antara: Voxel Reconstructions of a Singaporean Memory
2025–2026
Spatial Memory, Publication Design, Sound Design, Voxel Architecture, Autoethnography
antara n. —
between; in the middle of; in the interval. intermediate space; interior. [from Malay/Indonesian antara, from Sanskrit antarā (interval, interior), from Proto-Indo-European h1enter- (within, between).]
Memory does not preserve a place. It does something stranger, more tender: it arrives unannounced, bypasses will, and becomes sensation long before it becomes name. antara contemplates the shared spaces of a Singaporean life: thresholds that hover just beyond geography. Through voxel reconstruction and fabricated atmosphere, the quotidian is rebuilt as recollection holds it — quantized, abstracted, rendered strange. The familiar is made unhomely. These environments can no longer be found on any map, yet they return with the gravity of somewhere you have never been, carrying the residue of use without the use itself.
And if they belong to one person's memory, why do they feel like your own?
Listen at: antaraaa.cargo.site
Overview
antara—from Malay/Indonesian, meaning between, in the middle of, interior—describes a threshold hovering just beyond exact geography. This project is an autoethnographic reconstruction of a Singaporean childhood, translating four shared spaces—the HDB void deck, the MRT platform, the public pool, and the childhood playroom—into three distinct, interwoven artifacts. A technical manual codifies its voxel construction logic; a photobook renders the resulting spaces in full-bleed, film-graded imagery; and an ambient website preserves them as sound. By treating memory as a quantized voxel grid rather than a faithful photograph, the project acknowledges that recollection is not a playback, but a reconstruction—reassembling the familiar until it becomes profoundly strange, yet deeply and universally recognizable.
The System
antara: The System is a rigid, coldly doctrinal technical manual codifying the project’s four-tier scalar hierarchy: the Voxel (atomic unit), the Primitive (aggregate compound), the Module (spatial operator), and the Assembly (inhabitable world). Every measured dimension is dyadic—divisible by two—except for a narrow class of sub-dyadic residuals found at trim, fixtures, and seams, which the text describes as "the sole concession the grid makes to the seams it cannot otherwise resolve." Written in a captured, anti-humanist theoretical register, the manual treats architecture as an indifferent machine rather than a vessel for memory. Diagrams modeled in MagicaVoxel are rendered flat and evenly lit, supplemented by Neue Haas Grotesk typography and warm grey palette, creating an eerie, anonymous archive of precision without a human occupant.
The manual is organised into eight sections: an opening overview, definitions of the Voxel, Primitive, Module, and Assembly tiers, a combinatorial logic spread, nine configuration spreads pairing a diagram with a short block of text, and a colophon. Measurements throughout the grid are dyadic, divisible by two, except for a narrow class of sub-dyadic residuals at trim, fixtures, and seams, the grid's only exceptions, occurring at its thresholds: the same interval, antara, that gives the project its name. Every dimension is also calibrated against the human body: the standard corridor passes the body through untroubled, the half-height wall stops at mid-chest. "The grid never fits the occupant. It contains them." All diagrams were modelled and rendered in MagicaVoxel, chosen for its native voxel workflow and its flat, evenly lit output, suited to technical diagrams rather than atmospheric scenes. The manual is set in Neue Haas Grotesk Display 57 Roman, with technical accents in neue Vektor CNC, and printed in a cohesive palette of warm greys.
The Image
antara: The Image is a square-format linen hardcover photobook structured across four chapters: Pulang (returning home), Next Station (the MRT platform), Chlorine (the public pool), and Dahulu (the childhood before). The deliberate use of voxel renderings over photography forms the project’s core argument: a photograph claims to document objective truth, while a render openly admits its own artificial construction. Memory operates the same way. Each chapter opens with a threshold spread—the title paired against a spoken memory fragment—before unfurling into full-bleed, 4:3 imagery. Renders, post-processed with a Cinestill 50D film emulation, soften the grid’s native rigidity without erasing its quantized, built quality. This ratio, closer to a medium-format negative, prioritizes held detail and physical recognition over cinematic spectacle.
Each chapter opens with a threshold spread: the chapter title paired against a spoken memory fragment, before a single image appears. The book opens with a bilingual Malay pantun by Ali Yaakub; the final chapter closes on the phrase pulang dahulu, I'm going home first, echoing the pantun and closing the book's sequence into a loop. Renders run full bleed on the recto throughout, with no margin or frame. All renders were modelled and rendered in MagicaVoxel, then post-processed in Lightroom with a Cinestill 50D film emulation, chosen to soften the render's native precision toward something closer to a photograph without erasing the blocked, quantised quality that marks it as built rather than captured. Printed at 16×12 inches in a linen hardcover, set in Diatype, and locked to a 4:3 ratio, closer to a medium-format negative than a cinema frame, chosen to hold detail and favour memory over spectacle.
The Sound
antara: The Sound is the project’s most abstract layer, residing on a dedicated dark, monochromatic website. It comprises four ambient tracks (roughly six minutes each) interleaved with four spoken threshold recordings—memory fragments read aloud—totaling twenty-nine minutes of listening. The interface employs a split-screen layout: a static left panel holding the project title against a grainy gradient, and a scrolling right panel presenting the tracklist and chapter entries. Each chapter page is topped with a kaleidoscope-treated voxel render that subtly shifts as the cursor moves across it. Crucially, the project statement sits at the absolute bottom of the site, accessible only after the visitor has engaged with the entire audio journey. It asks for passive, sensory surrender rather than active intellectual navigation.
Lineage & Precedents
The visual and conceptual grammar of antara is explicitly derived from the folk architecture of the Backrooms—an endless, sallow-yellow labyrinth of damp carpet, fluorescent hum, and infinite, functionless rooms. However, the project runs this liminal mechanism in reverse. Where the Backrooms achieves its unsettling effect through randomness, anonymity, and uncanny deviation from human expectation, antara commits to absolute, remembered specificity. It draws from a lineage of labyrinthine art and literature—Piranesi’s Carceri, Borges’ Library of Babel, J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, and the collaborative online mythology of the Backrooms itself—to articulate a space that feels physical before it feels cultural. This thematic genealogy anchors the project not in fantasy, but in the documented architectural experience of collective human memory.
The project’s central paradox is that extreme specificity travels further than generic abstraction. antara does not depict a generalized void deck; it reconstructs one exact remembered configuration of pillars, tiling, and fluorescent light. Recognition happens at the level of the body before language. A corridor’s proportions, a step’s height, and the chlorine-blue of a pool register as physical facts before they register as cultural memories—which is why a space built this precisely can trigger anemoia (nostalgia for a place one has never known) in viewers who have never set foot in Singapore. The project does not claim these spaces belong to anyone else’s history. It asks only whether they could be. The threshold between genuine recognition and persuasive projection remains deliberately unresolved, rendering antara a tender, open-ended inquiry into how collective memory is architecturally possessed.
For more on the Backrooms and liminal spaces:
Wikipedia
SlashFilm, on the liminal horror genre
PBS Monstrum, "Lost in the Backrooms"
Context
Ballard, J. G. — High-Rise (Jonathan Cape, 1975)
The Backrooms — Internet Creepypasta (4chan, 2019; expanded by Kane Parsons et al., 2022–present)
Clarke, C. — The Anemoia Device (MIT Media Lab, 2024)
Drude, J. P. — The Unbuilt Memory (VR Software, PhD candidate, University of Hannover)
"Echoes Through the Mesh" — (Student Project, University of Westminster)
"Bubbles — The Silent Witness" — Interactive Generative Voxel Art Series (objkt.com)
Void (Deck) The Walls — Installation, National Gallery Singapore (2026)
"Waiting for the Elevator" — Video Installation (Japan Media Arts Festival, 2022)
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