The local IE Global group in Singapore has completed their first mission.
They report:
The objective of the mission was pretty simple, point your phones up at the big giant red lantern and keep looking up for 5 minutes. Planning missions in Singapore prove to be a difficult task due to the potential legal issues. We have a law here that prevents us from gathering in groups larger than 4 people.
Get involved in your area at Improv Everywhere Global.
Fantastic!
That takes guts.
Interesting mission. That really sounds like a repressive law, though. What’s the government so afraid of?
This is a real cool event. To me this is what I mean by, “improve everywhere” in other cultures. (I wrote a comment a few days ago about this thought). Real cool mission.
@ Matthew Flaschen: singapure is a pretty high supervising “citystate”, there are “tight” laws. But the result is a low grade of corruption, real low criminality and the society is pretty “rich”.
I think this is one of the reasons for a law like this. Sounds scary but different culture and different politic. The western cultures are getting more and more into this direction of “controlling” and supervising. For example the US with the “passports” (Fingerprints). The discussion about the “eay (iris) controll”. In germany we have biometcric passport-pictures.
Look that, is from Brasília Brazil!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vToSJWd4wvM
Hold on a second.
Can someone find evidence of this law? It disturbs me and frankly I’d rather find out it was a hoax.
My hat is off to you, Singapore improvisers! Keep pushing the envelope, bless you. As for the fellow acting as an apologist for such repressive laws–sorry, telling people they can’t gather in public in groups of over four will not stop ANY corruption. Dream on. Nor will passport checks and fingerprinting stop terrorists. Yes, Mussolini did make the trains run on time. I guess that’s what we want, then, huh?
This is the penal code for unlawful assembly in Singapore.
http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/non_version/cgi-bin/cgi_getdata.pl?actno=1872-REVED-224&doctitle=PENAL%20CODE%0A&date=latest&method=part&segid=888373001-001003
Yep, evidence for you.
Hejin:
That law states that an assembly of five or more people is only illegal if they are doing, or conspiring to do something illegal. So, as far as I know, pointing your cell phones and heads up in the air calling aliens isn’t illegal.
Just fun. :)
Though, some other missions might be somewhat less legal. For example, assembling a group to block a passage or “right of way” is illegal, so you’d have to be very careful where you are during a freeze, or other sort of group mission that involves standing in one place.
Either way, I really appreciate the group that decided to do this mission. They put themselves at a pretty large risk of law penalty just for the sake of chaos and joy, on their first mission. Most won’t do that until they are well established and have plenty of experience dealing with local laws and groups.
Thank you guys for exercising caution and creativity with this piece, I’ll look out for more from your group.
Bravo, guys. Bravo. :)
Hey
Noticed a lot of tention with the whole legal thing. We here at M:SG have no intention of breaking any laws in any of our missions. So to make sure that we DoNOt break any laws, we do our research we before any mission. For our second mission, a few of us are going through legal documents and websites checking out all the possible laws that might be against us for the mission, especially laws regarding publc nuisance and maintainence of public tranquility. If there are laws that prevent certain ideas from being actualised, then we’ll come up with alternatives. Although we really want to be spontaneous and random, we also don’t want to be criminals so we got to play things safe.
Singapore is a restrictive country, but We singaporeans love it anyways. We have peace and alomost no crime. Our crime rate is so low that they got to remind us there is crime, so we have crime prevention campaign with slogans like “low crime doesn’t mean NO crime”. yeah…. It’s a pretty safe country and Schools here are great cause everyone gets an education and Everyone here is above the poverty line. “As long as we’re happy, there’s no problem”. I think that’s a maxim that most of us hold to.
Peace
Nice one! I’m Singaporean but living in NYC now.. I think it’s excellent you guys did that esp at Marina Sq too!
Ought to try something else soon; restrictive Singapore or not - isn’t our darling government encouraging the ‘arts’?
Big thumbs up for you guys!
Didn’t know Singapore had a group doing such stuff. How to get involved?
Oh, and nice work guys.
Good job! Cheers.
The only way to improve Singapore is to drive a 50 kiloton nuke right into the heart of the CBD. And even then, you might want to firebomb the place. Twice. And then level the area with JDAMs. Twice.
It’s restrictive because of only one thing: Investors love places where there’s no visible corruption, no visible form of unrest, and where the populace is so busy with their personal agendas, they don’t care about the country as a whole.
The continued facade of “success” in Singapore is only possible because the populace don’t know they are deprived of the basic human rights that come naturally if you’re a human being. There is no freedom of privacy, highly restricted freedom of speech, and a defamation law so deeply flawed you’re better off settling it outside of court rather than inside. And that’s just the beginning.
You’re welcome to try to improve Singapore, but I highly suggest you don’t. This country is an anomaly that should never have existed in the first place.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate such things, it’s just that I hate my country more. I live here, and I hate it with the combined fury of a thousand suns from 5 different galaxies.
But hey, at least the trains run on time, that’s what everyone wants, right?
Wow! Good job! will be waiting for your next mission ;)
It’s not illegal gathering in enclosed area (under a roof). Otherwise millions would have committed offences in restaurants and shopping centres.
Just to make clear, my concern wasn’t at the group (kudos for what you do) but at the government for passing and enforcing such a law.
wow, we are cooler now! *sniggers*
Well, it isn’t so wierd that they got laws on how many you can be at the same place. Singapore is kinda small xD
Omg. This is So funny! just looking at all the people staring up at the red lantern when there is actually nothing there makes me wanna laugh already. and they all ended up with a confused look! GREAT JOB YO!!!!
i see there’s alot of talk about the law in singapore… namely gathering in groups of 5 or more…
the law in singapore is clear… gathering in groups of 5 or more is called an unlawful assembly… BUT… it only comes into play when there is malicious intent… so for example… if you meet 4 friends just to have a good time, its cool… but if you meet 4 friends and break the law..? you get charged for whatever law you broke, as well as unlawful assembly… if you meet 4 friends just to have a good time, but end up having evil ideas, it doesn’t matter whether you actually carried it out… you might still get charged with unlawful assembly…
we’re actually planning a freeze in singapore soon… and i’ve looked it up… the law can’t touch us… as long as we don’t touch anyone else… or think of doing it…
Hi, i’m just a fan…
Have anyone tried this?
Operation library evacuate.
Plan:
Requires 4-20 agents with basic pink IC.
The library does not keep record of books browed by patens unless the browed book is 1) overdue 2)on reserve or 3) book just returned was damaged extensively…
(Case 3 means that if a person returns a book that is, lets say, torn into half and only part of the cover is left, the library records one slash or strike on the last Brower of that book. If a person has 3 strikes on his or her account, it will be frozen.)
4 to 5 agents per library will systematically borrow 4 books from the same shelve and then return them at the book drops. If done on a month long school holiday, 8 books per person… when that shelve is empty of books, the agents move on to the next shelve…
this is repeated till almost all the shelves are emptied…
I have tried a short trial run of this and managed to empty 4 shelves in less then 15 mins tops… at the rate of 8 per book-run…
The a book is returned the system only registers that it is returned but the librarian stationed at the book drop will not stop the system unless he or she spots a heavily damaged book being returned…
In this way the library may be systematically wiped of books…
A video can be taken of a empty “library”.
P.s.: I am an idea man… not much more…
I know Singapore’s improve group is small, and we are kinda shy, my ideas can be mostly done by
Beating a system and by shadow agents. This means it will be done… but by whom? Only we will
know…
I’ll be back with more subterfuge sabotage plans…. Contact me if this is done…
emptying a library is not fun, neither is it going to make anyone smile. Only thing it does is frustrate people who actually want to borrow books, or the librarians who have to reshelve everything.
i dont think sabotage is ever the idea of improv.