art in transit
Shuchi Bellare Digital Media Arts Bachelor of Creative Arts 2016 Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology
There is an experience of what Bangalore was / is today that predicates a multi layered imagination, desire, hope, inkling and aspiration of what Bangalore can be. Bangalore is an example of “the city,” the nature of which is being brought into question world wide. The Art in Transit project looks at the nature of this “city” through the Metro Rail Transit System and inquires how experience, memory and fantasy invent this city, that like many others is in a state The Garden City. The Silicon City. The Smart of transition. The metro within this metropolis, is a semi - public space that offers opportunities for congregation and social City. The Pensioners Paradise. The networks. Where a diversity of people come together with a common purpose of getting from one point to Exploding City. The Garbage City, The another. The Art in Transit Collective is interested in a transdisciplinary framework that engages through art and Exclusive City, The World Class City. The design practices with the ‘metro’ as a symbol of a changing city. Pub City. The Young City. Traffic Jam City. The Fastest Growing City. Does the metro have the potential to become the connective tissue between a past nostalgia, our present experience and the fantastical future?
Art in Transit
As an animation student, my previous projects involved creating believable and immersive worlds to tell stories. I have always been more inclined towards fiction and fantasy owing to a childhood love of science and reading. Fictional narratives have the ability to reflect the real world even when the characters and worlds are imaginary and also to critique and offer alternatives without being sanctimonious. My interest in Art in Transit is to see animation used in public spaces in a way that doesn’t involve screens. Traditionally animation exists in a two dimensional sense on a screen as opposed to a public space that could create an immersive experience for viewers that engages all the senses. The opportunity to make something that people can interact with and influence is intriguing.
Why Art in Transit?
SITE OVERVIEW
The Art in Transit Project is site specific, located at and around the Cubbon Park Metro Station and the Vidhana Soudha Metro Station. Both stations have large underground areas and multiple above ground entrances. By the nature of their location, Cubbon Park Metro station is the access point to places of social, economic, historical and cultural interaction be it MG Road, Shivajinager, Cunnigham Road, Cubbon Park, Chinnaswamy Stadium, NGMA and the various other museums and shopping districts in the area. Vidhana Soudha Station is the access point to the political and legal systems of Bangalore City. These stations offer varied social, economic, political, historical, locative and cultural points of entry to the center of Bangalore City. Both stations are still under construction and will open to public use during the duration of the project.
IMMERSION
Our initial exercises aimed to help us familiarise ourselves with the area. Our first foray into Cubbon Park involved us trying to understand the food cultures surrounding the area. We observed people who brought their lunch boxes into the park on their breaks. We found a lot of them congregated on the large stone formations and were well prepared with their own routine. Many took off their shoes, spread out a towel under their box, ate mostly rice based dishes and afterwards, rinsed out their boxes and left the area clean. On the other hand, the families that we saw picnicking in the park left the most amount of waste behind like pizza boxes and paper plates. The benches seemed to be meant for pairs and couples, very few people sat by themselves and no strangers ever sat next to each other. It was both odd and completely normal that we didn’t see any girls by themselves, even in the middle of the day. People seemed to make the park their own private space, whether it was a dining room in the case of the people on their lunch breaks or the bedroom in the case of the couples we found tucked away behind trees.
There were three frames of entry into our understanding of Bangalore.
Past, Present and Future What does the city of Bangalore aspire to be? The metro has emerged as a symbol of this transient city and Bangalore’s identity jostles between nostalgia and future aspiration, becoming a collection of various tensions. Questions about mobility vs. immobility, inclusion vs. exclusion, marginalized vs. capitalised allude to the complex nature of social, political and economic binaries that can trap our thinking and action.
Transit as an Experience Human life on the planet is increasingly characterized by greater physical and social mobility; people find themselves living in communities defined not by common acquaintance, knowledge and culture- but by geography, economics and aspirations. This ‘transitional’ nature of human society has also altered our interaction with the physical, social and cultural world we inhabit.
Transit as a Social Network The “metro” has become a default commons, giving us the opportunity to rethink the idea of the commons in the city today. A semi-public space, albeit paid and monitored, the experience of the daily travel offers nodes of collective gathering and brief pause allowing the opportunity to connect with other travelers before embarking on a journey.
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
The first lens that I used to understand the city of Bangalore was the way people talked about space and the future. I took two approaches to this, astrology and science fiction. Astrology is a big thing in India, with parrots and gurus and your friendly neighborhood auntie always ready to tell you what the stars have in store for you. While I personally have my reservations about the stars and their role in my fate, astrology provides guidance and comfort to many people. It takes the unfathomable nature of our universe and futures and provides a tangible, understandable way to look at it. In a way, it’s a sort of science fiction. As part of my research, I conducted two interviews to get a better understanding of what the people of Bangalore thought of the metro and its effect on the city, as well as their hopes for the future. I spoke to Ekta Mittal, co-founder of Maraa and Dr. Gururaj KV, a batrachiologist at IISc.
Dr. Gururaj KV
Dr. Gururaj Shuchi: What is the history of IISc? I was wondering why so many research centres have opened up in the same city around the same time. Mr. Guru Raj: So, this goes back over a 100 years. In 1909 the institute was started and it happened because Tata and Swami Vivekananda were travelling in the same ship and Vivekananda floated an idea saying that, there has to be an institute of high repute and high level of education in India and he floated the thought to Tata. Tata generously funded the proposal. The Maharaja of Mysore provided the space and it was over 400 acres. Tata had passed away by the time the Institute started. The first director was Professor Travis and he was a British. The most important thing when they started the Institute was that it was not just research they wanted to focus on; they also wanted to have the research connected to people. So, it’s not like you’re confined to four walls of a room, at the end of the day your research needs to go back to the people. So that was the intent with which the institute was started. Shuchi: Do you have any thoughts or ideas as to what Bangalore would be like in the future? Mr. Guru Raj: Ya, that a very…I can’t even imagine. When the metro came, I thought that we would go underground because there was no need to put such kind of pillars on the face of the city. If it would have gone underground it would have been much better. But I don’t know what they are going to do. Abishek: Yes but parts of it are underground now. Mr. Guru Raj: Yes, but the amount of money they have spent in acquiring the land they could have spent of the tunnel boarding machine. It would have saved the feel of the city. Like I generally don’t feel like flyovers are needed. People have the wrong impression that widening the road will help in decongesting traffic. That is not true. There is a serious scientific law that has been done somewhere else, which states that if you have more roads, traffic will automatically get jammed in all the roads. But I don’t know what suggestion gets in and who suggests what.
They all feel that signal free corridors and big roads; those are the things to have in a city. Somewhere we need to have an ecological connect, that’s what I always feel. The next generation will surely feel that the water comes from the tap, milk comes in packet and there is no need for you to worry. We need to connect with nature and educate the politicians as they are the decision making team. If we do not convey our research to them there will be no ecological change that you wish to see in a city. But I definitely want to see my city, this is not my city, I came from Shimoga near Jog falls. I want Bangalore to be the way it used to be earlier, at least some 30-40 years back, it was green. Again the greenness is not in growing exotic species, Bangalore never had its own greenery, and it’s an arid area. It used to have less rainfall so there were a lot of grasslands, stunted growth trees, thorny trees, that it what you are supposed to see in Bangalore. It was changed because many people came over here and they brought the trees they loved, planted it here. But still, it’s the greenery that made it beautiful. Probably 20-25 years down the line I want to see Bangalore back into its old days. It’s for people who want to enjoy their retired lives. It goes in its own slow pace, it was never like this. There was never any congestion. Just 15-20 years back even if you want to travel to Yelahanka, I would have taken my two wheeler and reached in 20-25 minutes. But now I have to add 2 hours to my travel time. I think we should target kids between 8th to 10th standard, as they have the potential to carry whatever message you want to convey. So once you turn into an institute and get a degree, your mind does not work in a flexible manner. When you’re younger, you question everything and if someone can impress upon them at that time, it will be there throughout their lives and if you can educate those kids, they will definitely help us a lot. They will help change this city or even this country.
Ekta Mittal
S: Okay so you know, talk about this idea of how you see not so progressive public space in thefuture, you see that it’s going towards something that won’t be that great so what does your futuristic idea of public space. N: like even an image, any visual that comes in your mind S: What you think the future might be, what you think it should be. E: I think that it’s gonna really, I think it’s like a science fiction set, I just feel like there’ll be long alleys, brightly lit, you’ll be able to see everything but there’ll be nothing there. Even if there are people it will be, I think, it will not be a space that is too colorful. I think there’ll only be two three shades and it’ll be LED lighting and it will be very- and light is going to change the way in which we look at things around us and sodium vapor lamps, the warmth is going to be removed, its going to be replaced by a lot of tubelights. You know tubelights, btw, I was reading, elicits fear which is why in hospitals and prisons, there’s always white light. So it apparently creates the sensation of fear, and most countries in the west, not Europe but like, just observe the places which are lit with tubelight and see the difference and its quite-I feel its going to be a very-I don’t know, there will be more cars but I’m imagining this really long street, wide streets where there’ll be like loud cars going past but I think its going to be lifeless. I think it will be lifeless because, the reason I say lifeless- also it might be just the way, we only have created it, its not like this is someone creating it for us, and I think that, that’s one. But I also see in strange conflict, a very, somewhere close by a very- I don’t think that the people who keep the city together like the street vendors and the garbage pickers and the workers and all, they’ll be there and I’m not trying to say that its going to be-
I think its going to be quiter. And when I say quieter I don’t think of it as sonically, I think quieter in the sense of emptier. I just feel its very- I think everything is going to look the same, people are going to look the same, same kind of hairstyles, the ads that we’ll see will all be trying to sell different things but their aesthetics will be the same. Songs will sound the same, the frames in cinema will be very predictable. The way its moving towards is scary but I think its going to try and get into homogenizing. What would I like it to be? I’d like it to be- I really don’t mind an anarchist space- I’ve been watching some films around gypsies and I like some of the ways in which they occupy spaces, as travelers and wanderers and I think there can be spaces where we coexist and there can be respectful ways in which we negotiate with space where different kinds of people doing different kinds of things can coexist and it is tough but it is utopia -- when you come from the airport you see there were these ads inside people’s balconies and I was just wondering what is the meaning- the ad has entered your bedroom and suddenly you’re seeing all these high rises and I feel there’ll be so many high rises and no one to occupy, so I don’t know who’s going to be living there. N: The state of Bombay right now is this E: Its oversaturation and it’ll hit it, it’ll hit the peak and hopefully there’s going to be some very strange outburst and the only hope I suppose is hopefully in the arts if we don’t all get sucked in by the corporate sector, which is also the danger. The hope is to have more independant art, which is defined by the artist’s own terms and conditions and that is the space we need, people to be able to- and particularly artists have a really huge responsibility I feel particularly at this time All the best guys, you have a lot of work to do, in my opinion.
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
On the subject of science fiction, my research included writers, movies and the fans. For fans today there are numerous conventions and clubs where people gather to celebrate their love for the genre. Comic Con is one of the most famous and its success in India proves that there is no dearth of science fiction and fantasy fans here. There is an ever growing number of people, often quite young, writing their own stories and sharing them online. Many start with fanfiction and build alternate universes around existing characters from books and movies and then move on to write original stories. While the genre is extremely popular here and any bookstore you walk into today has a science fiction that has at least a few Indian authors, I didn’t find as much of a history of the genre in Bangalore specifically. A lot of books that I found tended towards mythology and medieval magic more than the ‘pure’ science fiction that we’re more familiar with. While I can appreciate these stories, because they are uniquely Indian, I kept looking for more. I turned to relatives and people that had grown up in Bangalore and most told me about the wonders of HG Wells and Jules Verne but had never heard of an Indian science fiction writer, though they do exist. While there have been movies produced in India including Rocket Tarzan, The Alien and Mr. X, most of the media that’s available to people comes from the West. I realized that this expectation came from an unconscious assumption that I made based on what I knew of Bangalore, specifically how much of the city’s fame comes from the stronghold that science has here in the form of the IT industry and the institutes that have flourished here.
My assumption that there would be a history of science fiction in Bangalore came from the fact that there were so many research institutes in just one city, and especially because ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) was based in Bangalore.I wanted examine this assumption and this disconnect with the media. Some of the major institutes in Bangalore include the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIAP). The main reason I found for these institutes to be located in the same city was that the climate was favorable, in the case of older institutes that were founded during the time of British rule and encouraged by the British. Other institutes followed by example, feeding off of each other and establishing Bangalore as a center for scientific research. One thing that struck me was the intention that knowledge be shared freely between these institutes and citizens, that there would never be a divide created by an imbalance in knowledge This notion seems in line with the general idea of scientific pursuit, that it transcends social boundaries as a universal truth. I found it interesting that IISc was founded on the principle that knowledge would always be shared, regardless of social status or level of education. This led me to explore different museums, including VITM.
Indian Space Research Organisation
The Indian Space Research Organisation was founded in 1969 when it replaced the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR), which was founded by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vikram Sarabhai in 1962. ISRO is managed by the Department of Space. Some of its many accomplishments include • Building India’s first satellite Aryabhatta, which was launched by the Soviet Union in 1975 • Launching Rohini, the first satellite to be placed in orbit by an Indian launch vehicle in 1980 • Launching Chandrayaan-1 in 2008, India’s first lunar probe • The Mars Orbiter Mission (also known as Mangalyaan), making India the first country to reach Mars orbit in its first attempt.
Indian Institute of Astrophysics
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics was initially established in 1786 as the Madras Astrophysical Observatory in Chennai, India. The observatory was renamed as the Indian Institute of Astrophyscs in 1971 when it was converted into an autonomous research institute to be funded by the government.
Indian Institute of Science
The Indian Institute of Science was founded in 1909 by Jamsedji Tata on lands donated by Sir Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, the King of Mysore. The institute was founded in the spirit of establishing a center for research and higher education in I ndia. Tata was inspired by Swami Vivekananda’s beliefs and the idea for the institute came from a conversation that the two had when the two were on a ship bound for the United States. The institute was founded in Bangalore on the recommendation of Nobel Laureate William Ramsay as the city’s climate was considered suitable. [1] When the institute was founded it was intended that there no divide between the institute and the people and that knowledge would be shared freely. [2]
Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum I visited the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum (VITM) to see how science was explained to people. My experience with science museums in the past has shaped a lot of my interest and love for science and I found VITM a very engaging environment. The museum was packed with people and almost all the exhibits were interactive. The key seemed to be to put a button on something if you wanted people to look at it, and it really worked. The main attraction was the giant marble track on the ceiling of the ground floor that let you interact with it in multiple ways, using buttons and cranks.
CONCEPT
where am i going with this?
At this point, I was leaning towards the idea of bringing science into the metro, to make science fun again. Most conversations I’ve had about science seemed more focused on engineering as a career option and the tech industry in Bangalore. And frankly, that’s boring. Science however is an extremely expansive term. Science predates its own name and if I wanted to do any aspect of it justice, I needed to focus on one field. I had started out by looking at science fiction and so I wanted to focus on light and space. At first my relation between the two was the theory that if one could travel faster than the speed of light, then one might be able to time travel, a very big part of science fiction.
As I was researching different artists that had worked with light I found that they were of two categories, artists who used light as a medium and those who used it as a concept. The former was using light to talk about other things whereas the latter talks about light itself. In my context of space and time travel I wanted to use light to tell its own story.
ARTIST TALKS Cooking Sections
Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernรกndez Pascual & Alon Schwabe) is a duo of spatial practitioners based out of London. It was born to explore the systems that organize the WORLD through FOOD. Using installation, performance, mapping and video, their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture and geopolitics. [3]
Forager Collective
The Forager magazine is a journal of food as a cultural practice and political issue. Published three times a year, it provides a platform for multi-disciplinary food related inquiry, encouraging writers and artists, and readers, to examine the world and its workings through food. The Collective also participates in experimental, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaborations with artists, writers, curators and other creative practitioners in both the digital and physical spaces. [4]
ARTIST TALKS Bonamy Devas
Bonamy Devas understands technostress, data asphyxiation, cognitive overload and time famine as symptoms of the electromagnetic embrace and thus drivers of contemporary art practise. He lives in London, where he was born in 1974, and works anywhere and everywhere. He believes the scent of a spice warehouse to be as much an image generator as a camera. [5]
Angelo Vermeulen
Angelo Vermeulen is a space systems researcher, biologist, artist and community architect. As a trained scientist, Vermeulen is as at ease collaborating with practicing scientists as he is constructing multimedia installations in galleries and building communities through design and co-creation. In 2009 he initiated SEAD (Space Ecologies Art and Design), an international network of individuals working in art, science, engineering and advocacy. Its goal is to reshape the future through critical reflection and hands-on experimentation. To achieve this, SEAD develops paradigm-shifting projects in which ecology, technology and community are integrated in synergistic ways. Biomodd and Seeker are the two most well-known SEAD projects. From 2011-2012 he was a member of the European Space Agency Topical Team Arts & Science (ETTAS), and in 2013 he was Crew Commander of the NASA-funded HI-SEAS Mars mission simulation in Hawaii. [6]
ARTIST TALKS Bonamy Devas
In the talk with Bonamy Devas we were introduced to the Pixel Stick, a device that allows you to create complex images out of light. We were also introduced to Devas’s work that deals with time and perception, ideas that I feel filtered into the concepts that I had
Angelo Vermeulen
Vermeulen’s talk really pushed me in the direction of interstellar travel and helped me form some of the ideas that I had. His Seeker project aimed at gathering communities to create spaceships that focussed on the co-habitation aspect of space travel, made a huge impression on me. The people that were part of these gatherings were often not in any field of science and had no formal training but their ideas prove that design isn’t something restricted to people with a certain degree or a certain background, and that some part of everyone has little dreams about space.
The Pixel Stick is a device that allows you to create complex images using the principle of light painting. “Pixelstick reads images created in Photoshop (or the image editor of your choice) and displays them one line at a time, creating endless possibilities for abstract and/or photorealistic art. Taking this one step further, Pixelstick can increment through a series of images over multiple exposures, opening up light painting to the world of timelapse, and allowing for animations of a scope and quality never before seen.� We spent a few days playing with the Pixel Stick, understanding how to manipulate the final image by changing speed, angles and the type of image uploaded. I created a short gif of an eye blinking. Each frame of the gif was a separate image that was later compiled digitally. The translucence of the images we created helped form the ideas I was mulling over both in terms of overlaing scenes on an existing background and by using light to paint a complex picture.
Angelo Vermeulen
ARTIST TALKS
James Turrell
REFERENCES
Olafur Eliasson
REFERENCES
Christine Wood
REFERENCES
Stu Campbell
REFERENCES
REFERENCES
• Dear World... Yours, Cambridge- an installation by Miguel Chevalier
Everbright, a light installation by San Francisco-based Hero Design
Masstransiscope- Bill Brand
Infinity Rooms- Yayoi Kusama
Nimbes- Joanie Lemercier
REFERENCES
REFERENCES
INITIAL CONCEPTS
1. I imagined the entire metro as a galaxy where each entrance became a different character informed by its immediate surroundings. One source of inspiration was The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupĂŠry, where each planetary body has its own unique inhabitant.
2. The stairs leading down to the platform that faced the glass wall of an elevator acting as the controls to a game that no one would be told how to play which would be displayed on the aforementioned glass wall. Alternatively, the same stairs being used as a collective pedometer that showed you how far away you were from another planet, and placed you in a fictional world using relative distance.
INITIAL CONCEPTS
3. Using star maps and constellations and converting them into code by mapping them on a grid. This code would then be converted into sounds. This could work on its own for example in a quiet space like the elevators or complement another installation.
4. In the vein of transforming the space, I wanted to create an app that transformed the interior of the train into an alternate reality.
PROPOSAL DESIGN BRIEF My project attempts to create a narrative revolving around space and exploration in the context of the metro. It initially started as a way to understand the way people in the city talked about space and the future. The two ways I wanted to approach this were through astrology which for many is a way to make the future more understandable and tangible and science fiction. By looking at science fiction writers from Bangalore as well as reportage of significant space related events in the past, I found that there was no formal history of science fiction in the city, let alone in the country. This assumption that there might be came from the fact that there are many research institutes in Bangalore including the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. Through research and interviews I found that these institutes were initiated by the British due to the agreeable climate of the city. Most notably IISc was founded with the intention of keeping open channels between the institute and the public which unfortunately is not the case nowadays. To gauge what parts of science was accessible to the public I looked at science textbooks as well as books available at the public library. Another way to make science accessible to the public was museums. I visited the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum to see how they made complex theories engaging and understandable through interactive installations and simplified explanations.
Initially I wanted to create likenesses of these installations and narrowed down the vast field of science to two of the concepts that I found most interesting, light and outer space. The link I drew to my starting point of science fiction was the (now disproved) theory that if one could travel faster than the speed of light, time travel might be possible. As someone interested in fictional narratives about the future and specifically space this is what I wanted to bring into the metro. MY POSITION As an animation student, my previous projects involved creating believable and immersive worlds to tell stories. I have always been more inclined towards fiction and fantasy owing to a childhood love of science and reading. Fictional narratives have the ability to reflect the real world even when the characters and worlds are imaginary and also to critique and offer alternatives without being sanctimonious. My interest in Art in Transit is to see animation used in public spaces in a way that doesn’t involve screens. Traditionally animation exists in a two dimensional sense on a screen as opposed to a public space that could create an immersive experience for viewers that engages all the senses. The opportunity to make something that people can interact with and influence is intriguing.
PROPOSAL
In my opinion most of our generation and older generations may never get to experience interstellar travel. Much of science fiction involves travelling to and discovering other planets. The metro lends itself visually, with its steel and gray, to a narrative that isn’t set in the present. The positive media coverage around the metro stresses on its future value. Bringing outer space into a train station, a mode of transportation for the present that aspires to the future is a way to expose people to more playful ideas about travel and science than one might find in a museum or a newspaper. This remains a secondhand experience, but an experience nonetheless that I personally hope would be the first of many. Light as a subject is still expansive, space literally so. The following are some of the artists, scientists and researchers that have inspired my direction in this project. • James Turrell (artist) - He is known for his work with the interaction between light and space. His work encourages people to stop and take a closer look, with installations that are often deceptive unless you approach and inspect them. They make light appear to have solidity and mass. • Olafur Eliasson (artist)- He combines light and more physical elements such as water, temperature and air pressure to create environments that people can physically experience. • Yayoi Kusama (artist, writer)- Her Infinity Rooms create an endless expanse of light and pattern using hanging lights and mirrored walls. Though they aren’t specifically intended to simulate space, they do resemble constellations. • Alan Lightman (physicist, writer)- His book Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collection of stories about the different scenarios Albert Einstein dreams of while developing his theory of relativity.
• Angelo Vermeulen (artist, scientist)- He works with interstellar travel and facilitates community projects that revolve around future technologies. • Rohini Devasher (artist)- She works with digital prints, video and sound. Several of her projects involve research in astronomy, resulting in narratives and myths about ‘strange terrains’. • Stu Campbell (artist, interactive designer)- His comic book Modern Polaxis uses augmented reality to show an alternate story. I have noticed from observing people on the metro that people are constantly on their phones. Many artists and writers have already condemned this with work that depicts people, especially millennials, as excessively dependant on and obsessed with their phones. However I don’t agree with this opinion. A phone connects people regardless of distance, provides entertainment, comfort and assistance. As a society we are indeed somewhat dependant on technology but the device doesn’t define the user, it only enables them. Any talk of the future is inevitably linked with technology. When creating an immersive environment that speaks of space or invites people to think about the future, I want to acknowledge how intertwined we are with our devices without condemning people for it. The work of these people all lean towards the future, in their respective forms and my concepts draw from all of them. I want to combine the idea of immersive environments, the limitless unknown nature of the universe, the idea of a community creating something together and the use of technology to unlock stories.
PROPOSAL
Though my intent was originally inclined towards educating people, I think that engaging people and getting them to question the things they see is more effective than simply providing them with facts. I don’t have a specific form in mind as yet but I want to create an intervention that people can play with, a narrative that is playful and encourages people to explore and speculate and come up with their own answers, regardless of whether they are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1. Can an intervention exist without people directly interacting with it but also give people the opportunity to influence their surroundings? 2. How much can you ask people to influence their surroundings without imposing? 3. How can you encourage people to use their devices to engage with their environment instead of distracting them from it?
CONCEPTS 1. The entire metro as a fictional galaxy that exists inside the station. Each exit is a planet that is influenced by the people that pass through it, each person affecting the planet’s appearance, atmosphere and the feel of that exit. This would manifest in changing lights, different sounds being played or changing visuals. 2. A game on the glass wall of the elevator that people can play/influence by walking on the stairs. The game can be played through experimentation, with no instruction given as to how it works. 3. The stairs as a collective pedometer that shows how far you are to a planet based on the total number of steps recorded to that point, and changes the lights or visuals on the platform accordingly. 4. Star maps and constellations, converted into code and then into light combined with the sounds of the planets to create an environment on the platform or in the train itself. 5. An app that works inside the train to show an alternate reality that could possibly be influenced by the users. APPROACH/PROCESS I am utilising the framework of “transit as an experience”. Up to this point, most of the approach has been research oriented. Moving forward I want to do more in depth research to settle on a form that my ideas can take. Depending on the research I feel that some of these ideas may combine to form a larger and more layered picture that I can arrive at through experimentation. I also want to understand and assess the technologies that I will be using.
PROPOSAL MATERIALS/RESOURCES These are the main resources that I have found useful and influenced my concept• Interviews with Ekta Mittal, co-founder of Maraa and Dr. Gururaj, a batrachiologist at IISc • The Pixel Stick • WE COLONISED THE MOON- artists that work with playful concepts related to the future and space exploration • Dear World... Yours, Cambridge- an installation by Miguel Chevalier • Einstein’s Dreams- Alan Lightman • Angelo Vermeulen • Olafur Eliasson • What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions- Randall Munroe • Stu Campbell • Nimbes- an installation by Joanie Lemercier • Mass Transiscope- Bill Brand
CURATORIAL THEMES
There were four curatorial themes that our projects were divided into.
AESTHETICS AND ASPIRATIONS
PARTICIPATIVE NETWORKS
THE TRAVELLER
THE OTHERLAND
Ecology and the City, Language, Identity, Roles, Perception, Experience, History, Nostalgia, Future Aspirations
Connecting/Disconnecting, Systems, Economics, Network systems, Causality, Identities, Start-ups, Nature, Environment, Communities
Traveller, Transient City, Migration, Gentrification, Sites of Transience
Dominant/Non Dominant, Outside/Inside, Perception, Experience, Metaphors, Dystopic Futures, Fantasies of Place, The Alternative, The Underground
Responses to the complex urban location of the site, highlighting a relationship between the city and the intervention, in form and concept.
Projects that are anchored in ideas of community and participation, aimed at accessing the nature of place in urban space.
Engaging with the traveller, evoking the urban situation through ideas of transit, addressing a constantly moving city and the journeys being travelled in it.
Ideas that are activated by the underground, reimagining the site through a series of whimsies, fantasies and stories.
THE OTHERLAND
My project comes under the curatorial theme of The Otherland. The Otherland invovles ideas that are meant to disorient and displace people from reality and provide them with an alternate version. In discussion with the group, we came up with some keywords (in the mindmap to the left) that described or spoke to the theme of the otherland. Each of our ideas tried to bring an element of the unknown into the space, adding whimsy or fun through illusions or simulations that shifted our perception of the space. In my case, my overarching theme was interstellar travel and creating the feeling that when you were in the metro you were experiencing some part of space. In my opinion, our generation may not live to see interstellar travel become a reality, and even if it comes into being sooner than we expect it’s going to take a lot longer for it to be accessible to everyone. The aesthetics of the metro lend themselves to futuristic themes and my intention was to build upon these visuals, using them as a starting point to jump further into unreality.
THE OTHERLAND
THE OTHERLAND
elevator tetris
One of my initial ideas was to use the glass wall of the elevator in the Cubbon Park metro station as a large game screen. The glass wall of the elevator is directly opposite a set of stairs. The layout of this metro station is such that all able bodied commuters are forced to use the stairs as the escalators only go up from the platform. In most other stations there are escalators that go both ways, meaning footfall on the stairs is not a guarantee. In this case, the giant game screen on the glass wall would be activated by sensors on the steps of the stairs. For example, if the game was tetris, each person stepping on to the stairs would trigger a piece and the speed at which they moved would correspond to the speed at which the piece falls. If the person stopped to look at the screen, the piece would turn. The intention was that the game was not directly playable, there are no instructions and no direct controls. The commuters interact play the game simply by existing in the same space.
elevator tetris
elevator tetris
Initial sketches for the stair activated game
planet people
In the vein of trying to bring interstellar travel closer to people who might not get to experience it in reality, I wanted to give the feeling of passing metaphorically between planets as commuters passed between stations.
outside the HAL entrance
Each entrance would be a planet, with its own characteristics based on its surroundings. The movement of travellers through the entrance would affect the appearance of the planet. For example, the buildings on the outside would lend their color scheme to the planet. Other factors would inputs from sensors that would track movement, temperature, time of day and each would activate a different element on the visual of the planet. I also initially considered using the concept of each planet having a frequency to give each entrance its own auditory experience but I felt that it might become disorientating, especially dangerous where there are stairs and a constant flow of traffic.
planet people
planet people
Initial sketches for the entrances Some of my ideas for the form this would take included engraved acrylic panels on the walls of each entrance that would change color according to the input from the different sensors. Another idea was an anamorphic image of a planet, formed by small floating orbs suspended from the ceiling. From the foot of the stairs or the top, it would appear as one orb but as you walked down you would pass between the orbs as if ‘walking through’ the planet. Each of these orbs would have a light that corresponded to one of the sensors, giving the appearance of randomness and adding to the larger picture of the planet being created by the people passing through the station.
interstellar
My third concept translates the idea of interstellar travel most directly into the context of the metro. The aesthetics of the train, with its steel and neon colors feels more futuristic than facts would suggest in comparison to the city. Playing on the idea of interstellar travel I wanted to create the illusion that the train was travelling through space as it moved between stations. I drew inspiration from movies like Star Wars and Star Trek that I’ve grown up watching, and the imagery that people have become familiar with as signifying high speed travel in space. For example, The straight white action lines that stretch away from the centre of the screen to make you feel like you’re traveling faster than the speed of light.
This idea of warp speed works well with the tunnel and the movement of the train. As the train lurches into motion when it pulls away from the station, it would feel like it was jumping into warp speed. The intervention here would be to reverse what animation normally is; a series of moving images presented on a single screen to a stationary viewer. In this case, there would be multiple images and the viewer would be the one that was moving
interstellar
There have been animation installations in underground train tunnels before. The most famous is Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope in New York. It takes the concept of the zoetrope and applies it along the length of the tunnel, using a tunnel parallel to the one the train passes through. This parallel tunnel has slits in the wall closest to the train and the opposite wall is covered with the frames of animation with no gap in between each frame. The slits in the wall break the image as the train passes allowing passengers to view it as an animation instead of a blur of image.
interstellar
The concept of the zoetrope cannot be directly applied to this tunnel as there is no space to accomodate the secondary tunnel. Instead I wanted to use the walls as they are and distance the frames in a way that allows for persistence of vision and therefore the appearance of animation.
factors
There are several factors that I had to take into account while formalizing this concept. As the station was not in use during our project, a lot of the planning that went into this was based on observations from other metros and extrapolating from the properties of the tunnel that I would be working in.
• speed of train- 30-40 km/hr • length of tunnel- 800 m • size of window • time- 1 min 12-36 s • frame rate- 20/25 fps • frame size- 0.38 m x 1 m or 1 m2 • where people are sitting • disorientation/ eye strain • size of window • gradient of image
Calculating from the speed of the train, the length of the tunnel and the size of the window, I arrived at the size of my frame. The windows of the train are approximately 2 metres in length and 1 metre in height. With a frame that was 1 m2, ideally the frame would be at the centre of the passenger’s field of vision. In film, the black space between frames allowed for the turning of the film reel. However in digital form, the black space become a black frame between each frame giving the image a flicker. By this logic, the frames here would be placed 1 metre apart that would act as this black space
20 fps
25 fps
0.38 m x 1 m
options for frame sizes
1 m2
form One of my main aims with this intervention is to create a platform for other animators, to give them a space that they may not have had a chance to inhabit otherwise. As an animator, I am generally confined to a screen, which was one of the reasons Art in Transit was a great opportunity for me. I want to give other people that same opportunity to work in a public space and have people interact with and respond to their stories. The forms that I initially considered for this included paste ups, light boxes, LED panels, conveyor belt advertising boards, projection mapping, flex panels, acrylic panels and LED strips. However, keeping the aim in mind, the criteria for the form was that it had to be something that could be changed and allow for more than one story to be told. This automatically ruled out paste ups or posters, which though the easiest to create and test would only allow for one story to be displayed. The acrylic sheets and LED lights were also out for the same reason. I started out with projection mapping, assuming that each projector would cover approximately 3 frames of animation. While this allowed for a single point of input which would make it a more accessible platform for others, it was far too expensive with no other justification for that cost. The maintenance of these projectors would also be an issue as they would heat up over time and the implications of having over a hundred projectors suspended over a moving train did not play out well.
rough sketch of frames in the tunnel
form
My second option was to use LED panels with individually addressable LEDs. This would mean a slightly more pixellated image than I would get with a projector but still allow me to change the image easily. The entire 800 metre stretch of the tunnel couldn’t be covered with LED panels as that would be far too expensive so I decided to use a combination of LED strips and LED panels. The LED strips would act as the warp speed lines of action that created the feeling of jumping into warp speed as the train lurched out of the station. At the midpoint of the tunnel there would be approximately 60-100 LED panels which would allow for 3-5 seconds of animation, before again going back to the LED strips that would give the feeling of slowing down and jumping back out of warp speed as the train pulled into the next station. In this case, each journey would give the passengers 3-5 seconds of a non-linear narrative. For a regular commuter for example, every morning they would see a different part of a larger story that they could piece together however they wanted. However, this idea was soon set aside as it was also too expensive.
form
My third option was to use trivision advertising boards. These still allowed me to have more than one story at a time, still functioned as a platform for others and was far more cost effective as this is a widely used form of advertising. With this form, I was restricted to only using the side of the tunnel with the walkway so that the panels would be accessible. This meant that it would be easier for the images to be changed and for maintenance and safety. The panels would still be sandwiched by the action lines of the LED strips, and the opposite wall would have only LED strips, giving the passengers on both sides something to look at.
Mute by Huang Ran
visual language
visual language
The visual language that I was initially leaning towards was more like the depictions we’re used to seeing of space. The intention was to create an entirely immersive atmosphere that seeps into the train by surrounding your field of vision. However I realized this might be overwhelming for passengers and might cause eye strain, especially if these images filled up their entire field of vision. I didn’t want anyone to be forced to only look at the floor simply because the images were either too bright or too jarring for sustained eye contact. This visual language will continue to evolve as this project progresses, especially after I am able to test these images in the station.
storyboard With a project that exists within the framework of the otherland, I wanted to remove people as much as possible from reality. In this case, the tunnel is an unknown space for people that you only experience through the train, never directly (something many horror movies have taken advantage of). Into this existing unknown space I’m introducing visuals of outer space. And in that unknown space, I’m adding visuals that you wouldn’t normally associate directly with space like astronauts and planets but instead dinosaurs and crystals and whales. The first storyboard I created was when I was using projection mapping as my form. I liked the idea of using both sides of the tunnel to create a depth perpendicular to the motion of the train. For example, it would feel like the train was passing through a planet or that a dinosaur was swimming through the train. The second storyboard was working with the LED panels sandwiched between the LED strips. The experience of the journey would be jumping into warp speed, seeing those three seconds of animation and then jumping back out of warp speed. The animation would change on a daily basis allowing people to see different parts of a larger story and hopefully not become bored. With the trivision boards, the theme for the three stories is objects that dissolve into each other, playing off of the idea of the nested unknown. The animation is still in progress as the form is adapting to updates in the information about the tunnel.
the unknown in the unknown in the unknown
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reflection
Being part of Art in Transit has taught me a lot. Being out of your comfort zone and out of your depth pushes you to do better and think in ways that you aren’t used to. As an animation student, most of the projects I’ve been part of have been traditional animation projects, that follow a traditional process. In this case, working in the realm of public art has meant changing how I approach situations and problems, of which there were many. There have been many opportunities to think creatively both in terms of logistics and narrative. I’ve found that I prefer this middle ground between what we normally think of as animation and something like public art that allows for interaction. I’m looking forward to continuing my experimentation and finding out how well my intervention works and how people respond to it. I’m also interested to see how it functions as a platform for other animators.
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