Misbehaving Machines Exhibition : OPEN PLAY by Hothouse

OᑭEᑎ ᑭᒪᗩY reconfigures the boundaries of the stage, devising an integrated sensory experience through the fusion of light, sound, and code. Expanding the physicality and temporality of live performance, this exhibition features the sonic and visual worlds of three musicians–Hidemen, Houg, and goneMUNE–set within a reactive environment designed by Alina Ling and NONFORM.

The exhibition is presented as an audiovisual circuit, where the individual worlds of each musician have been shaped into 5-minute “nodes,” connected through “branches” assembled from deconstructed audio elements. Immerse yourself in the fantastical ambience of Hidemen’s Dungeons & Dragons-inspired album DRAGON, escape further into the virtual through the zany and nostalgic video-game aesthetics of Houg’s MILD NOURISHMENT, and accompany goneMUNE’s cyborg persona AVERDONIA through a journey of self-destruction and resilience. 

As the culmination of 𝙼𝙸𝚂𝙱𝙴𝙷𝙰𝚅𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙼𝙰𝙲𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙴𝚂, a shared study of the evolving human-machine relationship through art and technology, the exhibition offers a glimpse of the methodologies and processes explored over the course of this interdisciplinary collaboration between the musicians, artists, and various systems at play.

About the Artists

Alina Ling is an interactive designer that creates interfaces, installations and experiences that explore new dimensions of sensory perception. Incorporating technology with different modalities, her multi-sensory works manipulate the physical and intangible to provide a deeper understanding of spatial constructs and perceptual experience.

​NONFORM is a collective of artists whose expertise spans music composition, sound design, multimedia art, and video production. Through the integration of diverse skills and mediums, they create dynamic works that resonate across multiple sensory dimensions.

​Hidemen is a group of close friends from secondary school who came together through their shared passion for music and art. Comprising mattgnaw, lamin, Wira Munir, and Ra’uf Shibel, Hidemen’s collaborative process is exemplified by their album DRAGON, which draws inspiration from medieval fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. With a genre-crossing sound rooted in hip-hop, Hidemen’s music and performances showcase a complex yet unified narrative and the attainment of creative control through collective world-making.

​Houg is a Singaporean artist-producer known for his chillwave and trip-hop soundscapes blending R&B, jazz and rock. His new album MILD NOURISHMENT is crafted entirely using the Roland JV-1080 synthesizer and inspired by the video game Spyro the Dragon. This album merges quirky, surreal tones with chill, vaporwave aesthetics to chronicle personal struggles within a zany virtual world, a vision further enhanced by Houg's exploration of PlayStation 1-style animation for the accompanying visuals, emphasising nostalgia and surrealism in his storytelling.

​goneMUNE (pronounced GONE-MOON), a prominent figure in Singapore and Southeast Asia's dark alt-pop scene, is known for their genre-bending sound that fuses retro synthwave with futuristic elements and their evocative storytelling centred on trauma recovery. As a multidisciplinary artist, goneMUNE self-produces their music, edits their videos and incorporates butoh-inspired movement into their immersive performances; their latest single, "AMNESIA", explores themes of grief, loneliness and resilience, creating a nostalgic yet innovative soundscape and introducing their new cyborg persona, AVERDONIA.