a viewer stands, the color of the mist changes, using pretty much the same principle as the formation of rainbows. Some children actually walked into the mist, to enjoy its coolness.

Another immersive and interactive exhibition is that viewers participate in the motion picture generation under multiple light sources. We had fun in generating our own art on screen.

We saw a sculpture with 7 rocks changing in size from large to small.  There were 7 glass balls placed by the rock in reverse order of the size to the rocks. We liked the pattern as well as the inverse images of the rocks in the balls, nothing else. The artist's intent, however, is reflected in the name given to the sculpture - last 7 days of glacial ice. With this sculpture, the artist has climate changes.

We were way off from artist's intent, but the interpretation of a sculpture is in the eyes of the beholder. 

last seven days of glacial ice

We also visited a few other exhibits at the museum. What impressed me the most were some of the paintings by Demos Chiang. Each of his paintings has a poem come with it, and basically let the viewers know his emotions, feelings at the time of each painting. I could feel his melancholy about the autumn, and longing for companionship and love.  

Walking through last stage
Walking through colors from the closed chapters
How strange it is that we are what we been through
How strange it is that we created with the colors from the past
Now we must start the next chapter so that we can coat ourselves with colors that were never ours

I rest here and look back
waiting for the ripples of life to settle

The hidden soul
there is no new black under the rainbow
black is always black
rainbow is always rainbow
I am fine to be shadow under your rainbow
for that how you see the colors under the rainbow

Keeping my heart
I can lose my heart and join you
but I decided to keep my heart and wait for you to join me

Falling forward
to fall down is a blessing
for it gives you another chance to get up
so you can see the world in a new perspective

we write our stories together
Together we climb the mountains
cross the lakes and journey the valleys
Together we imprint us onto the world
that is how we make our stories into a classic

Note * -

Olafur Eliasson is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scaled installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience.

Demos Chiang 蒋友柏 Taipei Taiwan. He studied in the United States, at the New York University.
1990, graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Information Management. He then worked in the entertainment and fashion industries in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. In 2003 He created in Taiwan the design studio : DEM Inc and he became a Designer. His achievements brought him many awards. As  an artist he turned to painting, installations and sculpture. He is the great grandson of the late president of Republic of China, Chiang Kai-Shek. 

The exhibit at SAM is his first solo exhibition. The following was his opening statement

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The only constant is change.
Every day, we face changes and adjust or adopt ourselves to the changes.

Just like how we cope to the seasons:
in spring we reclaim hope,
in summer we embrace heat,
in fall we harvest colours,

and in winter we silent warmth.
By repeating these change cycles, our lives are unfolded.

If one break down one’s life time into sections of seasons, I am at the end of summer and the beginning of fall. This is the time when I start to consolidate my life in search of my own peace of mind.

Changes are plots in our story. It is these plots that makes our story interesting.
After all, if life is not interesting, what are we living for?

- Demos Chiang

Reading Randomly

I choose the books to read or listen pretty randomly. 

I don't chose books per some magazines' best seller lists or famous people's recommendations

For leisure, I listen to books from local libraries, and usually pick nonfiction books, in the format audio, and status available now, and occasionally get on waiting list for books recommended by  friends or colleagues.

For my expertise area and adjacent fields, my selection of books not directly related to ongoing work, is even more random. A book selected could be from checking the source of an interesting article in a magazine, or from trying to find the definition of a new concept presented in a seminar, or just fact checking some posts on LinkedIn.

The advantage of  reading "randomly" is that I can cover a wide range of topics from limited reading, sometimes totally out of my regular choices, to be aware widely of different perspectives, new concepts, approaches, theories, or philosophy. 

Here are three books/article I read/listened recently: "Hidden Potential", AI Model Collapse and "Black Swan"

Hidden potential is a book by Adam Grant, discussing about how people can unlock their hidden potentials. I picked the book from local library catalog - nonfiction, audio format. 

AI model collapse is an article in Nature (July 2024), full title "AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data", which addresses the AI model degeneration. This article was selected purely by chance - I scanned through table of contents of last three issues of an online magazine on digital engineering, and read an article on applications of artificial intelligence (LLMs in particular) in engineering, The AI model collapse, which was a new concept to me, was listed as a risk factor. I did Google search to learn what it was, and then found the Nature article for a in-depth understanding.

Black Swan is a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb exploring the profound impact of rare and unpredictable events. A chain events related to the fact checking of a LinkedIn post on how to interpret statistical observations, led me to the concept of survivorship bias, and then the book Black Swan.

An example of survivorship bias (Wikipedia) 

What is common of these three items?

They are all involved with tails of statistical distributions. In fact, reading randomly helps me cover the tails of the distribution of the books I read as well.

"Hidden Potential" uses extraordinary individuals and case studies to support the arguments and suggestions made. While these examples provided are compelling, the book did not take into account of "the silent majority" of similar cases, i.e. those who applied the same strategies but failed to achieve the same goals. The success stories are in the tails of corresponding statistical distributions.

I listened to the audio version of the book during my daily commute. It did not occur to me that the book fell into survivorship bias until the end of the book, where an example of a migrant work turned astronaut Jose Hernández was given. Yes he had perseverance, grit to achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut, but in the end it was a good luck that made it happen even according to book's story telling. Tens of thousands of driven people applied for the position, many who are equally qualified or more qualified did not get it. 

It is not just "Hidden Potential", motivational books, "how-to" make self improvement guides, I read, fall into Survivorship bias. That said, readers can still benefit from these books, trying new approaches they don't know before, just don't expect the same spectacular outcomes.

The main reason for generative AI model collapse is, when the AI models are trained by synthetic data generated in earlier generations, the tails of the original content distribution disappear in future generations due to the resampling error of previous generations of generative AI models. The article used scenarios, such as future models are trained exclusively on synthetic data from AI models, to demonstrate the fast deterioration of model performance. The paper did give an example of using only 90% synthetic data, which led to much slower and minor degeneration. Here the authors used unlikely scenarios to highlight generative AI model collapse.

With the current trend to use synthetic data to train AI models, this alarmistic article title caught people's attention and could potentially help to prevent future catastrophe from generative AI models  

"Black Swan" is, by definition, a rare, unpredictable event with huge consequences. The book provides an unconventional and unique insight to black swan events. It criticized conventional risk and prediction models, especially in economics and finance, because they are fundamentally flawed, i.e. mostly rely on assumption of Gaussian distribution; furthermore most economists fail to recognize the limitations of their models and tend to rationalize failures after the fact. The book is provocative and stimulating.

What I learnt, at a high level, from reading these books ?

All theories/models have limitations, don’t blindly trust them, be inquisitive - thinking critically! 

Ask questions, analyze assumptions, examine evidence, infer through reasoning, and define problems, i.e. make hypothesis and test it.

The key in this process is to test hypothesis with a goal to find out if the hypothesis is correct; not to prove that it is correct, the later leads to confirmation bias, and slew of other biases.

======

Note

some past blogs on books

I have listened 100 books

audio books

A peek into a different world 

Notes from recent audio book listening

Mt Dolent - viewed from TMB

Mont Dolent is a rocky mountain peak at the intersection of Italy, Switzerland and France. Our 5th day on TMB was hiking around it.

We started our 5th day on TMB at La Fouly with breakfast at Maya Joie, with golden glow of morning sun on Mt Dolent!

The first 5km of the hike was in the valley, and Mont Dolent was blocked from our view from lower mountains nearer to the trail.

gradual ascend in the valley

a beautiful mountain peak

After about 5km, we got to higher ground, the rocky peak of Dolent and surrounding  mountains revealed themselves from the gaps between the lower mountains. After a turn, we saw a large herd of black and white sheep on the slope, and heard the sheep baaing back and forth. 

Climbing onto the ridge of the lower mountain, we were at Grand Col Ferret pass, which is the highest point on the regular TMB trail. There is an altitude marker there. On the "trail" perpendicular to it, there is a big cross on the slope on the South side, and there is a local peak at north side, further north is Mont Dolent. In fact the trail perpendicular to TMB is also the border between Switzerland and Italy, no checkpoint!

herd of sheep with Mt Dolent in the background

Grand Col Ferret pass, Elevation 2537m

the trail to the local peak - where one can follow to go to the foot of Mont Dolent

We rested near the pass a little bit to allow team member to take pictures, enjoy the grand views of the mountains and glaciers. We then went down a bit further for a lunch break, and had a short nap!

A picture taken at ground level - a totally different perspective.
The hikers in the picture were hiking counter clock wise

After the Grand Col Ferret pass, it is a steep decent, ~ 500 m elevation drop in 1km. About 2km beyond Grand Col Ferrer pass, we were in the valley, and after 3km, Mont Dolent was out of sight due to lower mountains blocking the view.

steep downhill was hard for my knees

after 1km, the slop is much gradual, with short steep sections

We rested at and then crossed a glacier river, on the way to this day's destination Lavachey.

Mont Dolent is 3823 m tall, nearly 1000 m lower than Mt Blanc, but it was felt so much taller, and grandeur  because we reached nearly its foot. 

The 5th day on TMB, around Mont Dolent was the best day we had so far on TMB, a beautiful sunny day, we hiked 18+km, 950m up, 800m mostly very steep downhill, in gorgeous surroundings.

after cold therapies, we crossed the glacier river 

The hotel we stayed on the 5th day on TMB

Food, Culture and Team Fun on TMB - by Lily

 6 French men, 2 Canadian ladies, 3 old couples (us), and a young, charming French belle as our guide, that’s the 15 in our group of TMB hikers. For us, this is the first time to take such a long, strenuous, multi-day hike with a group of unknown foreigners and in mostly remote areas with simple lodging conditions. Did we think it through before signing up? Perhaps not. But all the unknown factors are also part of the surprise, discovery and enjoyment. We not only survived the hike but also learned a lot and enjoyed most of the trip.

Teamwork

From day 1 it was obvious that most of the other people are much stronger hikers than us three old couples. We were constantly at the tail of the group, going up or down. Over time, some interesting personalities started to show as well. Some of us began to feel the stress of being slow and started to worry. But in reality, there’s not much we could do about it; besides, being able to safely complete the hike everyday is more important than speed. Luckily most of our teammates understood that. Sometimes, our guide Chloe would stay with us at the end to make sure we walk through some treacherous pass safely. Other times, a couple of other strong guys would be with us at the back, chatting with us a bit and taking pictures. I half-jokingly said that our slow pace allowed them to slow down and enjoy the scenery more 😊 

During the first week, they helped carry most of the shared lunch up to the mountain, including two heavy thermoses so we could have hot water for tea or coffee after lunch. Later on, they would offer to carry Allan’s backpack when he had trouble with his knees.  We reciprocated the kindness by doing little things we could as well, helping here and there, taking pictures for others, and by admitting our limits and willingly skipped a couple of days when the road condition was difficult so that the rest of the group would be able to enjoy their hike without worrying about us. By the time we completed the full circle of hiking, it was quite a joyous moment for all of us! We took a team picture at the TMB gate and celebrated our achievement with a drink. A tes souhaits !

Chloe carried Allan's backpack in one stretch

Mission Accomplished

Food

The morning of our first day hike, we happened to pass by a local farmer’s market at Chamonix. I saw loaves of hard bread (le pain), big chunk of cheese (fromage), sausages, and fruit and vegetables. This pretty much sums up European food culture in the Alps region. 

Le Pain

fromage (Cheese)

sausage and hams

fruit

During our hiking trip, we got at least 1 fruit every day, some salad made out of beans, peas and tomatoes (prepared by our guide Chloe after each long day of walk while we took rest at our corners), and bread and cheese and sausages. The Europeans love cheese, while we not so much, until we had raclette for dinner one day. We stayed in a Swiss village at Trient. At dinner, we saw three hot plates were set up on the long table. Our teammates explained to us that we would have the historical Swiss meal, raclette. The servers brought in trays of cooked finger potatoes and set them on top of the hot plate to keep warm. Then they brought in plates of ham slices and raclette cheese. We each had a metal tray to put the cheese chunk in, then we put the tray under the hot plate to let the cheese melt. On our dinner plate, we cut open the potatoes, added a slice of ham on top, then a few slices of pickles. When the cheese became bubbly, we poured it over the food on our dinner plate and began trying it out. It was delicious! We each tried a few rounds; the food filled us up nicely. Importantly, grilled cheese seemed to cause less stomach issues. Everyone was satisfied 😊 During our hike, we passed through diary ranches and walked side by side with the cows! Chloe explained to us that the two species of cows on that ranch were the only two certified to make French tomme cheese.

 

Swiss historical food - Raclette

Getting to know each other

Our team was divided into francophones and English-speaking group. Some of the French people and the Canadians speak some English, but most of us understood no French words. Despite the language barrier, we started to get to know each other. I made an effort to learn everyone’s name, then their professions and hobbies. The professions of the group are diversified, several engineers, a lawyer, an accountant, a banker, a small-business owner, a salesperson, a government employee, and a retiree.  In our group, there were a few marathon runners, a guy who climbed the peak of Mont-Blanc, a soccer player, a 100 km trail runner, no wonder this hike was a piece of cake for them :). 

Taking a break at a glacier river for a foot/knee therapy

During our last drink together, I asked everyone what their next adventure would be. Chloe would be training for paragliding competition and eventually get certified to be a paragliding instructor in a couple of years. How exciting! I told her I would sign up for her class when she is ready 😊

At the end, we hugged each other and bid our goodbyes. I’m sure all of us would bring home wonderful memories, interesting stories, and a desire to do this kind of tour again!

Geneva Excursion

Geneva is the second Switzerland city I visited. The first city I visited was Zürich during a long layover there. Geneva is similar to Zurich in many ways - it is situated by a lake, Lake Geneva, it has two rivers running through the city, it is an old city with many churches and statues. Despite being most famous cities in Switzerland, neither is the capital of the country, which is Bern.

Geneva is located at southwestern end of Lake Geneva, close to the border with France. It is a global city, a financial center, and a worldwide center for diplomacy due to the presence of numerous international organizations, including the headquarters of many agencies of the United Nations and the Red Cross. It is the second most populous city in Swiss, after Zurich.

We arrived at Geneva two nights before our TMB - Tour du Mont Blanc. We  toured a small portion of the city around the tip of lake Geneva at its southwestern end.

Sunrise Concert by the Lake

On the way walking to Place de jeux des Bains des Pâquis, where the concert was held, we passed the Brunswick Monument, a Neo-Gothic monument in honor of 19th-century duke. It was so quiet in the morning, we expected to hear the music from the concert as we got close, but we didn't. We wondered if there was no concert on this day. There was. 

When we got there, the concert was in progress already, and the Sun was yet to rise above the hill in the eastern horizon. A small band, with two singers and two instrument players, was playing already. The music was played softly, the singers sung gently and the audience was quiet, even the applauses were muted.

They sung in a non-English language, likely French, I stood by for a while, then walked toward the tip of the tiny peninsular to enjoy the vista and water fowls, and watch people climbing a rock wall in the water. 

While enjoying the sound and sights, I noticed that the water in the lake was flowing. There must be an lake exit nearby, there is. It is Rhone river.

Brunswick Monument

a pier served as a overflow seating area

A Sunrise concert by Lake Geneva

A lighthouse under the morning Sun

A Rock climbing wall in the water

The Geneva Fountain

The Geneva water fountain is across the lake from Bains des Pâquis. The fountain, a waterjet pumped Skywise, 140 meters high, an iconic sight of Geneva, and marvelous on a sunny clear day and night. We only saw its grandeur during day time.

Note it is only on at specific time depending on seasons. It is from 9am to 11:15pm during the time we visited.

View of Geneva Water Fountain from west shore

Later we took a water taxi from west shore to where the fountain is on the east shore, and looked at it up close to appreciate its magnitude and the rainbow. The fountain shoots up so high, and there is no very tall buildings around, one could see the fountain from many places at Geneva.

a rainbow

Geneva fountain is partially blocked by buildings when viewed from St Pierre Cathedral 

Geneva Fountain from River Rhone

Other landmarks at Geneva

A major land mark is St Pierre Cathedral, most famous as the adopted home church of Protestant Reformation leader John Calvin. There are also many sculptures spread around the city. The reformation wall is a stone wall monument that honors the protestant reformation and its founders. 

The hyped flower clock is a sidewalk garden with a clock in it.

The broken chair in front of the UN headquarters is "a symbol of both fragility and strength, precariousness and stability, brutality and dignity", it is an "ongoing symbol of the desperate cry of war torn civilian populations" originally conceived by handicap International. We also visited red cross international HQs.

St Pierre Cathedral

The last Supper

The reformation wall - This stone wall monument honors the Protestant Reformation & its founders, including John Calvin.

The flower clock

broken chair 

Red Cross HQ

Water fowls at Lake Geneva

The common water fowls at Lake Geneva and River Rhone include Eurasian Coots, Swans, Great Crested Grebes. We saw grebes before but it was the first time we saw a family of grebes - both parents and a baby grebe!

Rhone river, the exit of water at Lake Geneva, is packed with buildings

Swans and Coots

a great crested grebe family by the Geneva Fountain

Eurasian Coots resting on the shore of River Rhone

Swans and Coots on River Rhone

Two juvenile Swans 

Swan and Great Crested Grebe

Geneva is a beautiful, quiet city with free public transportations for everyone, including tourists at its downtown area.