Latest news with #Guanyin
Independent Singapore
15-07-2025
- General
- Independent Singapore
Burnt incense paper that caused Chai Chee St fire sparks debate online
SINGAPORE: A fire on Sunday morning (July 13) at Block 52 Chai Chee Street was successfully put out by firefighters from the Paya Lebar and Changi Fire Stations using a water jet. However, the incident caused seven people to require medical attention. Fortunately, none of them needed to be conveyed to the hospital. As a precautionary measure, a total of 35 people were evacuated from the premises by officers from the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF). The blaze was concentrated at the lift lobby on the 13th floor, which affected two units on the floor above with heat and soot damage. The fire began after a woman burned joss paper for Guanyin's birthday. Unfortunately, the flames spread to several items nearby, and the SCDF was called in shortly past 8:00 on Sunday morning. A resident named Mr Yang told Lianhe Zaobao that while his wife usually burns joss papers outdoors, on Sunday, she chose to perform the ritual at the lift lobby, where he usually keeps items that catch fire, including wooden cabinets and chairs. The fire also caused the power to be cut out for a few hours. Unsurprisingly, commenters online had some negative things to say about Mr Yang, 66, and his wife. A Reddit user held them both responsible for the fire: 'Mr Yang for hoarding flammable rubbish and his wife for burning incense paper next to the flammable rubbish.' 'Hope they'll be charged and made an example of,' wrote another. To this, a commenter replied: 'Entitled folks not wanting to use bin below. Let's see if they get charged or not.' Another chimed in to say, 'Honestly, those barrels should also be banned… Anyone who has ever lived on a low floor knows how bad it can get during some months. If you have no air-conditioning, your options are to choke or to choke and melt from heat.' However, one wrote the following: 'As someone who burns incense, I say times have changed, and the right way to burn incense is to go to the temple and use the ones there. See also Fire! Video of alleged loanshark harassment circulates online As well ……it is rude to burn incense at the void deck because the smoke does give people who want to dry clothes a bad time….like need to rewash.' 'I mean, in a perfect world, I would appreciate neighbours who don't burn offerings. It's not a perfect world, though, and we have to make do. I empathise with you. I'd rather they burn in the barrels than everywhere else they feel like,' a Reddit user chimed in. /TISG Read also: Jurong West landlord evicts tenant after his power bank catches fire & causes damage
Forbes
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Self-Driving Cars Need Therapy Too — At Least In This Universe
The sentient self-driving cars in artist Lawrence Lek's fictional smart city function as ... More protagonists in a story that delves into the relationship between humans and the AI entities they create. Life isn't always easy for self-driving cars. Humans fear them. They glitch. Sometimes they get anxious and depressed and have behavioral issues. At least that's the case with the sentient autonomous vehicles featured in 'NOX: High-Rise,' an immersive installation by award-winning multimedia artist Lawrence Lek that explores the increasingly complex relationship between AI entities and the humans who create them. Lex — whose work often reflects science fiction themes through cinematic storytelling — steeps viewers in a fictional smart city of the very near future where an AI conglomerate operates a therapeutic rehabilitation center for self-driving cars in need of a mental tuneup. Treatment at the center includes equine therapy with real horses and sessions with AI therapy chatbot Guanyin, named after the Buddhist goddess of compassion. The center is called NOX, short for 'Nonhuman Excellence.' But what, exactly, does excellence look like for artificial intelligence in an age of highly controlled automated devices? It's just one question posed by 'NOX: High-Rise,' which opens Saturday, June 28 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and runs through November 16. The London-based Lek, known for his work in virtual reality and simulation, combines floor-to-ceiling video displays, an interactive video game, objects and a moody electronic soundscape to relay multiple stories, each reflecting a particular car's unique soul-searching journey, sometimes narrated in its own words. Lek likens the experience to entering the physical version of a free-roaming role-playing game. In the universe of "NOX: High-Rise," self-driving cars with mental health health issues get ... More treatment that includes equine therapy with real horses. In a storyline straight out of dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, one aging police vehicle becomes erratic and violent out of panic it will be replaced and discarded. A younger car named Enigma is sent to NOX after getting a little too creative with company property — it used its camera to channel Ansel Adams on work time and take 3D, stereoscopic photographs of landscapes. For doing that, it gets disciplined, just as an employee might for misusing a work-issued laptop. 'I see many common issues that my science fiction versions of AI face and humans face,' Lek said over Zoom from Los Angeles, where he was busy getting ready for the installation's opening. Road Movie Starring Self-Driving Cars The 42-year-old artist described the piece's tone as part dark, brooding noir film and part sunny road movie. Here, however, the open road is less a classic onscreen symbol of freedom than a well-trodden commute along lonely highways dividing clusters of high rises. 'It's ironic thinking what the road movie would look like for a self-driving car, because the road to the car represents their job and a certain sense of what they might want to escape from,' Lek said. 'It's like this search for freedom in a world where maybe that's no longer possible. What does individuality look like for machines that don't have the means to own their actions?' Machines With Memories And Moods With 'NOX: High-Rise,' Lek joins a growing number of artists tapping their creativity to make sense of a world in which AI plays an increasingly integral role. An immersive AI-infused exhibit now on exhibit in St. Joseph, Michigan from Nathaniel Stern and Sasha Stiles, for example, explores how humans and technology evolve side by side, inextricable and directly reflective of one another. 'As we've learned in the past, some of the most daring answers to questions of our time come from art,' Pablo José Ramírez, curator of Lek's exhibit at the Hammer Museum, said over email. The Hammer installation marks the latest entry in Lek's ongoing series exploring the intersection of AI and urban life through the lens of transportation history. For a 2023 installation commissioned by the LAS Arts Foundation, he filled three floors of an abandoned Berlin shopping center with the interactive first chapter in his NOX narrative arc about a futuristic universe where self-driving cars recur as characters. The following year he won the Frieze London 2024 Artist Award, with the judges praising his 'essential interrogations into the use of AI and its relationship with the human experience.' The cars in NOX: High-Rise have experiences most humans will be able to relate to — they ponder their futures and their place in the world and what it means to forge their own path. In one video, Enigma spots a junkyard filled with old-fashioned cars, the kind that required drivers. 'What a strange fate it is not to drive, but to be driven,' it says. That line gets to the heart of Lek's inquiry about AI agency and consciousness and empathy between humans and the machines they make. It's hard not to feel something for Enigma when it waxes nostalgic about its childhood. 'Lurking under the overpass were the same kinds of cars I grew up with,' it says. 'Bright minds in cheap bodies, dreaming of getting permits and making it out of town.' Will spending time with Lek's sentient autos change the way you feel the next time you hop into a Waymo? Mileage, of course, may vary. Lawrence Lek was intrigued with the idea of a road movie for self-driving cars in which the highway ... More is less a classic symbol of freedom than a path the vehicles can't escape.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dazu Rock Carvings: The Last Monument of World Grotto Art
CHONGQING, China, June 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Located in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, the Dazu Rock Carvings have held UNESCO World Heritage status since 1999. Sprawled across 75 recognized cultural relics protection zones, the site shelters over 50,000 breathtaking statues. As one of the eight great grottoes of the world, Dazu Rock Carvings epitomize the pinnacle of world grotto art dating from the 9th to the mid-13th century from different aspects. Celebrated as "the last monument of world grotto art," Dazu, together with Mogao, Yungang, Longmen and other grottoes, constitute the complete history of Chinese grotto art. Recent initiatives have rejuvenated Dazu's cultural presence. In an 8K dome theater, the Thousand‑Armed Guanyin's benevolent gaze fills the screen, inviting viewers into a celestial embrace. The dance‑drama Tian Xia Dazu (For an Eternal Homeland — Dazu Rock Carvers' Legacy) animates the carvers' epic tale with immersive stagecraft. Even video games now feature Dazu's statues, their contours and stories woven into virtual adventures. This thousand‑year‑old sanctuary is stepping firmly into the present. The 8k full-dome film Dazu Rock Carvings awakens all 50,000 statues in layered streams of live footage and CG animation, transforming the physical space into a digital world. Reclined within the dome, audiences look up through a canopy of digital stars, accompanied by haunting Buddhist chants and soulful light interplay. Time‑weathered halos reform around sculpted robes — reborn in pixels yet rooted in antiquity. In Black Myth: Wukong, the Monkey King cleaves through primordial chaos with his magical staff, the thousand-armed Guanyin of Dazu Rock Carvings smiles serenely amid dimensional rifts — holding a flower between her fingers. In the digital Buddhist world, gamers traverse a meticulously rendered Dazu, encountering Buddhist iconography amid mythic quests — an interactive bridge to Eastern philosophy. Meanwhile, CCTV's China in Intangible Cultural Heritage devoted its Chongqing episode to Dazu, describing the site's living legacy as "like stars falling all over mountains and rivers in Chongqing," rekindling collective memory through the screen. On stage, dancers echo the chiseling rhythms of bygone artisans. Silk‑flowing costumes swirl as performers burst from stone walls, transforming history into kinetic art. This isn't a static reenactment — it's a cultural translation, transmitting the carvers' spirit through flesh, motion, and emotion. The Dazu Rock Carvings are being revitalized through digital technology and cultural innovation. Digital projection breathes new life into carvings in the virtual spaces, enabling dialogues across time and space; Stage arts, meanwhile, imbue them with contemporary vitality. Technology extends their reach, while culture revitalizes their essence. Through this symbiosis, this millennium-old treasure resonates with the modern era, radiating timeless splendor. Photo - - - View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Dazu Rock Carvings
Malay Mail
09-06-2025
- Malay Mail
Devotees devastated as Guanyin statue vanishes from Batu Niah temple; committee appeals for its return
MIRI, June 9 — A porcelain statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, enshrined at the Batu Niah Town Tua Pek Kong Temple for more than three decades, was reported stolen in the early hours of June 6, leaving devotees in shock and sorrow. According to the temple's spokesperson, the disappearance was first noticed by a worshipper who arrived to offer prayers, only to find the statue missing. 'The temple committee was immediately informed of the incident,' she added. The spokesperson said the Guanyin statue holds deep spiritual and historical significance for the temple. 'It was the very first Bodhisattva statue ever enshrined at the temple's altar and was personally brought by the temple's founding monk, Venerable Master Sheng Lin, in 1994 when the temple was established. 'Since then, it has served as a symbol of the faith and the founding spirit of the temple,' she explained. The spokesperson noted that despite the temple being a simple wooden structure, it had never experienced theft before. 'The sudden and mysterious disappearance of the status has not only caused concern among devotees but also highlighted the need for better protection of religious artifacts,' she added. Meanwhile, Batu Niah Buddhist Association chairman Chong Teck Huat said a police report has been lodged and that police are investigating the incident. 'We urge anyone with information to come forward and assist,' he said, expressing hope that the statue can be recovered soon the restore peace of mind to the community. 'The statue is not just a status. It is a living testament to the temple's founding We sincerely hope the Bodhisattva can be returned to its rightful place soon.' He called on devotees to remain mindful, and continue praying, trusting that the truth would soon come to light. — The Borneo Post
The Guardian
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Scenes from a Repatriation review – 12 ingenious questions about cultural ownership
Controversies over statues of cultural figureheads have churned in the news in recent years. The repatriation of a fictional 12th-century statue of a Chinese deity, carved in stone, forms the central dispute in Singaporean Joel Tan's play. The Bodhisattva Guanyin reclines in the 'royal ease' pose at one end of a traverse stage, designed by TK Hay, with a combination of screens and mirrors. The drama is formed of 12 distinct scenes, loosely connected around the statue. It begins choppily inside the British Museum with patronising or incendiary debate by protesters and curators, sometimes set beside flashes of 19th-century imperial history. The tone switches from serious-minded to satirical to gnomic. But its disparate parts coalesce and gather intellectual complexity as well as dramatic intensity, all enacted with zest by a six-strong cast: Kaja Chan, Aidan Cheng, Jon Chew, Fiona Hampton, Robin Khor Yong Kuan and Sky Yang. There is playful yet disciplined direction by experimentalists emma + pj, with actors using the auditorium in original yet unmessy ways. We travel from protests in London, inside and outside the museum, to a Chinese detention centre, Shanghai Pudong airport and a splashy Beijing party thrown by the industrialist who secures the return of the statue. An overseas Chinese student protester confronting his British tutor opens up ideas on identity, covert racism and art – a statue can be in exile like a refugee, says the student. A Chinese official interrogating a cartoonist offers new dimensions to cultural appropriation and artistic protest. The Beijing party brings troubling patriotism and anti-western contempt that intersects with shocking misogyny. These scenes are relatively brief but contain real depth of thought. Neither are they bluntly polemical but wrapped within character and incident. 'All of human history is basically people taking things from each other,' someone says. It does not seem to be an argument for leaving, for example, the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum, but the play cleverly muddies the idea of provenance and ownership. A character states that the Bodhisattva Guanyin is not even a Chinese figure but is in fact Indian. The play's various scenarios complicate the debate and lay bare the politics of repatriation. The Chinese magnate who virtually bribes the museum into returning the statue places it in Shanghai's airport so that the deity is turned into a symbol of power – and the rise and fall of empires. The Bodhisattva herself presides over all of it, watching over centuries of history, but the statue remains wrapped throughout. This obfuscation is puzzling – yet another one of the play's interesting ideas. This is innovative theatre, shining with intelligence, which brings richness to our cultural tussle with the problem of ancient statues and their rightful place in the world. At the Royal Court theatre, London, until 24 May
