Hope is not beholden to reason. EMERGE:NCY is a media art installation tailor-made for London’s Piccadilly Lights, presenting a visceral expression of entrapment, senseless perseverance, and liberation. Its title comes from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the Dark’, which argues: “Inside the word “emergency” is “emerge”; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.” The 2.5 min long film is the recipient of the 2023 CIRCA Public Vote Prize.

EMERGE:NCY expands upon Box Body, an interactive media art piece showcased on Ten Square Singapore’s billboard during Singapore Art Week in January 2023. Our unique production method involves remapping filmed imagery from a built scaled model. It has the capacity for real-time interaction with 3D visuals tailored for the screen from a specific viewing angle, with minimal need for computer-generated imagery (CGI).

The intense, massive visualization of a giant human trying to break free from a box compels viewers to witness hope in raw action. As the human navigates the confining, suffocating space, their curiosity and confusion devolve into frustration, defeat, and helplessness—but their determination remains. This is hope’s dynamic nature: sometimes apparent and fervent, other times dormant, yet never truly extinguished.

EMERGE:NCY captures the ebbs and flows of hope, not as a passive wish but as an active confrontation to challenge. The emotions are communicated through performance, as well as sound and music design. The human’s final breakthrough, with light flooding the darkness of the now broken box, insists in a hope that is not fragile, and that there is always something beyond the boxes that trap us.