THESIS PROJECT 2017 CO-MIX Graphic Narratives & Public Space
STUDENT:
Madhav Nair
PROJECT:
Art in Transit
SPONSOR: Herman Miller PROGRAM: Undergraduate Professional Programme AWARD:
Information Arts & Information Design Practice
GUIDES:
Amitabh Kumar, Sandeep Ashwath
Copyrights 2016-2017 Student Document Publication (for private circulation only) All Rights Reserved Final Thesis Project (Undergraduate Professional Programme) Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore - 560064 Karnataka No part of this document will be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, scanning, photography and video recording without written permission from the publishers namely Madhav Nair and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. Written, edited and designed by Madhav Nair Printed at Kolorkode, Bangalore
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Intellectual Property and Plagiarism Statement
I, MADHAV NAIR, hereby declare that the content of this student documentation and final design/artwork submission is my own original work and has not been plagiarised in full or part from previously published/ designed/manufactured material or does not even contain substantial propositions of content which have been accepted for an award of any other degree or diploma of any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in this thesis project. I also declare that the intellectual content of this Thesis Project is my own original work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style and presentation is acknowledged & that this thesis project (or part of it) will not be submitted as assessed work in any other academic course.
Copyright Statement
I, MADHAV NAIR, hereby grant Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology the right to archive and to make available my Thesis Project in whole or in part in the institute’s databank and website, and for non-commercial use in all forms of media, now and hereafter known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act.
Name Signature Date
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page 4-5 Selected pages from “Wide Awake”, 8 page comic for kuš! #27 page 6-7 “Airavat”, mural at Dhavantri Circle, Oct 2016 page 8-12 Selected panels from “Goodnight Limbo”, 10-page comic exploring space and identity within video game level concepts above Selected panels from “Thank You Come Again”, 13-page comic for Brainded page 14 Illustration for NH7 Peripheral Art Project 2016
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1. Introduction
For the past four years of my time at Srishti, I’ve found myself falling down a rabbit hole of opportunities after taking interest in visual communication, illustration and public art courses. A few examples of these projects have been shown in the first few pages of this document. The decision to make comix only came halfway into that journey after getting a glimpse into the history of independently-published graphic narratives from Bangalore and outside while on a semester-long exchange program in Utrecht. I’ve realized the immense potential for a community that shares their graphic work and supports each other in their own modes of expression, a small but talented group of people dedicated to independent free-thinking and experimental narratives from unique voices. This is the world I look forward to after my graduation. This is where I thank the faculty that have guided me through this process and the peers I have made who inspire me every day with their strength and courage, both inside and outside the college environment. This is also where I recognize the strength that my family has given me and the support that led me to where I am today.
2. Position as a Practitioner
Having begun my journey at Srishti as a visual communication student, a large part of my process has been influenced by publication designers and branding gurus that have shown the way towards healthy collaboration towards a particular vision. It was only after recognizing the potential in graphic storytelling did I focus my creative energy towards more experimental paths that have led me to some incredible practitioners, thinkers and visionaries, both inside and outside the contemporary graphic storytelling community. This has guided my process and keeps me alert and curious, hungry for new experiments and processes in storytelling and image-making. Another major framework that I’ve been part of has been the constant exposure to public art and the process of site specific installations, through numerous public art courses and multiple opportunities outside the pedagogical environment..As a graduation project environment, Art in Transit has allowed me to work with this curiosity and develop a research environment through feverish cycles of making and experimentation.
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ZUMBA WORKSHOP
ZUMBA
23rd Jan, N5 terrace
23rd J
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3. Immersion
The first few weeks were spent calibrating our working process into an intense 3-week time period of consistent making and presenting, with a heavy focus on giving simple ideas and metaphors a dimensional quality. Some interesting outcomes were typefaces that replaced characters for drawings of human teeth. After this point, we approached the Cubbon Park Metro Station and looked for opportunities inside and outside the station. Here, a myriad of possibilities presented itself hence it was important to revisit some of the decisions we’d made during the 3-week immersion process to navigate our way through site-specific projects. We had a few other opportunities outside the metro station, such as the Neralu festival as well as Cubbon Park itself as a site for intervention. I chose to explore the nearby marketplace of Shivajinagar with the idea of inhabiting a space with a narrative. After an overwhelming week of daily visits and sketching, I came up with a few ideas for a wheatpasted poster narrative that used the narrow roads in Shivajinagar instead of the pages of a comic book. I put together an absurd story of a tug-of-war match between two species of mutated chicken-men, using the routes to map the game instead of an unbroken line leading from one end of the market to the other.
4. 3rd Festival of Stories
After the wheat-pasting exercise, I decided to adapt the same character into another story but in a smaller zine format with a different narrative, to be distributed for free at the 3rd Festival of Stories at the ticket counters. Here I could experiment with the reach of the story with a couple of simple decisions, such as keeping the story silent (without text as dialogue) and the characters cartoonishly grotesque but similar to the characters used in the Shivajinagar poster exercise. This would set the tone for the projects I did for the next few weeks.
(facing page) top Type sample from the teeth typeface, made on the very first day of class. bottom Zumba posters, based on a sound piece derived from recorded samples from in and around Cubbon Park page 18-19 page 20-23
Chicken coops from Shivajinagar meat market Pasting the posters along the routes within Shivajinagar
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After the 3rd Festival of Stories, I wanted towards a direction where I would choose a part of the metro station to inhabit and use that space to set up a small studio and work out of this studio for a few weeks. Here, I set up a small monoprinting press setup and also used some cardboard sheets to make large drawings as well as work towards an anthology of 10 short zines around a single idea. After some deliberation, I wanted to make a set of comics about digestion and circulation, without using too many physical markers from the site I was working on. Over the span of two weeks, I printed a stack of the comix I had finished till that point to be given away at the Rangoli Art Centre. It was at this point that I stepped back and had some interesting conversations with a few other artists and comix makers about the value behind a photocopied zine found in a metro station versus a beautifully printed comic book from a convention and seeing both these dynamics affect the kind of readership and involvement you get from your audience. A starting point here was the conversation we had with Oskar, a comics teacher who was visiting Srishti for a week and spent some time with us talking about his experience with running a magazine and selling comics in Sweden. Here we spoke about the experience of purchasing a comic and how that changes the value given to the product. After this, Amitabh and I spoke to George Mathen and Anpu Varkey and together came up with a plan for a magazine for comix and a planned event with a collection of independent artists as contributors of silent comix as well as a platform for other small press initiatives. For the 4th Festival of Stories, I used this opportunity to beta-test this process and published a 12-page newsprint comic as well conducted a collaborative comix making workshop with Gathr, a Bangalore based organisation that conducts micro-events. At this point, we’re using these processes to inform the way in which we build the larger publication and how we would present it as a platform for independent artists and their comix to inhabit public spaces.
5. The Way Forward
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Spreads from “Good Morning”, comix for the 3rd Festival of Stories Pages from “Untitled Dog Comic”, part of the Digestion Anthology Cardboard paintings made at the studio inside the metro station Pages from “Untitled Cat Comic”, part of the Digestion Anthology Pages from “Keep Your Bananas Exposed”, comix for the 4th Festival of Stories Printed comics at Judge Press, Convent Rd
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THESIS PROJECT 2017 CO-MIX
STUDENT:
MADHAV NAIR
PROJECT:
Art in Transit
SPONSOR:
Herman Miller
PROGRAM:
Undergraduate Professional Programme Arts and
Final
Panel COMMENTS:
Examiner 1 (name and signature): Examiner 2 (name and signature): Examiner 3 (name and signature): Date:
Academic Dean:
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Design
Madhav Nair Proposal (21 Feb 2017) The Brief. This project aims to create a pedagogical environment for artists to create interventions within a public space to create dialogue between artists and the public, through interventions within their shared realities. Position as a Practitioner. Most of my work revolves around visual storytelling; having found a deep interest in storytelling through imagemaking. My work has also taken me into the realm of public art and public space interventions, such as self-published zines and murals. These projects have given me an in-depth understanding of what is considered as a public work of art and the importance of a creative practice that is visible to the public. I also relate to mediums that are open and free to be remixed and re-contextualized, as well as forms of expression that can be pried open and experimented with. Process. From the very beginning of this project, we’ve taken part in an intense process of making artefacts within public spaces and initiating a dialogue with the public through these artefacts. An interesting outcome from a practice based research such as this encourages feedback intensive outcomes that inform future interventions within public spaces, with a careful balance between craftmanship and collaborative feedback and research within the artists involved. Research Questions. Through this project, these are some of the enquiries I’ll be using as a general direction for the next few months. a. Working with zine publishing and distribution networks to create an environment for artists like myself to come up with b. Learning how to use new mediums of expression within the metro station and Cubbon park (projection mapping, animation, interactive sculptures) while maintaining a process that is visible to the public. c. Exploring the relationship between the public space, printed and distributed narratives/zines and public interventions (murals, installations, etc.) Artefacts. A major part of this project would use gritty black and white Xerox prints as a starting point, because of how affordable it is to create something of such a large scale in terms of distribution, as well as how making sequential narratives that look use simple shapes, bold lines and absurd narratives makes it easier to approach and consume. Another important decision here is the heavy reliance on silent narratives that use written text as image, if at all. This project is structured around three public art festivals, which speaks to the process-intensive research practice that has been around since the very beginning of this semester. The most recent examples of this are two different experiments with storytelling; the first was a route-based sequential narrative that is experienced not by turning pages but by walking through the streets of Shivajinagar, using paste-ups as panels and routes as a method of experiencing a surreal narrative. The other was a printed comic book using the same characters in a different setting distributed within the metro station during the third Festival of Stories to the commuters and engaging in conversations with the people who attended the festival and consumed these absurd stories on their way to another part of the city. Using these experiments as well as the interventions done during the immersion process have lead me towards experimenting with new media and storytelling techniques, to tell stories about the city around us and bridging the gap between the known and the unknowable. Materials/Resources a. Processes and materials I’ve used so far: Xerox comix, murals, paste-ups, soliciting public spaces, collecting visual references from a public space as a tool for spatially informed image-making and intervention and creating environments for open public conversation through these interventions. b. Processes and resources I’d like to experiment with: Projection mapping, new media, puppet-making, moving images as well as different printing and distribution techniques such as offset newsprints, monoprinting and online comix. (Here I’d like to mention how online comix have shaped my practice, by publishing short comix through Brainded, an online platform put together by my good friend and mentor, George Mathen and a few other artists as a platform for public dissemination through free comix available online) Learning Outcomes. Through this project, I seek a better understanding of my own process of image-making and have a stronger grasp on my narrative style, thus informing my future practice into self-published and distributed comix. I also want to build an environment for other artists like myself to use this platform to tell their own stories and use the raw experiences of handing out comix to unsuspecting readers to inform our collective practices,
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