Nusantara.com: some personal projects

The Literary Festivals Web Log
Started this blog after coming back from something grandly called the Asia-Pacific Literary Festival Directors meeting, in May 2005... I went because, for my sins, I had accepted to serve as the Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Singapore Writers Festival 2005. And I'm using this blog to learn more about the fascinating world of literary festivals. We are all under-resourced and dependent on the hard work of dedicated people, so I thought a blog could be a good way to link up together. [11/05 update: have taken a break from this - next Writer's Festival won't be till 2007]

Singapore University Press

Well, I guess I should put this in projects... This was my job from May 2002 to September 2005, looking after the University Press. The site is very simple, and is put together with BBEdit, Filemaker Pro to hold all the book data, and the excellent WebMerge, to push the database info into html templates created in BBEdit. A bit of a messy system to leave my successors, but they seem to be getting it...



Public Art in Singapore
A database of public sculpture in Singapore, which I put together in August and September 2001, as part of my research for a paper on kitsch and the Singapore modern, a paper that takes public art as its focus. At launch there were some 65 sculptures in the database, and we are up to around 120 as of October 2005. I've been maintaining a pretty active blog on subjects related to public art as well, since end of 2002. Please do drop me a note if you have additional information on any of these works, or if you can suggest new works to put in the database.



The Southeast Asian ArtFile
In late 1996 and early 1997 I maintained the Southeast Asian artfile, a site which tracked Southeast Asian art as it appeared on the web. I mostly aggregated to other sites, and posted news articles from sites that did not archive. I have not updated the site since 1997, but I believe it is still a useful concept. Many dead links I am afraid... apologies...


Gambuh
A photo essay by Rio Helmi, dedicated to Bali's most ancient theatrical art, Gambuh.


Singapore Knowledge Net
In 1996 I helped conceptualize and the launch this site, which has emerged as Singapore's leading history website. It is produced by KnowledgeNet Pte Ltd in cooperation with the Singapore National Archives. This website is an attempt to build an online encyclopedia of Singapore heritage information.


The Indonesian Heritage Series
In 1994 and 1995 I helped conceptualize, plan and commission the Indonesian Heritage Series, a 10-volume series of richly-illustrated books aimed at capturing the diversity of Indonesia's rich natural and cultural heritage. The project involved very interesting collaboration with a large number of the world's top experts on Indonesia, and with photographers and illustrators across Asia. A website was developed by DigitalDevelopment.com of Jakarta, Indonesia, and was a very useful attempt to create a web version of the book series. Looks like the site is down, so I've taken down the link. Here is a very simple site that I created when we launched the book series. People are still linking to the Rafflesia and swidden agriculture pages.


The Agung Rai Museum of Art
A simple brochureware site I created for the Agung Rai Museum of Art in Peliatan, Ubud, Bali. Nothing fancy, but it gets about 100 visitors a day...