Argh how did I miss this? Thats what you get for not reading newspapers and not venturing into the general “town” area for fear of encountering the Christmas crowds, I suppose.
Either way, this event/project pertains so much to my project that I can hardly ignore it, even though its over and done with. If you, like me, haven’t heard about it until now, its basically a side event for the Marina Bay 2010 Countdown whereby people are asked to write their wishes (and dreams, aspirations, hopes etc.) onto large white spheres (euphemism for beach balls) and all these wishes—all 20,000 of them, I hear—are then floated onto the Singapore River. Kind of reminiscent of Thailand’s Loy Krathong, no?
Anyway, the scale of the project itself is pretty awe-inspiring and the images are simply amazing. You really can’t beat 20,000 white spheres floating on the river with the city skyline as a backdrop; couple that with the fact that these spheres are actually covered with the wishes of thousands of Singaporeans, and it really makes for quite a poignant scene.
From the official Marina Bay Countdown website, they have information on the significance of the wishing spheres, and also a gallery where people can submit their wishes in the form of videos, photos or text online. Also, there’s a short clip on Youtube by mrbrown, where he tracks the journey of a sphere!
Great as all this may be, I still have to ask myself one important question—what about me? Whats so special about my project that is different from all the others out there, or has something new to offer? From all the research I’ve done, I know that I don’t simply want a project that is a collection of wishes—anyone can and has done that—I want to use the conclusions I’ve come up with, the categories of wishes I’ve devised, to do something deeper, something different. To be honest, and this might be a little scary, but I still don’t know. Trust me, I’ve spent the entire break thinking about it, but there just isn’t that one idea that makes the imaginary light bulb above my head light up.
But it’ll get there somehow, I have to believe it. It just needs more exploration and time. My project is like a wish; now, will it come true?
