Daryl Tay.net

With all the buzz about Night Festival here this year, for once I was the enthusiastic one to ask the girlfriend to make the trip down to the museums to check it out.

Sadly, I think we were both disappointed.

Firstly due to the rain, we didn’t know what was going on and what wasn’t. If it wasn’t for the tweets from @nicole85 and Ingrid’s contact with the museum, we would have no idea what was going on because the sound system was poor and unless you stood right in front of it (a feat that was not easy to achieve due to the rain), you couldn’t hear what the speaker was saying. We weren’t the only confused ones as many people were milling around wondering if there was going to be a programme going on or not.

Secondly, we were lost with regards to where to stand. And take it from me, if we as SMU students can’t figure out the best vantage point to view a performance opposite the road, the general public will be even more clueless. Signage was in existence, but while they could point the general direction the performances/exhibits were at, there was no indication where exactly one should stand to watch the performance.

Finally, the German performance which most caught my attention on the programme turned out to be a big disappointment. It was essentially 25 minutes of slow music, three people going round and round on a mechanical wheel, and random pyro effects going off every now and then. I do feel sorry for the performer who fell off the moving treadmill though.

I do sympathise with the organisers because I’ve done events and rain is one of the worst things that can happen to any event. It seems people who attended the night festival on Friday had a relatively better time, so perhaps our lacklustre experience was due largely to the rain and not any fault of the organisers, I don’t know. In any case, I still think the Night Festival is a brilliant idea that can potentially blow peoples’ minds, but really, in the middle of campus green with the weird terrain and trees everywhere just is not the place to do it.