Alok Utsav - Brewing the In-Between by Art in Transit

BREWING THE IN-BETWEEN (DRAFT VERSION)

Project Documentation Book Alok Utsav Diploma Project 2014 Project: Art in Transit Facilitators: Agnishikha Choudhuri, Amitabh Kumar, Arzu Mistry, Samir Parker Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology

ABSTRACT Art in Transit is a pilot project which aims at giving public spaces life and to connect the public with the space through art and design. Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in collaboration with the Bangalore Metro Rail Cooperation Limited (BMRCL) launched its pilot project at the Peenya metro station which began in July 2014. Being a site specific project this book takes you through my process along with my personal work that led me to this project.

CONTENTS Introduction Why Art in Transit? Understanding Public Art Practice First Contact Sketching Peenya Personal Metaphor Proposal 1.0 Group Metaphor

Intervention Defining My Presence in Peenya Mapping Smell Mapping Sound and Light Mapping Light at Night Proposal 1.5 Conceptual Explorations

Construction The Root Conceptual Iterations Making of the Root The Exhibition Reflection

Progression Taking off from The Root Conceptual Explorations Proposal 2.0 Final Iterations Primitive Visual Recepetors References Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

WHY ART IN TRANSIT? I come from a film background. My journey has been about seeking, deconstructing and making sense of narratives that crop up along the way. Even though I majored in film, over the last four years, I’ve chosen to jump headfirst into projects ranging from interaction design to natural building to advertising. I’m also from Bangalore, I’ve spent my entire life here. At the start of my final semester in Srishti, I found myself staring at a dilemma. We were given a day to choose from a list of projects. I thought I knew what I had to do, I’d spent a lot of my time in Srishti polishing my skills as a student of film. Choosing a project involving film meant that I’d be doing something I’m sufficiently comfortable with. I’m perfectly fine staying with what I feel like I’m capable of doing best, at the same time, there’s a gnawing unease at the idea of that becoming my entire identity as an artist. It may just be because I assume that I can produce something just good enough to make the cut somewhere without really testing myself. The idea of being comfortable

was extremely satisfying and revolting at the same time. I’m often confronted by a cloudy wall of doubt and fear that looms over anything I might attempt. I’d rather not showcase my potential weakness and stay with what I do well, than indulge my vulnerabilities. But where did that leave me and my DIP project? Art in Transit was the only project that essentially scared me. I didn’t know the scale of what I was going to get into, and it was vastly different from what I had done before. Or so I thought then. I found myself being swayed by this thought of creating something that has an impact in the public realm. Nothing I’d ever done had this kind of an audience. All the work I’d done so far had been about me exploring and honing my skills without having too many ‘real world’ consequences. It was also a project that would have a direct connection with Bangalore. Having grown up here, there was a sense of ownership to this city that I felt I had to tap into.

The Bangalore metro spent a lot of years in bureaucratic limbo before it started gaining any steam, and it still is a divisive system. Now that a good portion of the system is actually up and running, the public is warming up to the idea of having a metro in the city. It’s still a novelty to many, it’s not an uncommon sight to see families and individuals getting on the metro solely to enjoy the newness of it all. This may change in the future, but the idea that the metro is a symbol of progress and development in Bangalore is here to stay. In essence, Art in Transit was a project that enabled me to jump into creating a site specific public art piece, with key emphasis on ‘site specific’. Having said all that, the complete ly irrelavant and tiny fact that I lived one stop away from the Peenya Metro station tipped the scales in favour of me picking this project.

UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ART PRACTICE In her book, ‘Public art in Philadelphia’ Penny Balkin Bach writes about how “public art is a part of our public history, part of our evolving culture and our collective memory. It reflects and reveals our society and adds meaning to our cities. As artists respond to our times, they reflect their inner vision to the outside world, and they create a chronicle of our public experience.” I’d never done this kind of public intervention before, and I’ve always shied away from trying to enforce any sort of social or political view on others. My work has been one about making observations of mine own life and patterns, and drawing parallels. Not to say I haven’t made works that in a way hammer home a social message, but I’ve never been too comfortable with it. This discomfort stems from me doubting my sincerity and indepth knowledge of anything I might want to say, not because I like second guessing myself, but because I think handling a charged topic requires a lot of sensitivity and responsibiltity that I believe I’m yet to hone. The next step of the process involved defining what public art meant for myself and exploring the different types of public art.

Art history educator Miwon Kwon expands on the different categories of public art in her essay “Public Art and Urban Identities”: (1) art in public places, typically a modernist abstract sculpture placed outdoors to “decorate” or “enrich” urban spaces, especially plaza areas fronting federal buildings or corporate office towers; (2) art as public spaces, less objectoriented and more site-conscious art that sought greater integration between art, architecture, and the landscape through artists’ collaboration with members of the urban managerial class (such as architects, landscape architects, city planners, urban designers, and city administrators), in the designing of permanent urban (re)development projects such as parks, plazas, buildings, promenades, neighborhoods, etc.; and more recently, (3) art in the public interest (or “new genre public art”), often temporary city-based programs focusing on social issues rather than the built environment that involve collaborations with marginalized social groups (rather than design professionals), such as the homeless, battered women, urban youths, AIDS patients, prisoners, and which strives toward the development of politically-conscious community events or programs

(Bottom) Olafur Eliasson’s “The Weather Project” (Right) Neil Dawson’s “Horizons” (Far Right) Claes Oldenburg’s “Ice Cream”

FIRST CONTACT Sketching at the Swami Vivekananda Station The first week was spent getting a feel of the metro in Bangalore. We were split into groups of 6, and sent along to sketch the Purple Line which run from MG Road to Byappanahalli. I was with the group that covered Swami Vivekananda Station. I’m going to be honest, I didn’t know there was a station under that name until that day. We made our way to this exotic station and got to work. We had been asked to each cover a different angle of the station,. Once we had our angle, our job was to zoom in or zoom out to capture the station’s context. As you see on your left, my first attempt at sketching a Metro station was mediocre at best. I had no focus, and instead chose to rely on the larger picture. My process and approach to this project started with only a vague sense of the scale. I failed to really stay and engage with the place at hand.

The sketches and the subsequent metaphor (not pictured here) derived from my understanding of the metro, though functional, were somewhat one dimensional. Yet to get a good grasp on the scale, my second visit to the Swami Vivekananda station left me wondering about how people interacted with the space right before they entered the station or walked underneath it. It was a huge sprawling canopy, it had an eerie calmness to it even though it was adjacent to a busy road. People interacted with the space with what I perceived to be a sense of humility to its size.

SKETCHING PEENYA First Impressions

SKETCHING PEENYA First Impressions Walking into Peenya for the first time was quite definitely a boost in morale. The station was huge, airy and had a ton of natural light coming in from everywhere. My sketches this time had a better frame from which I was looking for points of interest. It was a progression towards inhabiting the space and making it mine. Sketching in Peenya and taking a look at the green line as a whole, made me look at the play of light and the notion of inside and outside in the structure.

PERSONAL METAPHOR Steak Dinner While on the metro all the way from Mantri Mall to Peenya, it seemed like the stationg were getting more and more abandoned and half completed. The progression was a little sad. That thought helped my personal metaphor for the entire green line take shape. I likened the metro line to me having a nice big fancy steak meal. It starts out all nice, the juices are flowing, and the smell is irresistable. I’ve basically been told by everyone that a having a steak is something that most people don’t get to enjoy. I dig in, and begin to realise just how nice it is. And then I get a little full, start thinking of the cost of the damn thing, definitely worth it, I tell myself. “I mean, would other people be here enjoying a steak if it wasn’t any good?” I think, taking a pause and looking around the restaurant. And then I get to the carrots, I’m sweating at this point, I don’t know whether I can continue. Is this really worth finishing? I mean I had all the meat. But of course I buckle down and finish it.

“(Because) I don’t stop eating when I’m full. The meal isn’t over when I’m full. It’s over when I hate myself.” - Louis C.K.

PROPOSAL 1.0 Background Just after our initial foray in to Peenya, we were tasked with making a proposal (next page). The number of times I’d been to the station was a grand total of 1. I was supposed to come up with a whole bunch of concepts for the entire station, addressing different sites of interest. It was purposefully meant to be blind, and to be honest, I didn’t see the point of it. But I went ahead with it anyway, I strived to come up with 15 or so concepts that had some sort of overall semi-cohesive concept to it. Naturally, since this was a conceptual exercise, I went ahead and came up with grand ambitious concepts that I’m pretty sure were far outside of my capabilities and resources. Not that I wasn’t aware of the fact that these weren’t achievable in the given time frame, but the lack of restriction was in a way quite freeing. I had a free reign to air my first initial ideas out in public, before I went back to the drawing board. This doesn’t mean I didn’t feel good about the ideas then, I was quite happy with what I had, I remember thinking “Well, this is it. I’ve just thought of 15 epic public art interventions. Now what?” These ideas were born from a very superficial understanding of Peenya. On paper they seemed like good ideas, but I had nothing to back it up. I didn’t recognise it then, and there’s no way I would have recognised it then without the kind of hindsight I have now (let’s choose to believe that Past Alok was far less wise than Present Alok, who can do no w rong).

PROPOSAL 1.0 Premise The entire station would be thought of as a functioning/living machine. The idea is to provide an illusion of constant movement and introduce a mechanical character to the structure. There would be many shiny bells and whistles that would add to the atmosphere. I’m thinking of combining elements of cultural/ traditional Indian architecture with very robust industrial elements.

Concept: Steam Whistle. Huge, seemingly ceremonial steam whistles would be on the main platform; two on either side which would then whistle out loud to signify the departure of each train. Concept: Punch Card Machine. This would involve a fully functional punch card machine that would read information from a user’s Metro card and provide them with a timestamp/keepsake/QRcode for the completed journey. It would also contribute to the mood of the building (more on that later). This desk/machine would be right outside the “Customer Care” booth. It would have two or more slots to accommodate more people. Concept: Industrial “Technical” mural of the station. This would be a mechanical blue print of all the parts that the station may be made of, gears, whistles, pulleys, crankshafts pipes, etc. Below is a drawing of a sewing machine, but the structural similarities are pretty striking. Concept: Noisy metal pipes. The underside of the steps leading up to the second floor would be covered with metal pipes of all differing sizes. They branch out from the end toward different part of the station. Each pipe would sort of broaden out in the shape of a funnel on each end so as to pick, channel, and transmit sound from one part to another. Each pipe will have its two ends at a different parts of the station.

Concept: Soundscape. The whole station would hear gears clinking into place, machine whirring, hum of a conveyor belt hum and it would imitate the sense of being inside the belly of a machine. There would be a rhythmic ebb and flow to the sounds, and “normal” sounds like the escalator going up, or the gates of the entry gate opening would be replaced by mechanical sounds.

Concept: Reverse engineered iconic coin operated weighing machines that were usually found in old train stations. They’d be redesigned with attention to recreating the task in a roundabout way a la “Rube Goldberg Machine”. The inner mechanisms would be housed in a transparent/ partially exposed shell that would resemble the psychedelic coin operated weighing machines. Before its next usage, the machine would reset to its initial state. Concept: Kinetic installation made from metal that would be inspired by the structure of the station. It would change its form over the course of a day and be reset by the end of it. The movement would be triggered certain sounds/frequencies, for e.g. The high pitched whistle from a guard. Every time the whistle is heard the installation changes form. Possible materials: Sheet metal, arduino, and motors. Concept: Interactive sound and light installation on the platform that would be triggered by the relative position of the passengers. With the help of a series of sensors, the gap leading up to the yellow line and the edge would be accentuated by a “Wall of sound”. The closer one gets to the edge, the higher/louder the sound emitted would be. This would be more sensitive in the presence of an oncoming train, and would turn off in sync with the door of the train. Concept: Smoking Chimney. This would be added to the roof, complete with a periodic release of smoke/steam that would signify the arrival of a train in the next two minutes. This would serve as a beacon for anyone within the vicinity of the station while informing them about the oncoming train. Materials: DIY Fog machine, arduino and huge metal pipe.

Concept: Wall of gears/clockwork piece. One entire section of the wall would be taken up by a giant network of gears, pistons, sprockets, belts and lights to create the exposed “underbelly” of the machine. Concept: The Core. This would be a big humming engine that would represent the heart of the building. The Core would play a main part in determining the mood of the building. Over the course of a day, the core gets “tired” and goes into sleep mode. This would in turn cause all the other parts of the building (sounds, sculptures) to wind down to a slow din. The mood of the building would be determined by the number of passengers currently in the station. The fewer the number passing by, the less there is happening. Once the threshold is reached, the whirs back to life. The information about the number of passengers in the station is received from either the gate OR the punch card machine.

GROUP METAPHOR Facial Hair Group members: Alok Utsav, Anchana Kota, Aroushka D’Mello, David McKenzie, Ria Bajaj, Sayori Mukherjee, Vrinda Gupta, Ruchika Nambiar WHY METAPHORS? Every city is always changing, on its own trajectory. The metaphor for the green line stemmed from personifying the city of Bangalore. Novelty, consumption, yearning and desire were some of the themes in play. Bangalore isn’t as old as cities like Mumbai or Kolkata. We looked at Bangalore going through an awkward phase, and likened it to puberty. Puberty, we felt, was a time of great change, confusion and ambiguity. It was a transition from childhood to adulthood, and Bangalore was at the thick of it. We decided to take the idea further, comparing Bangalore’s metro to an adolescent boy’s attempt to grow facial hair. Facial hair is a telling symptom of puberty that never seems to be is one’s control initially, despite one’s yearning for it. We soon realized that every stage in the growing of fa cial hair had a corresponding phase in the formation of the metro. So we chose a form that would give equal consideration to each and every stage without summarising or condensing any of it.

I found myself staring at the mirror With a tiny glimmer of hope There wasn’t anything to see yet Nothing to feel I remained the same Everyday I’d observe with envy The leaps and bounds everyone else was making; And I waited for the day to come Then one fine day It arrived and appeared And was welcomed with such joy Overflowing with happiness at this glorious beginning I showed off to the world my new prized possession But it grew unsteadily A little clumsily And soon I didn’t know what to do with it

Gathering attention from all around With my sudden spurt in growth I grew impatient with my awkwardness It grew in patches Making gawky connections I didn’t know when it would end. Waiting was all that was left. I know I’ll get there eventually I know this phase is necessary And hopefully… It’ll be worth the wait Or will it?

(top) The script (left) Cover and packaging (right) Selected scenes from the book

INTERVENTION

DEFINING MY PRESENCE IN PEENYA Framing Questions What makes space a place? What makes an engaging faĂ§ade? What makes me want to enter a space? What about transitional space excites me? Who will engage in this space? Are the people of Peenya conscious to the change happening all around them? Am I conscious to the change happening in Peenya? Is there change happening in Peenya? Define the change for myself. Find contrasts. Play with contrasts. Inside/outside. Light/dark. Hard/soft. Can I have a form thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s both inside and outside? How can I justify that? Can it reflect BOTH realities? What if the inside of the station reflected a different reality than the outside? Can my piece just change over time?

Our experience and perception of a space is the only thing that remains over time. A space may not exist after a time, but our memory and perception will remain with us forever. As designers, we create interior spaces, so we are curators of the context of an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience. Interior spaces are not just a place for the function of a certain task, but they have a huge impact on our psychological and physical health (Gifford, 1997) 31

Our original slice of Yelahanka, with the bottom tip being the N2 campus.

The grid used to dissect the slice in more palatable chunks.

Our slice with the grid laid over it, we carried and empty version of the grid to fill and this one for reference.

SENSORIAL MAPPING Mapping Smells To begin to get an idea of the place I was going to draw inspiration from, we decided find different lenses from which to map Peenya. This meant I first had to get into the right frame of mind to experiment with mapping techniques, so we decided to have a dry run in and around Yelahanka. A circle with a diameter of 2 kilometres was drawn around the N2 Campus, and split up into equal slices; two people per slice. After getting a feel for our slice, Raj Palan and I, decided to map smells in the area. It was a tricky choice, there isn’t a standard vocabulary to define smells, and the intensity of it has to be determined on an individual basis. We sought to create ways in which we could standardize our findings. We chose to go over our slice individually and record data separately. This way we could cross reference and double check any anomalies that cropped in either of our findings. We agreed on standard ‘pleasant’, ‘unpleasant’ and ‘industrial’ smells. We scouted the area together before we began and established a benchmark for each of these smells. Pleasant smells included perfumes, residential smells like incense and food being prepared, plants/flowers etc. Smells like stagnant water, sewage, untreated

garbage, manure etc. were classified under ‘unpleasant’. Construction smells were smells like iron dust, cement dust, fuel, smoke, wood, tar etc. Each of these smells were mapped on an intensity scale of 1-3, with 3 being the highest. This of course was hard to standardize between two people. What we tried to do was to have a ‘neutral’ control smell we’d use to cleanse our nasal passage and to make sure our brains weren’t getting desensitized to the smells in the area. We split the map into a grid system, and went around assigning each grid a particular grade. Sooner than later we began to see some very interesting patterns emerge, our exercise began to show us very clear areas like roads and residential areas by just looking that the data. The roads have a very clear outline of ‘U’s because they all had sewage running along it’s sides. The map gave us an idea about the types of habitation in our slice, for example, we could now make safe assumptions as to where people lived and where new buildings were coming up. This exercise was in a way time sensitive. It’s a suggestion about what you might smell when you’re here.

The final smell map of our slice, we tried to be as thorough as possible with translating our findings, but there were still wide gaps in our map since some places were inaccessible to the general public. 33

SENSORIAL MAPPING Mapping Sound and Light After our brief stint at mapping smells, I moved on to mapping sound and light at Peenya. When we set out with our objective, Manush John and I didn’t have access to lightmeter or a soundmeter, so we had to improvise. We realised there was an inbuilt light meter in my DSLR. It had a scale from -7 to +7, all we had to do was determine was ‘0’ was and keep the setttings constant. Once the light meter was calibrated, we started gathering data at the Yeshwantpur Industry station, the station before Peenya as a first trail. Our process was simple, we arrived at a spot, took 4 pictures in 4 directions and recorded the data. We wanted to see if we could map the change of light over time, and draw any correlations between the intensity of light and the level of sound present in certain areas underneath the metro station. We mainly collected data around the station, venturing a bit into one of the side roads which had a lot of people moving in and out. Our other main question at this phase was also to see if there was any glaring contrast between the type of light and shadow in Peenya as opposed to other parts of the city. To collect sound, we used an app on android called “Smarttools” which can be calibrated and it seemed to 34

show a decent fluctuation in sound as we walked around. We assumed this wasn’t 100% accurate when it came to recording sound in dB, but since it was calibrated to our specific usage, we chose to accept the readings as its on unit as opposed to counting it as decibels. This time around, to make sure we had translated our position exactly right, everytime we arrived at a new position we took a photograph from a smartphone that geotagged each image within 1m. This way we had accurate location data to go with the light data.

(Top) The control image which we used to calibrate the light meter. (Bottom) Examples of images that read -7 and +7 respectively

Focal Length............................ f/8 Shutter Speed...................... 1/500 ISO........................................... 100 Focal Length........................ 55mm Metering Mode.................. Matrix (Above) The settings for the camera used to calibrate the light meter

(Top) GPS data from the phone showing us precise locations of each point (Right) The Light and Sound data map, each point has four corresponding figures for light one can perceive in four different directions and an average sound level.

After a semi-successful attempt at mapping light during the day, we now focused on mapping light sources at night around the station. I say semi-successful because even though we had data, we were still struggling to with how to represent this data.

SENSORIAL MAPPING Mapping Sound and Light

We spent about our time in Peenya initially plotting out the night lights in all the major roads leading upto and around the station. We wanted to see just what kind of light input was around the station. To go further in our attempt, we decided to ascertain just how the lightscape changes around at night. We realized that since there were no immediate residential areas around the station, the only other light source in the area was from the traffic. This, in our minds was a good 40

variable to draw our data from. We spent a total of 18 hours on three consecutive nights to log the traffic data from the site. We averaged the figures from these three nights and plotted the figures on a graph (shown opposite). We attributed each car/data point as one unit of light. This lead to our visualisations of how the light scape changes over time at night.

Intensity of Light in Peenya at Night 90

0 20:00

20:30

21:00

21:30

HMT Main Road V/m

22:00

Adjacent Service Road V/m

22:30 Highway BOTH

23:00

23:30

0:00:00

Opposite Service Road V/m

Bar graph of all the accumulated data

(Left top) Early iteration depicting the flow of light around the station (Left bottom) Streetlights in the area plotted on the map, to scale. (Right) Sample frames from the 80 frame animated GIF we created to depict the changing light scape.

It was our belief that the collection of such data would better inform us about the visibility of the station, its approachability and presence at night. This data can also aid in the design of new interventions that take advantage of the illumination at night.

THE PROPOSAL Synopsis I want to find and engage with transitional spaces in the station. We transit so frequently that we are not even aware of the presence of the transitional space. I would create an installation or kinetic sculpture that would draw attention to these spaces, while creating a seamless transition from the insulated interiors of the station to the locality of Peenya and facilitating a sense of play.

Process My process and approach to this project started with only a vague sense of the scale. Tasked with the first reconnaissance assignment, where we looked at an individual station on the purple line, I failed to really stay and engage with the place at hand. The sketches and the subsequent metaphor derived from my understanding of the metro, though functional, were somewhat one dimensional. Yet to get a good grasp on the scale, my second visit to the Swami Vivekananda station left me wondering about how people interacted with the space right before they entered the station or walked underneath it. It was a huge sprawling canopy, it had an eerie calmness to it even though it was adjacent to a busy road. People interacted with the space with what I perceived to be a sense of humility to its size. Over the course of the next few weeks and assignments, my mind had several key points to sink into. Mapping my personal journey to college every day, led me to look at how I perceive my own journey through my day. Looking at the journey from point A to point B, I realized that a lot of it is in autopilot limbo, by that I mean the zone where Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m only briefly aware of the passage of time and/or distance. A phase when my body and brain function almost akin to mechanical automation without conscious supervision. This zone is only ever disrupted due to the presence of an external stimuli, be it a bad driver or an unexpected cow on the road, the stimuli doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter as much as the consequence of our response. Once I do respond, that moment is recorded and filed away in my brain which acts as a personal marker to that dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s events. Sketching in Peenya and taking a look at the green line as a whole, made me look at the play of light and the notion of inside and outside in the structure. My sketches this time had a better frame from which I was looking for points of interest. It was a progression towards inhabiting the space and making it mine. 44

The metaphor for the green line stemmed from personifying the city of Bangalore. Novelty, consumption, yearning and desire were some of the themes in play. We looked at Bangalore going through an awkward phase, and likened it to puberty. Puberty, we felt, was a time of great change, confusion and ambiguity. It was a transition from childhood to adulthood, and Bangalore was at the thick of it. The metro was associated with facial hair, a telling symptom of puberty that never seems to be is oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s control initially, despite oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s yearning for it. Taking a further look at changing phases, we mapped the intensity of light over time in relation to the roads around the station. It was our belief that the collection of such data would better inform us about the visibility of the station and its approachability at night. More importantly, it gave us a window into the morphing light scape at night and isolate potential areas of intervention. 45

Context When looking back at the work done over the last few weeks, I began to see a pattern. The idea of transition was present in each segment of my process, I wanted to look and interact with the metro as something that was more than just a site of transit. I had been looking at “Transitional Space”. In psychology, Donald Winnicott, refers to the infant’s experience of the inner and outer reality of the world (Winnicott, 1953). He talks about a child coming to terms with the distinction between “me” and “not me”, while understanding that the inside and the outside are interconnected. A transitional object could be a real object like a blanket or a teddy bear, but other ‘objects’, such as a melody or a word, can fulfill this role as well (Winnicott, 1953). In architecture, transitional spaces are spaces located in-between outdoor and indoor environments acting as both buffer space and physical link. It is the place where borders get fuzzy and we stand there, on the threshold, getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of where we were into where we are to be. Transitional space is the zone between the inner and the outer; stimulus and response (William Bridges, 1987).

Way Forward With these parameters in mind, my sites for intervention would be clear. I want to create and evoke a sense of play and delight in these transitional spaces. This would involve looking at similar studies, interviews with artists and architects, and engaging with the space to photograph and sketch places that suffer from a lack of delight. Interviewing the relevant stakeholders of the metro and

studying their movement patterns through the station would be part of my next step. Winnicott writes that most people experience enough creativity to know that they are mostly living uncreatively, “as if caught up in the creativity of someone else, or of a machine.” He writes that humans, whether children or adults, are only creative when they play: only during play do we use our full personality, and only when we are creative do we understand ourselves (Play and Reality, 1972). And this sense of play can only be facilitated in a transitional space. Transitional space becomes vital, as it is an intermediate space which has the potential to condition the human mind for subsequent environment. I want to create an installation with sound and light to engage the people who traverse the metro station. The station as of now, is an isolated bubble. Compared to its surroundings, entering and exiting the station is a jarring experience. My objective would be to both create a piece to make the transition from Peenya into the Peenya Metro station as seamless as possible, while facilitating a sense of play. To come up with an appropriate form for my intervention, I need further research into the writings of Donald Winnicott, Martin Buber and artists like Sarah Sze, who works on “playing with space and time and creating a situation that forces the visitors to be in the moment.” Mapping Peenya the locality and the station with the notion of trying to identify the various transitional objects and spaces that are relevant to the community, I believe would help vastly in my process.

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATIONS Inorganic Vines

Early iterations that had organic vine like structures moving in and out of space. They were originally concieved to be made with a metal inner skeleton and covered in re-puprosed wood.

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATIONS Architechural Mutations More visualisations of the space coming to life by using the existing architechural elements. I was trying to use different ways of manipulating the forms to suit this space. I chose this particular spot in the station because it was one of the biggest open spaces that would one day be the main entrance. Having my work situated here would have meant a lot of eyeballs from the get go. This area also contained both paid and unpaid spaces. This meant that it had the potential to interact with the casual pedastrian as well as the regular commuters.

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATIONS Rear Box This was more an ideation tool than a concept for me, I had an idea that basically looked at physically opening up spaces. Rather, hinting at it. This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a hint though. I imagined the rear-end of the station to pop-open like a box.

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATIONS Hinges This concept is built off of the previous idea, I was looking for ways to open up physical spaces. The presence of large hinges in key corners would suggest a possibility of these spaces being inside a box. My idea was to introduce further such large realistic day-t0day hardware items in different spots around the station.

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATIONS Corner transitions This piece was inspired from the visit to the scrapyard, where the batch plant for mixing concrete inspired me as a form that dominated the landscape. Walking across or around it would result in facing a different corner each time. Each slice offers different visual and aural experience, thanks to the huge walls. I wanted to translate that feeling of never ending corners to a place inside the station. The structure would have a multitude of folds that would vary every so slightly from each other, through the use of light, transclucency or testure forcing the viewer to pay attention to the corner as they passed by. I wanted to make this piece

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATIONS Sound Transitions The initial idea for this setup was to create a “corridor of silence” inside the station as people transitioned from the inside to the outside or vice versa. The interior of the station is a very noisy space, with a lot of the outside hum being echoed on the inside. Though I start out being somewhat sensitive to the sounds, I find myself tuning out the sound and getting used to the din.

The vibrations caused by the traffic are travelling through walls that, depending on construction (materials used for the wall, depth and width of studs, type of insulation, and even the type of paint) can vary wildly. The position of the source of noise can vary as the source of noise can be from a multitude of places anywhere on the other side of the wall, and that will vary how the sound interacts with the wall.

I wanted to create a moment and a space where a passenger would unknowingly find refuge from this cacophony momentarily. This piece was meant to reset the commuter’s aural input, so to speak. In theory, they would be more in tune to the sounds of the station after having walking through silence. Such a space would have possible with a physical sound proof structure. I wanted to avoid making a large imposing structure in this case, since the commuters would then expect some sort of change instead of unknownigly walking into it. My initial inquiry lead me to investigate noise cancelling speakers, I setup a few experiments to determine if this would even work. I recorded around 6 hours of audio from inside the station in an effort to analyze it.

The types of sounds emerging from the wall also varied greatly. Active sound cancelling works best with low frequency sounds, for higher frequencies, the spacing requirements for free space and zone of silence techniques become prohibitive. Since I couldn’t find an appropriate location for this idea, I shelved it as an idea I would want to revisit later.

While I found certain examples of similar aural installions done by other artists, I realized it would be impossible to achieve in this scale because of the sheer openness of the spaces inside the station. The other artists, would work in closed off spaces like art galleries ot resturants, with a combination of physical sound damping and speakers. 59

Rough reference sketch of the roots from a Pongamia Pinnata (honge) tree.

CONSTRUCTION

THE ROOT Concept Stemming from my concept of creating a piece that would be mutated from existing architechtural forms, I had my idea for The Root. The rear facade of the station had a row of pillars that rested on a crossbar 45 feet up in the air. My piece would be an extension of the pillar in the form of a root. By mutating, transposing and amplifying the forms, lines, blocks and light patterns present in these spaces I intended to integrate the station into its surroundings. I wanted to highlight the idea of the station getting comfortable with itself and spreading out. This piece is also situated in a transitional space, it can be engaged with from both the inside and the outside.

CONCEPTUAL ITERATIONS Visualizing the Root The process of finalizing and fabricating this piece started about 2 and a half weeks before the exhibition. I wanted to stay true to the original form of the pillars. It was hard to percieve the massive scale of the site until I started measuring the place manually. Height between the two crossbars was around 22ft. I realised that to have any sort of visual impact in such a huge frame, the roots had to be at least 10-15ft across. My plan was to create a prototype for the upcoming exhibition, to see how it looks in the space and then take it further after the exhibition. My initial ideas looked at creating a the structure with PVC pipes to re-create the texture and the form of the pillars. Given the size limitations, I soon abandoned that idea because of three main reasons: The form would be severely restricted by the PVC and the availability of joints. It would be really expensive for a prototype. And finally, the conbined weight of all PVC pipes would be far too great to support. I rushed to find alternative.

CONCEPTUAL ITERATIONS Visualizing the Root I drew inspiration for the structure of the roots from the Pongamia Pinnata (Honge) tree. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s native to India, and is a pretty common sight around Bangalore. The tree is well suited to intense heat and sunlight and its dense network of lateral roots and its thick, long taproot make it droughttolerant. Studying and simplifying the root structure helped me move away from PVC pipes, to considering a material like fibreglass. Molds could be easily created and cast with fibreglass to achieve any form I had in mind. While being relatively light and versatile, the estimated cost of prototyping the full size piece in fibre glass ended up being around Rs. 50-60,000.

CONCEPTUAL ITERATIONS Visualizing the Root

MAKING OF THE ROOT Structure After what seemed like months of sitting in front of a computer, I’d forgotten the joy of getting getting down and dirty to start making. I consider myself to be a problem solver, I try to be as efficient as possible when I’m trying to get work done. The best part of making is the breakneck speed at which ideas progress, there’s barely any time to second guess yourself or get distracted. Even though I thought I had my root form all done and finalized on the computer, there were a lot of changes that occured on the spot. These were real world decisions I had to make, accounting for things like weight distribution, leverage, fatigue etc. It’s always a learning experience to make something from scratch, let alone a metal skeleton 14ft long, 7ft deep and 7 ft wide.

MAKING OF THE ROOT Materials I’ve worked quite a bit with a lot materials and fabrication over the last four years, though not at this scale. I had to find materials that would be quick and sturdy enough to last atleast a few weeks. I zeroed in on hard packing foam to make the prototype. It was perfect for my usage, since I essentially needed cylinders of varying sizes. I personally had never used it before, but I had seen a lot of theatre props being made from it. I was skecptical at first, but it bonded excellently well with SR gum. When pulled hard, the foam tore before the glue gave away, I was satisfied. I also chose to use scrap thermal insulation tubes for the thinner arms, they were far more flexible to use and since they were already in a cyclinder my job was made easier.

For the metal skeleton, I used varying sizes and strips of scrap Mild Steel, ranging from 2” to 1/2” 18 guage square pipes. These were sturdy enough without being too heavy. by the end of the week, I had cut, bent and welded about 80ft of metal for all the arms.

MAKING OF THE ROOT Designing the Rig Once the armature was assembled, I knew I was in trouble. It weighed somewhere around 40 kilos, without the foam. I had accounted for the entire structure to weigh around 25-30 kilos, and had designed the rig that would hold the piece to this parameter. Originally, I had a simple ‘U’ frame with thick steel rope that would lock itself around the pillar while supporting the roots below. But now it seemed far too unstable to sustain something around 45 kilos. I went back to the drawing board and came up with a new solution. Instead of steel rope, I went with a solid metal frame that would encompass the entire crossbar. I used heavy duty hinges to secure the corners. In the centre, a thick 3/4’’ bolt was used to fasten the piece onto the frame. Lastly, because of the fact that most of the weight was in the front, I used 6mm GI coated steel rope to tie around each arm to reduce the stress on the centre bolt.

MAKING OF THE ROOT Installation I knew from day one that the installation of this piece would be a major nightmare. It was meant to be installed right above traffic, during the peak hours for best light. If any one piece fell on a car or pedestrian below, the worst case scenario was probably death, aside from expensive property damage. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d designed the piece to be relatively easily easy to install. I had a few people who worked with my father, mainly Pasha and Anand the welder, helping me with the setup. After the main frame had been set up, the main tap root would go in and be bolted loosely to it. The main tap root basically had three arms coming out of it from the left, centre and right. Given that we had a 76

scaffolding, the plan was to assemble each arm, starting from the right, individually while rotating the piece into place gradually. As luck would have it, L&T was right in the middle of painting the rear facade with the aid of a boom lift. We asked if we could borrow it, and they obliged after a bit of nagging and cajoling. Unfortunately, we had a few technical issues with the piece, I’ve outlined them in the reflection next page.

To make it worse, we changed the plan of assembling it limb by limb and rotating it gradually to a more risky head-on assembly since we had the boom lift. We had basically bolted the main tap root to the frontal position and had one arm already secured. But once we had the unforeseen delays, the boom lift went back to painting, refusing to aid us any further. At this point we had no other options left. With a soft and unsteady ‘Screw it.’, we went ahead and got it assembled anyway. 77

REFLECTION I think the biggest takeaway from this exhibition is understanding that making is in itself a far more potent creative tool than idle ideation. While being necessary, ideation doesn’t usually help me ground my ideas in the real world. I am, and always have been more of a hands-on creator. Not to say this was something entirely new that I picked up during the experience. Things change and mutate once you start making. No script or blueprint can account for real world variables, and I think playing off of these variables and working them into your creation is what gives it more value. It’s just something that was reinforced, as it seems to tend to do so every time I start major work on a project. Gaining any sort of traction into the making process was marred by what seemed like weeks of indecision and hesitation. It’s the not knowing that eats away at any motivation to get started. Curiously, it’s the same not knowing and the accompanying panic that seems to act as a catalyst to cause a series of chain reactions inside of my head to make or bust. Panic and doubt seem to be my goto recipe to fuel creativity, so much so that when in the absence of it, I seem to be relying on my ability to create artificial panic by raising the stakes of the outcome.

For example, I told myself and everyone that I would be making and finishing a life sized prototype of my idea with all its challenges and risks instead of making a small scale model of my piece. It was a big enough task in my head to trigger my innate sense of panic into high gear. It had to be done in its entirety, or fail trying. That’s not just true for this exhibition, it’s something I’ve noticed in me for as far as I can remember. I’ve just been more sensitive to it lately. Am I growing wiser to it? Per-haps. Do I have any idea what I’m doing when I start something? Not really. I don’t know of any other way of going about my creative process. I’d measured the cross beam that would be supporting my piece twice before the actual day of installation, and it was still an inch too short on that day since I didn’t account for electric wire housing on one side of it. When it came to installing the main stem, it was discovered that the bolt that would support it was a quarter of an inch larger than the hole on the main stem. Of course there was no ½” drill bit to be found on site, prompting a long trip to the hardware store to buy one. With one arm already installed the second arm gave way in the middle right before it could be inserted.

It had been damaged during transit, with my luck, it was only discovered when it was dangling mid air threatening to fall and injure anyone/thing beneath. A quickfix weld on site seemed to take care of it. All in all, what I had originally envisioned to be a 2-3 hour installation had quickly ballooned to a full day ordeal. This one day full of curveballs is an accurate representation of all the days leading up to it. Things went and will go south all the time, and it’d be naïve to not account for them. A lot of the making didn’t come from a place of expertise or comfort in the knowledge of having it done before. It was trial and error, plain and sim-ple. The level of planning that seemed to be required to achieve a piece at this scale was becoming more and more apparent. While scary, this is now a process I can now say I’ve seen through till the end, regardless of temporary shortcomings. I now know to always check the size of holes with their respective bolts. In “dealing with the unknown, or the space between no idea and actions” I’d say that of all the habits of the mind I’ve most successfully tapped into “Developing a Craft” and “Stretch and Explore”. I’ve outlined a host of reasons as to why I think fall under these two habits above. Regarding habits that I need to work on and that I’ve struggled with, I’d say “Engage and Persist” and “Express” would be my picks. I feel like I haven’t engaged with the subject at hand as deeply as I

thought I would be. The emphasis is on creating iterations and drawing from all the data collected so far. It’s never good the first time, and it doesn’t get better until it’s re-fined over multiple steps. Achieving a state of flow seems to be a huge driving factor behind any creative pro-cess. That only comes with persistent engagement. But the path leading to it isn’t very well defined. I can hope to create a routine. To replace some of that fear and doubt with comfort and habit. I haven’t succeeded in maintaining a nice routine so far, it’s definitely something I’ll setup. I’ll need more trips to the scrap yard to draw inspiration from, perhaps even spend a few days walking around scrounging for material and idea. Regarding my concept, I plan to work out every detail of how I plan on making it happen. If I get a good idea of the budget, I can limit or exaggerate my ideas accordingly. There’s been a lot of ambiguity in my head re-garding that, since it’s a type of project that I’ve never attempted before. My site has been more or less final-ized, I know I’ll be creating something more than the form I’ve made during this exhibition. I’m still in the process of honing on my final form. The key is creating and refining iterations while continuing to make, be it small prototypes or large material studies. I know I want to work on a piece that is going to be massive in scale and size, I need to remain realistic when it comes to the outcome and timeline of this project.

THE FINAL STRETCH

PROGRESSION

TAKING OFF FROM THE ROOT Water Tank I recieved quite a bit of positive feedback for The Root, a lot of the responses commented on the scale and usage of site. People liked the simplicity of the piece. I was also asked to relook at materials used and to take this a step further. The main issue I saw with The Root was that it offered very little in terms interactivity, it didn’t let the commuter into its world. It was important to get feedback and spend time understanding the commuter in relation to my installation. It was in a highly in-accessible location, which prohibited people to walk up close and examine it. I’d also learnt a huge lesson during the installation of the piece, even though everything worked out ok in the end, I realized I couldn’t be that ambitious about my location especially if that was going to be a permanent piece. I knew I was onto something all this while with the various iterations, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was at the cusp of landing on a different plane of thought. I decided that the only way to push past was to go back to the drawing board for this final stretch. And I did. I had two main idea for the next step, the first was The Water Tank. It was a piece inspired by a visit to the scrap yard where Manush John and I found an old water tank in the area. We were immediately struck by its presence.

CONCEPTUAL INSPIRATION Water Tank

CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATIONS Water Tank

PROPOSAL 2.0 Synopsis This project aims to envision to the stationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sensitivity to sensory stimuli, and its immediate socio-cultural surroundings. In the form of a large, site specific installation, this project hopes to represent the physical manifestation of the stationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growing sensitivity to Peenya as bits of Peenya and the station flow to and fro. It intends to open channels between the inside and the outside, by mutating, transposing and amplifying the forms, lines, blocks and light patterns present in these spaces.

Process My process for this course started with trying to understand size and scale. Yet to get a good grasp on the scale, my second visit to the Swami Vivekananda station left me wondering about how people interacted with the space right before they entered the station or walked underneath it. It was a huge sprawling canopy, it had an eerie calmness to it even though it was adjacent to a busy road. People interacted with the space with what I perceived to be a sense of humility to its size. Over the course of the next few weeks and assignments, my mind had several key points to sink into. Mapping my personal journey to college every day, led me to look at how I perceive my own journey through my day. Looking at the journey from point A to point B, I realized that a lot of it is in autopilot limbo, by that I mean the zone where I’m only briefly aware of the passage of time and/or distance. A phase when my body and brain function almost akin to mechanical automation without conscious supervision. This zone is only ever disrupted due to the presence of an external stimuli, be it a bad driver or a loud jarring horn, the stimuli doesn’t matter as much as the consequence of our response. This got me thinking about stimulus, we has complex thinking, functioning beings have sophisticated receptors to percieve stimuli. Once I do respond, that moment is recorded and filed away in my brain which acts as a personal marker to that day’s events. In this case it is me responding to stimuli directly.

The metaphor for the green line stemmed from personifying the city of Bangalore. Novelty, consumption, yearning and desire were some of the themes in play. We looked at Bangalore going through an awkward phase, and likened it to puberty. Puberty, we felt, was a time of great change, confusion and ambiguity. It was a transition from childhood to adulthood, and Bangalore was at the thick of it. The metro was associated with facial hair, a telling symptom of puberty that never seems to be is one’s control initially, despite one’s yearning for it. Taking a further look at changing phases, we mapped the intensity of light over time in relation to the roads around the station. It was also an exercise where we tried to re-create receptors to analyze sensory data. It was my belief that the collection of such data would better inform us about the visibility of the station and its approachability at night. More importantly, it gave us a window into the morphing light scape at night and isolate potential areas of intervention. This exercise has lead to my main concept. When looking back at the work done over the last few weeks, I began to see a pattern. The idea of transition was present in each segment of my process, I wanted to look and interact with the metro as something that was more than just a site of transit. I had been looking at “Transitional Space”.

Context Child psychiatrist Donald Winnicott, refers to the infant’s experience of the inner and outer reality of the world (Winnicott, 1953). He talks about a child coming to terms with the distinction between “me” and “not me”, while understanding that the inside and the outside are interconnected. In architecture, transitional spaces are spaces located in-between outdoor and indoor environments acting as both buffer space and physical link. It is the place where borders get fuzzy and we stand there, on the threshold, getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of where we were into where we are to be. Transitional space is the zone between the inner and the outer; stimulus and response (William Bridges, 1987).

STIM·U·LUS (STMY-LS) n. pl. stim·u·li (-l) 1. Something causing or regarded as causing a response. 2. An agent, action, or condition that elicits or accelerates a physiological or psychological activity or response. When a stimulus is applied to a sensory receptor, it normally elicits or influences a reflex

Concept At this point, I had shifted from architectural terms to physiological terms. Imagine that the station is a rudimentary being, with minimal perception of the light, sound, smell and life around it. It’s an organ/being trying to come to terms with signals from its outside environment. The commuter isn’t aware of this struggle. I perceived the station as a constant flux of movement; but it’s now somewhat aware of the happenings around it. Does the station think? There is definite sensory stimuli around the station, and it’s constantly acting on the station without much reciprocation. This is perhaps because of the lack of receptors on the station, it’s trying to pick up and respond to these stimuli, and in doing so it finds itself (with my aide) mutating a channel with the people who traverse through it. I likened it to the station being covered in a semi permeable membrane, and it trying to reach out. How the people choose to respond to it is entirely up to each individual. The people inhabit this space without ever perceiving or understanding the various rhythms around it. There is a continual “relationship of co-production” between an individual and respective surroundings, and this relationship exists through mutable bonds and recurrent negotiations. “How do I become attuned to it? How do I make others notice these patterns? Can the station create a cipher that is vital in showcasing its point of view?” What is the key to the station and it’s surroundings? The people. They are the ones taking a bit of the outside to the inside and taking a bit of the inside to the outside. Winnicott writes that most people experience enough creativity to know that they are mostly living uncreatively, “as if caught up in the creativity of someone else, or of a machine.” The Root was a prototype for this idea. What is the station seeking from the root? Knowing the basic functions of a root, what does the viewer take away from its presence? On art and the questions his work is supposed to raise, artist Olafur Eliasson asks “How do we configure the relationship between our body and the space? How do we reconfigure it? How do we know that being in a space makes a difference? What consequences does it have when I take a step? What does it matter? Does it matter if I am in the world or not? Who is the author, and who is the receiver? Who is the consumer, if you want, and who has responsibility for what one sees? And does it matter whether the kind of actions I take filter into a sense of responsibility? Is art about that? I would say yes. It is obviously about not just about decorating the world, and making it look even better, or even worse, if you ask me.” Professor Carl Jung regarded the conscious mind as a skin covering the unconscious (Analytical Psychology – it’s Theory and Practice) and further proposed that in the earlier years of life a person communicates directly with the unconscious without ego or conscious skin. Is it possible to tap into this 99

Goals I want to create an installation which acts as an intermediate between the outside’s stimulus and the station’s response. My piece will act as a rudimentary visual cortex for the station and its inhabitants. It will attempt to morph and mutate existing architechtural elemants to further illustrate the idea that the station is coming alive. The piece will have a interactive element to it, where based on the relative position of the participant, they’ll see a different image of the outside from the inside, or vice versa. I hope to introduce a sense of play and interaction to this transitional space. This piece represents the physical manifestation of the station’s growing sensitivity to Peenya as bits of Peenya and the station flow to and fro. It intends to open channels between the inside and the outside, by mutating, transposing and amplifying the forms, lines, blocks and light patterns present in these spaces.

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REFERENCES Books Tan, Shaun (2007). The Arrival Calvino ,Italo (1972). Invisible Cities Fleming, Ronald Lee (2007).The Art of Placemaking: Interpreting Community Through Public Art and Urban Design Turner, Janet (1998). Designing with Light â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Public Spaces Baron, R. M. (1985). The Role of Tentativeness in Perceiving Architecture and Art D. W. Winnicott(1973), Playing and Reality

Articles Simon Grolnick, The Work & Play of Winnicott. The Work of Art by Walter Benjamin The Sociology of Urban Public Spaces by StĂŠphane Tonnelat In Defense of the Poor Image by Hito Steyerl Failure and the Potential for Redemption By Ronald Lee Fleming Lost horizon. Retrieved from Retrieved from

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Internet Resources http://blog.pawlingprintstudio.com/2010/08/antony-gormley.htm http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/realityplay/201209/the-transitional-space-john-cage https://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Winnicott_ch1.pdf http://www.rochesterpublicart.com/public_art/?art=threshold http://www.uni.edu/universitas/archive/fall06/pdf/art_praglin.pdf http://www.esf.edu/ccdr/capstones/Mooney_report_2003.pdf http://w3.unisa.edu.au/artarchitecturedesign/ sasagallery/catalogues/Objectifiedcat.pdf http://onluminousgrounds.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/the-creative-space-of-play/ http://www.metla.fi/projects/sscs/esitelmat/kalliokoski020206.pdf http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/sites/brighton-hove.gov.uk/ files/downloads/trees/5_-_Tree_roots_and_structures.pdf http://eipcp.net/transversal/0102/kwon/en http://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/work/179/index.html http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=195/view,page=2/ http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/public-art.htm http://associationforpublicart.org/public-art-gateway/what-is-public-art/ http://createquity.com/2012/01/public-art-and-the-challenge-of-evaluation/ http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/olafureliasson http://en.louisiana.dk/exhibition/olafur-eliasson http://vimeo.com/olafureliasson/videos http://www.olafureliasson.net/works.html http://www.somasato.com/soma_text/soma_text01.html http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/events/2014/ september/olafur-eliasson-the-cubic-structural-evolution-project http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/breaking-the-frame-olafur-eliassonsart-merleau-pontys-phenomenology-and-the-rhetoric-of-eco-activism/ http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/on-vibrations-by-olafur-eliasson/ http://oldenburgvanbruggen.com/largescaleprojects/lsp.htm http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-06/entertainment/ ca-31913_1_monumental-sculptures http://www.pafa.org/About/Lenfest-Plaza/Oldenburg-s-Paint-Torch/843/ http://www.margoleavingallery.com/exhibitions/59?artist=61 onal Space?

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Agnishikha Choudhuri, Amitabh Kumar, Arzu Mistry and Samir Parker for their guidance. My parents for the roof over my head, and their boundless support. The BMRCL for giving me this opportunity and the space to explore. Ruchika Nambiar, Manush John, Radhika Mantri, Rahul Chacko, Siddanth Shetty and Ayushya George, for being around. Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology.

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