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Description

Titled "Ornamental Fish," this work is a surreal exploration of childhood memory and the feeling of being on display. It captures the specific pressure of growing up in a culture where children are often seen as a measure of their parents' success. The central image—a boy in an astronaut suit confined within a television set-turned-aquarium—is a direct metaphor for this experience. The fish tank represents a life lived for the viewership and judgment of others, while the astronaut suit signifies profound isolation and the sense of being an alien in one's own home. By using AI to generate this scene with the aesthetic of a faded 1990s photograph, the work creates a sense of "futuristic nostalgia." It is a memory that feels both deeply personal and artificially constructed, questioning the nature of our own remembered pasts.

Process

This piece was born from the quiet and persistent memory of being compared to other children. I was moved by the urge to give form to the feeling that my existence was performative, designed for the joy and validation of my parents and their peers. Life didn't feel like it was mine to live; it felt like I was living in a fish tank. The term "ornamental fish" became the core of the idea—a creature prized for its appearance but confined to a small, transparent world. I wanted to answer a question that has followed me for years: What does it look like to be simultaneously prized and profoundly lonely? Creating this work was an attempt to process that feeling. Using AI as a collaborator allowed me to approach this deeply personal memory from a distance, translating a human emotion through the logic of a machine to see it more clearly myself.

Tools

The image was created through a dialogue between my own memory and the AI text-to-image model, Midjourney. The process was not a single command, but a series of layered prompts and careful iterations. I began by feeding the AI keywords from my childhood in 1990s Singapore, combined with the core metaphor of being an "ornamental fish." I introduced the concept of the astronaut helmet to symbolize isolation, and the vintage television to represent the feeling of being constantly watched. A crucial decision was to guide the AI to generate the image in the style of a faded, analog photograph from that era. This involved specific prompts for film grain, color palettes, and lens distortion, grounding the surreal scene in a tangible, nostalgic aesthetic. The final piece was selected from dozens of variations, chosen for its ability to capture the precise, melancholic expression that resonated with the original memory.