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The Studio Book Reimaging & Reimagining the Western Ghats
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2015. Design + Environment + Law Laboratory. The DEL Laboratory is an initiative of Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology and Natural Justice. DEL Lab Logo Design: Sonalee Mandke
This project was a collaboration among DEL Laboratory, Bangalore Human Sciences Initiative and Mathur/da Cunha at PennDesign. This project was partly funded by the Andrea von Braun Foundation grant. Studio Faculty: Dilip da Cunha and Deepta Sateesh.
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The Studio Book Reimaging & Reimagining the Western Ghats 2014 - 2015
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Contents 01 07 pg Who we are 09 pg 02 The PROJECT
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11 pg
Why the Ghats
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12- 45 pg
Reimaging/reImagining landscape - Studio One The Idiolect of the Ghats
14 pg
Rhythms of the Western Ghats
18 pg
The Transforming Malabar
22 pg
Corridor
26 pg
Making Sense
30 pg
Data Strata
34 pg
Trunket
38 pg
Exhibition
42 pg
Reflection
44 pg
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05
46 - 75 pg
Splice - the iconic - Studio Two joint Threshold
48 pg
Movements of the Western Ghats
53 pg
Reconstruct
57 pg
A Field of Traces
61 pg
The Long Version of a Short Story
66 pg
Fabric of the Ghats
70 pg
Exhibition
74 pg
06 77 pg Symposium 07
79 pg
Journal Unbound
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01
Who we are The Design+Environment+Law Laboratory (DEL Laboratory) is set up to challenge existing legal, environmental, social, economic and cultural frameworks through interdisciplinary thinking and creativity. The DEL Laboratory is an initiative of Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology and Natural Justice. We believe that the artist / designer brings an interdisciplinary approach of complexities and contradictions on the ground in contentious landscapes, through synthesis and imagination, to investigate, image and intervene. The studio-lab carries out collaborative research projects, to explore the intersections between design and the humanities, through active engagement in the environment; to bring design approach to pedagogy, policy and practice; and, to strengthen socio-ecological relationships, making way for synchronous engagement in our environment.
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The world as we see it is rife with large global
Disciplinary boundaries have further limited the
‘wicked problems’ that stem from complex local
impact and relevance of these solutions, which
social, ecological, economic, political and cultural
potentially create and perpetuate dissonance. In
issues, and new patterns of consumption that
order to maintain the complexities of processes,
impact human values and practices. The divide
forms, functions and relationships, we intend
between government and citizen, development
to embark on a design inquiry, a new approach,
and environment, and sustainability and
to explore new ways of situating, visualizing,
resilience, is widening at a rapid pace, while
and engaging complex environments. This new
our ability to view the complexity of these issues
approach, we hope, will begin to expose the
is limited by current systems of knowledge and,
nature of places and construct new images and
as we see it, current ways of visualizing and
imaginations, working from the particular to
representing complex environments despite
the larger idea and vice versa. The objective is
the increasing volume of and access to ‘data’.
to propose a new approach/model of enquiry,
This knowledge and ways has tended to
investigation and engagement that may be applied
oversimplify complexity in order to understand
to inform interventions that do not propagate
and find solutions.
‘problems’, but are synchronous and build resilience.
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02
The PROJECT
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03 the Western Ghats The site of investigation is the Western Ghats.
population of tigers, ancient practices of
The Western Ghats has been the focus of many
agriculture and conservation, sacred groves and
kinds of research and activism, development
national parks and the laws that govern them,
and conservation. Without contesting those
monsoon catchments, human settlements and the
approaches and activities, we propose a pilot
natural resources that support them, all coexisting
project using design as a praxis that integrates
in a fragile balance in this place that demands
and reframes our concerns – bringing together
negotiation and rights-of-ways in time, multiple
the humanities and social sciences, planning and
scales, practices and relationships – rather than as
design, law and policy, landscape and the natural
enclaves and segregation in space.
sciences. To negotiate the Western Ghats, we propose an With its recent designation as a UNESCO World
interdisciplinary team that brings to the project
Heritage Site, the Western Ghats of India has
critical theories and practices, reflections and
become an extremely contested terrain between
insights, diverse research interests and experience,
environmental and developmental concerns.
to contribute to creating a new way of seeing,
Rather than perpetuate the environment -
representing and engaging in the region; through
development divide, we propose to reimage
design and reflexivity, cognition and imagination.
and reimagine the Ghats, going beyond its
The collaboration brought together Mathur/
many identities and relationships as a global
da Cunha (School of Design, University of
biodiversity ‘hotspot’ of flora and fauna, one of
Pennsylvania), and Bangalore Human Sciences
the oldest cloud and rainforests that are home to
Initiative and the DEL Laboratory at the Srishti
rare species of frogs and flowers, dwindling
Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
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Reimaging/reImagining landscapeS Studio One
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The undergraduate studio imaged and imagined
Students were encouraged to use techniques such
the Ghats beyond its many identities as a global
as film and text editing, mapping, montaging,
biodiversity ‘hotspot’, a hill range, a geological
joinery, coding, weaving, etc. To pursue their
escarpment, a mineral field, a unique culture,
investigation logically and analogically.
a cloud and rainforest, a tiger reserve, a home of sacred groves, a UNESCO site, a monsoon
Traversing the Ghats
catchment. With the lens, interest and agenda developed Inquiries into a ‘particular’ of the Ghats
through the investigation of a particular ‘thing’, students undertook a journey crossing the Ghats,
To initiate this process, students undertook
documenting territories, phenomena, conflicts,
diverse inquiries into a particular thing, process,
materials, processes, cultures, and environments
event, or rhythm of the Ghats, something of
along and across this constructed line.
their choosing. The inquiry required them to construct a lens, an orientation, a condition, and
Initiating Design
set of locations that guided their field work in the Western Ghats. These inquiries became the
In this stage of the studio, students designed
starting points of visualizing the Ghats as a unique
an intervention toward changing the imaging
terrain, and of articulating a design agenda that
and imagining of the Ghats. Their interventions
engages and transforms this terrain in some way.
included films, animations, audio-visual installations, and exhibits.
The subject of inquiry was a choice of one of the following: basalt, laterite, a tree (the coconut or Palmyra) mangrove, grove, an animal (tiger, leopard), a migrant community, a conflict, a movie, a song.
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TO UNPACK
The Idiolect of the ghats Ananya Singh Rohit Dasgupta
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lining up
Plurality must be practiced actively when making decisions that affect people who live differently.
Ananya and Rohit began constructing a lens
It is not in the object itself but in the perception
based on a phrase from William Blake’s poem
of it. We are not confused whether the window is
“to see the world in a grain of sand.” This also
made of wood or glass or plastic or metal. What is
produced the two central tenets of their lens,
sgnificant is the idea of a window. The idiolect then
the Kachha and the Pukka. This gave rise to the
is the unique path traced by an object as it is used
second tenet of their lens, ‘the idiolect.’
in practice - as the Kachha becomes the Pukka, and the Pukka transforms into the Kachha.
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to draw out
(Right corner) Process plots of mapping the idiolect of the Ghats using field data, (Above & right) and drawing from it.
THE MAP TO READ THE IDIOLECT OF THE GHATS Reading Order: Idiolect A. Idiolect B; To Draw Out, To Unpack, Lining Up, and Looking Again
A B
IDIOLECT Our imagination enables us to conjure a probable past and future of the objects that composes our world; it reveals the scope of purpose, use and motion of everything around us. When we see ruins we guess that in the past it may have been a house, a shop or a mill because of some tell-tale signs. A stove, a chimney, a door, and a window are a collection of objects that signify something to us; that these are commonly employed in house, these are architectural, that these are functional, and so on. Thus, these objects constitute a language, of sorts, that is used by humanity at large. We are not confused whether the window be made of wood and glass or plastic and metal. What is recognized is the idea of a window. The idiolect then is the unique path traced by an object as it is used.
KUCCHA-PUKKA IDIOLECT a
IDIOLECT b
B1
TO DRAW OUT
B2
TO UNPACK
B3
LINING UP
Kuccha and pukka have been traditionally used in context of food and foodstuff. Kuccha is understood in this sense as raw, uncooked, unfinished, undesirable and inferior while pukka along the same lines is understood as cooked, finished, desirable and superior. When the use of these words is extended to the context of architecture, manufacture and so on, they retain the earlier sense. Therefore, a pukka road, made of concrete or pitch and tar, is better than a kuccha road, made of earth, mud or loose stones. Everyday occurrences seen in the light kuccha-pukka reveals a world that at first glance seems composed of objects. However upon looking closer it is seen that behind these objects are processes that binds them together. Here the objects constitute the pukka and the processes that unite the objects constitute the kuccha.
B4
LOOKING AGAIN
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lining up
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In our daily lives, people and the environment that surround us at any given point have an intrinsic rhythm, that is usually unseen. Ruchir and Raheel, explored the different places in the field – Udupi, Agumbe and St. Marys Island – to bring out the richness and the diversity of the rhythms that reside in the environment of the Ghats. Their exploration began with the Siddhi community in the Ghats. Their lens investigated four categories: Expression, Surroundings, Instruments and Practices.
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Rhythms of the western Ghats Ruchir Gupta Raheel Malkan
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A plot constructing the Rhythms of the Western Ghats discovered after collecting data in the field.
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The transforming malabar Sanika Sahasrabuddhe Shambhavi Singh
(Below) Parts of the Coconut Tree; and (Right) Plot depicting processes in a coconut tree.
The Western Ghats are in constant flux. It is a fluid and dynamic field that sustains itself through visible and invisible change. Resilient ecosystems become so by the virtue of transformations, that lead to an emergence of something extraordinary, from the ordinary nature of things. Commodification is one such transformation that we use to view all species (including humans). Both biotic and abiotic agents bring about transformation in an ecosystem. Sanika and Shambhavi traversed
reality an expansive web of processes that add,
the Ghats through the lens of commodification.
subtract and multiply the layers of the region.
Through design intervention, we see the Ghats as
To generalise a huge portion of the Ghats under
a field that is resilient by the processes and agents
one category is to oversimplify the complexity of
that inhabit it. Every species’ creativity determines
the field that is interpolated with infinitesimal,
the manifestation of the landscape of any biome
yet integral processes that maintain this actively
in the world. The ‘strip’ of land that is today
resilient field of transformation. Transforming
designated as the Western Ghats is in
Malabar reveals a new structure of a ‘pre-state’ and ‘post-state’, enabled by an ‘agent’.
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weaving
thatching uprooting
drying
bundling
decaying
flowering
plucking
floating
floating
floating
plucking
flying
assembling
rooting
rooting
hallowing
fruiting
rooting
withering
feeding
inhabiting
nesting
foraging falling
weaving
feeding
hatching nesting
pecking
hardening
thickening
drying
foraging drying
hardening carving
crushing
liquefying
extracting
feeding
hatching capturing
secreting
boiling weaving
preying
solidifying shelling
drying
incubating
gathering
shelling piling
packing
drying
catching
segregating (untangling) casting
extracting
dehusking
casting (in use)
segregating (untangling)
unloading
sorting
catching
birthing
storing
storing
chunking
sorting
selling
falling
firing (baking)
powdering
decaying
flowing hardening
littering
surveying
travelling
dampening arriving
designating
anchoring
depositing
building
eroding
flowing
touristing
dampening buffering
repairing
beaching
plucking
flying jumping
feeding
assembling
foraging
incubating
feeding
hatching
weaving
foraging
nesting
pecking carving
hatching
thickening
germinating
aging
decomposing crumbling
spinning
felling
creeping
moulding
disintegrating
drying
growing
growing infrigidating (tempering)
bundling
resettling
constructing
moistening
creeping
leaching
charring
moving
designating
baking weaving
leaving
feeding
maturing
logging
arriving
designating
anchoring
eroding
depositing
building
flowing
touristing
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buffering
repairing
beaching
plucking
flying jumping
feeding
assembling
foraging
incubating
feeding
hatching
weaving
foraging
nesting
pecking carving
hatching
feeding
capturing
secreting weaving
preying incubating
gathering
leaving
piling designating
baking/ heating
migrating
moistening
constructing
resettling
growing
creeping Final Representation of the Ghats (Left) the plot arranged geographically from sea to inland; (Above) Demonstrating shift of coastline according to processes.
maturing
falling
decaying
decomposing
flowing dampening
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Shams and Loveena’s project began by creating a lens that was extracted from the nature, behaviour and movement of elephants. Their explorations lead them to investigate the idea of a ‘corridor’ and its constructions. Using this lens they traversed the Ghats to discover the world as a network of interconnected paths/corridors that make up the landscape and inform our engagement in it.
(Above) Final Representation “Corridor of Light”. (Below) Study of how the light travels. (Right) Final Representation “The Human Corridor”.
ute
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Manipal Lake
Corridor Loveena Chopra Shams Al Shahid
Manipal
Udupi Temple
Agumbe Forest
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(Above) Mapping of Elephant infra-sounds travelling from Mangalore to Chikkamangalur.
Whether it’s veins inside a body (corridor for blood), or crevices on a rock (home for tiny living organisms), the corridor allows an action and the barrier enables a response. The corridor and barrier co-exist. This relationship is taken for granted or unoticed but is of great significance.
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Making sense Shreya Dugar Shreya Bhatia
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Plots capturing a moment of being, a moment of curiosity or a moment of delight. (Left &Above)
The physiological effect of coffee has been so powerful worldwide, it plays with and involves all our senses together to create an experience. Such an experience of drinking coffee can be truly captured only in its habitat. But even our senses have certain limitations; they can only perceive information that they are constructed by. Using this lens the Shreya duo explored the Ghats to discover that the senses can perceive experiences through each other.
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Plot of the Western Ghats to capture its multiplicity.
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(Left) Process Plot exploring different properties of laterite with different extremities eventually leading to observe processes by extracting colour values. (Right) Deconstructing the material ‘Laterite’.
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The idea of the ‘datum’ comes from the need to measure ‘things’ in the landscape in relation to a ‘benchmark.’ Koyal and Aditya explored the metamorphosis of this landscape through this
Data Strata Koyal Chengappa Aditya Bharadwaj
lens, to understand the notion and to open it up as a fluid and negotiable space. They began by exploring how laterite is perceived as a geological entity, further extracting and abstracting from it. The datum, a geographical tool, was introduced to foster the explorations. This led to different properties of materials — metamorphosis, porosity, humidity, surface textures, saturation to rethink ‘datum’ as a dynamic idea that holds its own plurality.
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(Above) The plot is a blueprint of the data amassed and organized before the development of an instrument. The four plots explore Wetness through laterite, Saturation of ground cover, Clearings acknowledging sky, and the Folds containing water. (Right) The designed instrument.
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Trunket Roshan Shakeel Sudeep Vashistha
TOKENS, SMALL
CARDS, MEDIUM
(Right) The set of cards in the game. (Below) The different elements in play.
STARTER CARD
HYBRID CARD, LARGE
‘Trunket’ is a visual card game for two to four players, created by exploring ideas of patterns, complexity and scale - of fractals. Roshan and Sudeep’s traverse across the Western Ghats drove them to identify layered patterns across the landscape. Through complexity thinking they developed the game as an engagement with the diverse ecologies they had traversed, getting a sense of the elements that were present in each, along with their patterns of growth, adaptation, and transformation.
MOSS
BARNACLE
MACHINE
CRYSTAL
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(Left Lower) Hybrid Cards and their combinations.
CRYSTAl+ MACHINE (Orange)
MOSS+ CRYSTAL (Orange)
MOSS+ MACHINE (Green)
CRYSTALBARNACLE (Green)
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(Left) The Final combinations that allows the player to win the game by placing the Trunket card.
GREEN Machine
ORANGE+BLUE+PINK Machine Moss
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(Above)Trunket set, with ‘Rules of Play’ book and set of cards.
The game allows for visual representations of fractalized elements in the landscape that link with each other over varying scales. The plot truly becomes activated when the element of time is also in play—becoming a dynamic, collaborative game that reimagines this complex, ever-evolving terrain.
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Exhibition Studio One
Design students shared their explorations and new constructions of the region in an attempt to reimage/reimagine the Ghats, from its peculiarities and practices, to the general public. The medium of engagement was primarily visual, audio and tactile, as these media have the ability to reach out to a diverse audience. Exhibitions were held first at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, followed by a public exhibition in Agumbe, with the support of the Forest Department and ARRS/Madras Crocodile Bank Trust. A total of about 150 visitors, from diverse cultural backgrounds, engaged with the exhibition. Visitors were excited to see an in-situ exhibit – of the Ghats in the Ghats.
(Above) Shambhavi and Raheel, presenting their projects to visitors at the Srishti exhibition held in Bangalore. (Below) The Shreya duo presenting the project ‘Making Sense’.
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(Above) Child playing the game ‘Trunket’. (Below) Shams presenting The Corridor Project during the exhibition that was held in Agumbe.
Although the exhibits required some amount of initial conversations to orient the visitor, we believe the works of this unique design approach communicated new ways of seeing the region in a more accessible manner than presentations through singular disciplines that require prior basic knowledge, or inclination. Many shared their own stories of experiences and places they had visited in the South Canara region of the Western Ghats. The curiosity and enthusiasm with which the design explorations were received reaffirmed the possibility to initiate dialogue and collaborations where public opinion and design thinking can interact.
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Reflection Studio One
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The objective of this pilot project was to explore
complex on the ground. Pedagogically the project
a new approach/mode of enquiry, investigation
called for a less structured approach where
and engagement that may be applied to inform
students were mentored through their thinking,
(design) interventions that do not propagate
and encouraged to follow their unique plots,
‘problems’, but are synchronous with the
trajectories and imaginations. Through this
environment and build resilience. It incurred its
studio, it was challenging to ground the
own discoveries and challenges as it progressed, as
explorations in deeper and more critical
it was the first time such a studio was conceived of
understandings of place and its construction.
at the undergraduate level. The students’
Hence, in the following studio, beginning the
explorations in this studio challenged the role
enquiry with a design operation (“splice”)
of design from being application-oriented to
anchored multiple possible trajectories and
being instrumental in the reimagining of existing
facilitated a greater commitment by the student to
geographical definitions. The project initiated
visualizing the Ghats as a unique terrain, and of
a dialogue about the Western Ghats and a new
articulating a design agenda that investigates and
approach to understanding a space/place that is
images this terrain in meaningful ways.
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To most people the Western Ghats is a range of
A threshold that allows the SW monsoon to come
hills on the west coast of India covered with
through, a moisture-laden wind that drops large
monsoon forests, a repository of minerals, a
amount rain between June and September on its way
UNESCO World Heritage Site and a biodiversity
to the Himalayas;
hotspot. In this studio, however, the Western
A ‘wild’ belt that generates networks of roadways,
Ghats was a splice: a joint of two things that does
railways and airways to draw people from the urban
not call attention to itself so much as to the new
centres on the Arabian Sea and the Deccan
‘singularity’ that it creates. It is common to hear
Plateau – people looking for ‘nature’, vacations,
the word splice used to describe the taping of two
recreation, adventure and research;
celluloid strips in making a film, the tying of two
A ground that reveals veins, strata and ore of coveted
ropes in extending a length, the joining of two
minerals;
pieces of wood in crafting an artefact, the
A catchment of rain that inspires conduits of
juxtaposing of two images in creating a montage,
water and hydropower to cities on the Arabian Sea
the connecting of two pieces of music to make a
and the Deccan Plateau;
performance, To say the Western Ghats is a splice
A biodiversity hotspot that calls attention to an
is to see:
endangered planet.
A coast calling attention to a land-sea gradient; An escarpment that unites the ground beneath the
The singularity initiated by the Western Ghats in each
Arabian Sea and the Deccan Plateau along a N-S
of these cases has a beginning but no end, direction
shear that reveals layers of basalt toward the north
but no destination, trajectory but no enclosure.
and a surface of laterite to the south;
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Splicethe 05 iconic joint Studio Two
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Threshold Henal Jain
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Henal explored a materiality of points and folds as a method to investigate the Western Ghats as a (Above and Below) Splicing the Spaces, Malpe, St Mary’s Island and Agumbe.
threshold, changing the perception of the Ghats as merely a biodiversity hotspot. It opened new grounds for new interpretations in reading the landscape. Where a filter can be reductive, spatial, momentary and resistant, adapting the lens of a threshold can lead to ideas that are complex, help us understand the temporality of the systems and adapt to change.
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(Below) Complex networks of movements constantly affecting the Image. (Right) Plotting a Threshold.
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The Western Ghats are rarely ever viewed for what they could be - a giant ‘colony’. It is a ground on which multiple interactions and simultaneous moments occur, and they all operate together as a whole. Priyanka’s project viewed the Ghats as a large super-organism that is an amalgamation of a field of movements. Through this lens one can see the Ghats as not just a hill range or an escarpment, but as a collection of moments and movements.
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Movements of the western Ghats Priyanka Mehta
(Left) Conjuring a Movement, as a joint in between two moments in time. (Above) Photographs taken at the same place at different times, extraction of details from every frame.
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(Above) A Visual and conceptual exploration of movements of a super organism. (Below) A assemblage of movements that were extracted across the Ghats.
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Reconstruct Sreemoyee Roy Choudhury
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(Above) Plot of a new framework that informed the project at every level. (Left) Visual styles.
Sreemoyee’s project sees the Western Ghats as a field of events, where each event is staged by an actor, which is activated by an agent, and engaged by a viewer. They are constituted as much by the memory of the viewer as by the actors that participate within it. Using storytelling as a medium, she created an intervention to challenge the current education system and the way it projects the environment as problems, while helping children understand the value of their experiences and memories in finding new ways of learning about places.
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(Above) Journal entries.
(Above & Across) Visual style explorations.
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From geological traces of continents being pulled apart, to traces of plough marks in a paddy field, the Western Ghats is a “Field of Traces” left by practices that dwell in multiple grounds. Sanika saw the landscape of the Ghats through a new lens constructed by the taking apart of a splice. All around, there is a co-existence of practices. Living practices of harvesting, building, walking, and worshipping, that make the land dynamic by their own unique traces. This project reimagines the Ghats as a Field of Traces imprinted by the variety of practices and activities on the ground. The ‘trace’ emerges as the splice of the ground-practice interaction that constructs landscape.
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A Field of traces Sanika Sahasrabuddhe
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Waves form
Waves crash
Heron fishes
Pebbles move
Waves crash
(Previous Page) Final confection, in the form of a detailed mural. (Right) Process plot showing multiple ground conditions, traces in the ground, and practices that dwell in and beyond these grounds.
Gradient of Traces: Coast to Inland
Water seeps
Trash lines/ gathers
Salt deposits
Barnacles Crabs dwell dwell
Water seeps
Crabs burrow
Sludge remains
Catch unload
ded
Fish catch Rope measured drops
Ice melts
Catch is sorted
Kites fly
Stone Stone carved carved
Stone laid
Chariot tracks impressed
Person draws rangoli
Camphor burns
People walk People worship
Caterpillar forages
Water flows
Water flows
Water stagnates
Spider builds web Cattle grazes
Plants grow
Vehicles run
Cracks Lichen Cattle grows defeacates form Draco dwells
Lapwing nests Cattle defeacates
Walking Firewood Stone is burnt demarcates Building Firewood is collected
Person draws rangoli
Field is burnt
Tractor ploughs
Fish dwell
Water stagnates
Paddy grows
Grass grows
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The long version of a Short Story Adwait Pawar
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This project intends to inspire people to view the Western Ghats through a different lens and give them a new vocabulary to understand the landscape. Adwait’s narrative intends to allude to the relationship between ‘civilization’ and ‘nature.’ The hypothesis for this project is that city, towns or any appropriated spaces of human settlement are actually the inside of a “bubble”, while the Ghats form the outside. With this new view, he hopes that educators and policymakers will start looking at the Ghats differently.
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(Previous page) Final spreads from the illustrated story book. (Left) The story board. (Bottom) Plot of the different stages of the bubble, across different places.
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(Above and right) Final pieces of fabric. (Below) Abstractions from the plotted gradients. (Immediate left) Gradient of patterns /textures.
The aim of Namrata’s project was to construct an intervention that reveals the ‘interdependencies’ within the complex environment of the Western Ghats. Her lens was created through an exploration of textile weaves - of the warp and weft. This lens brings to light the nature of interdependencies between the elements being viewed and their gradients. The final works produced show the Western Ghats as a layered fabric where the base fabrics are defined by the particular interdependency, and the overlays are defined by the nature of the gradients.
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Fabric of the Ghats Namrata Singh
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(Above) Base Prints, (Below) Final prints.
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(Above) Extracting the gradients which lie on the infrastructure in the plot. (Left) Overlays of fabric.
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Exhibition
The Srishti Collective 2015 held at Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore.
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While running the studios, much discussion began at the faculty-level on: the role of design as inquiry opposing the mainstream application to market, a revealing the need for a new ground for the humanities, and the relationship between them. Many conversations among the collaborators/interlocutors resulted in creating new spaces to dialogue and develop that which can emerge from the particularity of place, to construct new knowledge generated from imaging and its language, by design. A symposium and a journal have emerged as platforms for thinking through current problematics and activating the imagination.
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Symposium
There has been a growing awareness that in many domains of design and the human sciences—geography, politics, ethics, the visual, the social—not only the conceptualizations of the domains but our practical, passionate doings
The task is to understand both the distortions and
in the domains are distorted and cramped by
the superimpositions that have rendered invisible
the dominant frames received either through
different ways of conceptualizing the domains,
the colonial past or contemporary disciplinary
which may be geographical, ethical or aesthetic.
lenses. The distortions are all the more acutely
We believe that like thought & everyday practices,
felt in domains where there were alternative
scholarly discourse too is boundless and open.
frames, where the very structuring of the lived
Non-disciplinarity — the freedom from territories
domain was different. We see the effect of such
and boundaries that bind thought and practice to
distortions in our social world where the fine-
compartments of knowledge — will free scholars
grained practices that sustained the social and
and practitioners from constraints and normative
ethical world have been distorted and rendered
requirements and open possibilities for radical
invisible by disciplines that had no resources
thought. Our goal is not an avant-gardist
to understand them. But such dissonances are
rejection of all that is traditional, inherited or
common whether we take eco-cultural spheres,
historical. Nor do we aim to renounce
the built environment, political and educational
philosophers, theoreticians and scholars of past
institutions. In domains as far apart as geography
and present. Instead, our aim is to rescue and
and ethics, but also in many other domains we
highlight non-disciplinary ideas, frameworks,
encounter a problem that is both cognitive and
practices and theories from ancients and
practical. How to understand this dissonance in
moderns alike to enable us to think anew. We
different domains and to practically and creatively
bring together a small group of distinguished
deal with it is a question that we can no longer
practitioners and theorists from a variety of
evade. Implicitly or explicitly the models have
disciplines to explore the new ground in a day
come from elsewhere (colonial inheritance in the
long workshop to be held in Bangalore. The task
case of education, politics and administration, but
for all was to: 1) identify the problem in their
more generally western frames in other domains)
domain; 2) describe their ways of dealing with
and the implicit frame has had to assert itself
the dissonances; 3) articulate their sense of how
obliquely, often only in the way we have had to
alternative framing can begin to develop; and, 4)
cope with the inhospitable structures. The result
discuss the feasibility of starting an e-Journal.
often enough has been distortion, of both the imposed structures and the resistance.
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Images of Symposium held at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
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Journal Unbound ‘Unbound’ is a non-disciplinary e-Journal of Design Discourse and Practice. We call ourselves non-disciplinary because thought and everyday practices are unbound. They operate simultaneously on contiguous and often overlapping domains. We believe that the assertion of a discourse and practice that is non-disciplinary is an act of design, forging a trajectory toward not just thinking anew but also acting anew in a realm unbound by professions that territorialize disciplines and change. In this it breaks from design as a privileged and bounded field, elevating it to an everyday practice of non-disciplinarity. The journal will be published in the Summer, Monsoon and Winter each year.
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