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Embrace the New Year with a Smile!

2020-01-13

SINGAPORE - The 8th edition of Singapore Art Week (SAW) 2020 kicks start the year with a smile.  In keeping with the theme “Art Takes Over” where the public can look forward to over 100 arts events taking place across Singapore, commuters can also look out for an interactive digital screen at City Hall MRT station and cast their votes with a smile for their favourite artwork.

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SAW 2020, a celebration of Singapore’s vibrant arts landscape, is a joint initiative by the National Arts Council (NAC), Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). Taking place from 11 to 19 January 2020, SAW is the pinnacle event in Singapore’s visual arts calendar and a meeting point in Southeast Asia for artists and arts lovers from all over the world.


The SAW 2020 ‘Smile2Vote’ interactive digital screen is located exclusively at City Hall MRT station till 15 January 2020. In addition, on 10 and 11 January, 5pm to 8pm, participants can bring home exclusive SAW merchandise when they smile to vote for their favourite artwork. Be among the first 50 participants each day to receive a SAW tote bag. The next 100 participants will walk away with specially designed Singapore Chinese Culture Centre (SCCC) x SAW red packets.


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Ms Yeoh Phee Suan, Director (Marketing, Communications and Digital Strategy) of the National Arts Council (NAC) said, “Digital technology is a great facilitator to enrich audience experience, and the ‘Smile to Vote’ campaign allows us to do just that. In partnering X Collective (XCO) to explore innovative advertising for SAW 2020, we are able to marry the use of art and technology to showcase our artworks and captivate commuters. We are excited to discover how the public will interact with the arts in new ways and in unconventional spaces such as our transport nodes.”


“SMRT is a long-time supporter of NAC, promoting local arts, talents and programmes to communities in and around our stations,” said Ms Dawn Low, XCO’s Managing Director and Executive Vice President SMRT Experience managing the advertising OOH and properties businesses, “This delightful initiative marries the latest in digital technology with our public transport assets with a smile. We are excited to curate and create this engaging initiative to delight our commuters as they journey with us.”


Added Ms Jeslyn Tan, Vice President, Transit Business, XCO said, “We are excited to promote SAW 2020 with our new innovative dynamic digital OOH experience that unlocks an amazing journey to engage our customers through creative content and immersive experiences. Working with our partner – Grid Synergy who provides the Smile2Vote application for this campaign, we’re able to offer innovative products to our advertisers, making OOH advertising more targeted with dynamic content, facial verification and programmatic OOH.”


The Smile2VoteTM application is developed by Grid Synergy, a Singapore-based creative media and technology company. It employs Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) technologies developed by the global AI company, SenseTime. Through the expression identification technology, Smile2Vote can count the number of passers-by, identify the number of people looking at the media on top of those who smile at the screen. In Smile2Vote, the computer vision algorithm interprets the image to assess if there is a smile. The interpretation of those data triggers the application to register the results on the screen, like if the smile is qualified as a successful vote. The system works with or without an internet connection, thus no personal data is being retrieved.


Said Mr Philip Wu, CEO, Grid Synergy, “We wanted to make it really simple for commuters to vote with just a simple action like a smile. We are extremely careful that no personal data nor identity be stored or leaked during this process. Since the launch, the results have been amazing. We have more than 8,700 votes submitted, using their megawatt smiles. Of the voters, 62% are female and 55% of them are within the age range of 21 to 30 years old. Out of the 5 artworks displayed, the best artwork received a “Smile Vote” of nearly 30%. The potential of AI to revolutionalise customers’ experience and create opportunities for our clients are limited only by our imagination. We believe that the ability to creatively merge the usage of Media and AI technology effectively will generate totally new experiences. It is a privilege for us to be able to employ these new ideas with amazing partners such as XCO and SenseTime. We hope that these ideas will contribute to Singapore’s aspiration to become a SMART nation!”


Mr Martin Huang, Managing Director of SenseTime International Pte. Ltd., said, “We are pleased to collaborate with Grid Synergy to introduce an innovative and interactive advertisement approach for XCO and NAC. SenseTime is proud to contribute to the community by using AI technology to support the growth of Singapore’s local art scene through this interactive campaign. We hope this pilot will change the commuters' perceptions and inspire younger generations to have an interest in art."