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The Studio Book Reimaging & Re-Imagining the Western Ghats
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2015. Design + Environment + Law Laboratory.
The DEL Laboratory is an initiative of Natural Justice & Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. DEL Lab Logo Design: Sonalee Mandke This project was a collaboration among DEL Laboratory, Bangalore Human Sciences Initiative and Mathur/da Cunha at PennDesign.
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The Studio Book Reimaging & Re-Imagining the Western Ghats 2014 - 2015
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Contents 01 07 pg Who we are 09 pg 02 The Idea behind the intiative
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11 pg
Why the Ghats
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12- 45 pg
Reimaging/re-Imagining 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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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 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
dissonance. In order to maintain the
‘wicked problems’ that stem from complex local
complexities of processes, forms, functions
social, ecological, economic, political and cultural
and relationships, we intend to embark on
issues, and new patterns of consumption that
a design inquiry, a new approach, to explore
impact human values and practices. The divide
new ways of situating, visualizing, and engaging
between government and citizen, development
complex environments. This new approach, we
and environment, and sustainability and
hope, will begin to expose the nature of places
resilience, is widening at a rapid pace, while
and construct new images and imaginations,
our ability to view the complexity of these issues
working from the particular to the larger idea
is limited by current systems of knowledge and,
and vice versa. The objective is to propose a new
as we see it, current ways of visualizing and
approach/model of enquiry, investigation and
representing complex environments despite
engagement that may be applied to inform
the increasing volume of and access to ‘data’.
interventions that do not propagate ‘problems’,
This knowledge and ways has tended to
but are synchronous and build resilience.
oversimplify complexity in order to understand and find solutions. Disciplinary boundaries have further limited the impact and relevance of these solutions, which potentially create and perpetuate
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02
The Idea behind the Project
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03 the Western Ghats The site of investigation is the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats has been the focus of many kinds of research and activism, development and conservation. Without contesting those approaches and activities, we propose a pilot project using design (thinking) as a praxis that integrates and reframes the concerns described above – bringing together the humanities and social sciences, planning and design, law and policy, landscape and the natural sciences. With its recent designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Western Ghats of India has become an extremely contested terrain between environmental and developmental concerns. Rather than perpetuate the environmentdevelopment divide, we propose to reimage and reimagine the Ghats, going beyond its many identities and relationships as a global biodiversity ‘hotspot’ of flora and fauna, one of the oldest cloud and rainforests that are home to rare species of frogs and flowers,
dwindling population of tigers, ancient practices of agriculture and conservation, sacred groves and national parks and the laws that govern them, monsoon catchments, human settlements and the natural resources that support them, all coexisting in a fragile balance in this place that demands negotiation and rights-of-ways in time, multiple scales, practices and relationships – rather than as enclaves and segregation in space. To negotiate the Western Ghats, we propose an interdisciplinary team that brings to the project critical theories and practices, reflections and insights, diverse research interests and experience, to contribute to creating a new way of seeing, representing and engaging in the region; through design and reflexivity, cognition and imagination. The project will be 3-year collaboration among faculty and researchers from the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore.
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Reimaging/re-Imagining landscape Studio One
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The studio imaged and imagined the Ghats
a conflict, a movie, a song. Students were
beyond its many identities as a global biodiversity
encouraged to use techniques such as film
‘hotspot’, a hill range, a geological escarpment,
and text editing, mapping, montaging, joinery,
a mineral field, a unique culture, a cloud and
coding, weaving, etc. To pursue their
rainforest, a tiger reserve, a home of sacred groves,
investigation logically and analogically.
a UNESCO site, a monsoon catchment, etc. Traversing the Ghats Inquiries into a ‘particular’ of the Ghats With the lens, interest and agenda developed To initiate this process, students undertook
through the investigation of a particular ‘thing’,
diverse inquiries into a particular thing, process,
students undertook a journey on the Konkan
event, or rhythm of the Ghats, something of
Railroad– crossing the Ghats, documenting
their choosing. The inquiry required them to
territories, phenomena, conflicts, materials,
construct a lens, an orientation, a condition, and
processes, cultures, and environments along and
set of locations that guided their field work in
across this constructed line.
the Western Ghats. These inquiries became the starting points of visualizing the Ghats as a unique
Initiating Design
terrain, and of articulating a design agenda that engages and transforms this terrain in some way.
In this stage of the studio, students designed an intervention toward changing the imaging and
The subject of inquiry was a choice of one of the
imagining of the Ghats. This intervention could
following: basalt, laterite, a tree (the coconut or
be a film, a book, a device, a sign, an event, an
Palmyra) mangrove, grove, an animal (tiger,
infrastructure, or a place.
leopard,), a migrant community,
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TO UNPACK
The Idiolect of the ghats Ananya Singh Rohit Dasgupta
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lining up
The imagined world that is in our possession is
“Plurality must be practised actively when making decisions that affect people who live differently”
inherited and is never questioned but accepted as the truth. Ananya and Rohit began contradicting this fact by constructing a lens based on a phrase
the evolution of the Kaccha-pakka. The real
from William Blake’s poem “to see the world in a
change then is not in the object itself but in
grain of sand” this also produced the two central
the terms of perceiving it. We are not confused
tenets of their lens, the twin concept of Kaccha
whether the window is made of wood and glass
and Pakka road. After further deconstructing
or plastic or metal. What is recognized is the idea
they shaped the second tenet of their lens, which
of a window. The idiolect then is the unique path
is idiolect. In a certain way the idiolect is really
traced by an object as it is used.
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to draw out
(Right corner) Process plots of mapping the idiolect of the Ghats using field visit. (Above & right) and drawing from it. after field visit
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, while people and the environment that surrounds us at every given point have an intrinsic rhythm which is always left unnoticed. Ruchir and Raheel, explored many different places, such as Udupi, Agumbe and St. Marys Island to bring out the richness and the diversity of the rhythms that resided in the environment that surrounded them. In order tobreak the pre conceived notion, they fashioned a lens into four categorize: Expression, Surroundings, Instruments and Practices, the purpose being to be able to analyse and appreciate the rhythms of the Ghats in a more effective manner.
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Rhythms of the western Ghats Ruchir Gupta Raheel Malkan
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A plot constructed to give a better synthesis of Rhythms in the Western Ghats that they discovered after breaking down the collected data into a time-lapse.
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The transforming malabar Sanika Sahasrabuddhe Shambhavi Singh
(Below) Textural strata’s of part of the Coconut tree, (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 transformation, that leads to an emergence of something extra-ordinary, 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. And so Sanika and Shambhavi
designated as the ‘Western Ghats’ is in reality an
traversed the Ghats through the lens of
expansive web of processes that add, subtract and
commodification, to enable similarities rather
multiply the layers of the region. To generalise a
than differences between species. Through
huge portion of the Ghats under one category is
design intervention, we see the Ghats as a field
to oversimplify the complexity of the field that is
that is resilient by the processes and agents that
interpolated with infinitesimal, yet integral
inhabit it. Every species’ creativity determines
processes that maintain this actively resilient field
the manifestation of the landscape of any biome
of transformation. And transformation is a change
in the world. The ‘strip’ of land that is today
that allows resilience instead of hampering it.
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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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By observing the nature, behaviour and the movement of the elephants from the forest, Shams and Loveena’s project initially started by creating a lens that focused on the movement of elephants, which furthermore leaded them to explore elephant corridors and communication. The infra sounds produced by elephants over a wide distance, travels in a certain path or one may say ‘corridor’. This lead them to explore corridor and its barrier. Using this lens they traversed the Ghats to discover that the world is a network of interconnected paths, from tiny particles to the largest being.
(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.
Whether its veins inside a body – corridor for blood, or crevices on a rock – home for tiny living organisms, the corridor is the action and the barrier brings out the reaction, or the corridor and barrier can co-exist. It is something which is of least importance but something that holds a great significance.
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Making sense Shreya Dugar Shreya Bhatia
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Plots capturing either one of these moments: 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 (in the place itself). But even our senses have certain limitations; they can only perceive information that they are
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native to understanding. Using this lens Shreya and Shreya explored the Ghats to discover that the function of one sense cannot be interchanged with another, not naturally but to be able to expand the scope of our senses such that it expands our perception.
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Plot imagery 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 energy processes by extracting colour values. (Right) Deconstructing the element ‘Laterite’.
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The idea of the datum started off as a very solid, almost unquestionable measure of studying landscapes. Koyal and Aditya observed the metamorphosis of this concept from a strongly
Data Strata Koyal Chengappa Aditya Bharadwaj
defined term to a fluid and negotiable space. They began by exploring how laterite is perceived as a geographical entity, further abstracting it to something permeable and unsolidified. The datum a geographical tool was introduced to foster the explorations. This in turn helped delve into different properties like metamorphosis, porosity, humidity, surface textures, saturation and eventually leading it to observing energy processes by extracting colour values.
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(Above) A plot is a blueprint of the data amassed and organized before the development of a final representation. The four plots explore Wetness through laterite, Saturation of ground cover, Clearings acknowledging sky, and the Folds containing water. (Right) the final representation in use.
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Trunket Roshan Shakeel Sudeep Vashistha
TOKENS, SMALL
CARDS, MEDIUM
(Right) The set of cards the game box comes with. (Below) The different kinds of elements presented to the players.
STARTER CARD
HYBRID CARD, LARGE
Trunket is a visual card game for two to three players, created with the ideas of pattern, complexity and scale. Roshan and Sudeep’s travel through the Western Ghats inspired and informed this game. Through the lens of Scale and Time—developed over the course of this project they analysed the diverse environment 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 kinds of combinations. (below) How the game play looks
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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Trunket set, with ‘Rules of Play’ book and set of cards ranging from small to large.
Analysis and further mapping created a ‘plot’, a visual representation of the modular set of elements in the landscape that linked with each other over varying scale. The plot truly becomes activated, however, when the element of time is also in play—becoming a dynamic, collaborative game that re-imagines this complex, ever-evolving landscape.
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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, with elements of 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 exhibit in Agumbe. A total of about 150 visitors, from diverse cultural and economical 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 the visitors of the Srishti exhibition held in Bangalore (Below) Shreya and Shreya presenting the project ‘Making Sense’
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(Above) Child attempting to play 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 section 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 went along,
explorations in deeper and more critical
as it was the first time such a studio was conceived
understandings of place and its construction.
of 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
toward the north and a surface of laterite to the
hills on the west coast of India covered with
south. A threshold that allows the SW monsoon
monsoon forests, a repository of minerals, a
to come through, a moisture-laden wind
UNESCO world heritage site and a biodiversity
that drops large amount rain between June and
hotspot. In this studio, however, the Western
September on its way to the Himalayas. A ‘wild’
Ghats was a splice: a joint of two things that does
belt that generates networks of roadways, railways
not call attention to itself so much as to the new
and airways to draw people from the urban
‘singularity’ that it creates. It is common to hear
centres on the Arabian Sea and the Deccan
the word splice used to describe the taping of two
Plateau – people looking for ‘nature’, vacations,
celluloid strips in making a film, the tying of two
recreation, adventure and research. A ground that
ropes in extending a length, the joining of two
reveals veins, strata and ore of coveted 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
the connecting of two pieces of music to make a
Sea and the Deccan Plateau. A biodiversity
performance. To say the Western Ghats is a splice
hotspot that calls attention to an endangered
is to see a coast that calls attention to a land-sea
planet. The singularity initiated by the Western
gradient. An escarpment that unites the ground
Ghats in each of these cases has a beginning but
beneath the Arabian Sea and the Deccan Plateau
no end, direction but no destination, trajectory
along an N-S shear that reveals layers of basalt
but no enclosure.
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Splicethe 05 iconic joint Studio Two
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Threshold Henal Jain
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Henal used points and folds as a method of (Above and Below) Splicing the Spaces, Malpe, St Marys and Agumbe.
investigating the Western Ghats through a
be reductive, spatial, momentary and resistant,
threshold that changes the perception of the
adapting the lens of a threshold can lead to
Ghats as merely a biodiversity hotspot.
ideas that are complex, help us understand the
It opened new grounds for new interpretations
temporality of the systems and adapt to change
in reading the landscape. Where a filter can
effectively.
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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 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 time zones, Extraction of detail from every frame
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A large frame of movements documented and extracted across the Ghats
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Reconstruct Sreemoyee Roy Choudhury
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(Above) plotting the main structure that became the back bone of the project(Left) Final representation of visual styles
Sreemoyee’s project takes a different view of the Western Ghats. She sees them 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 talks about the environment as a problem, while helping children understand the value of their memories in finding new ways of learning about places.
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(Above left & right) Final illustration, (Right below) presentation of Final outcome. (Left) brainstorm doodles and form exploration.
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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 on multiple grounds. Sanika’s project looks at the landscape of the Ghats through a new lens. 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 re-imagines 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 practice 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 and explain them. To this end, Adwait has written an illustrated novel, which alludes 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, (Right) Plot of the Storyboard (Left) Story board itself
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(Above, right) Final pieces of fabric (Below) Using pen strokes to abstract from the gradients (Immediate left) to create patterns /textures.
The aim of Namrata’s project is to construct a lens that communicates the interdependencies within the complex environment of the Western Ghats. There are events that are actually happening in the Western Ghats which go unnoticed. This lens brings to light the events within the landscape and the nature of interdependencies between the elements involved in the events. The Fabrics of the Ghats is a project looking at the Western Ghats as a layered fabric where the base of the fabric is defined by the interdependency and the layer is 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.
By using pen stroke, Namrata traced out the interdependencies seen through the plot. This further helped in defining the pattern of the base fabric.
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(Above) extracting the gradients which lie on the infrastructure in the plot, raising the possibility of interdependencies within the landscape.
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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 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
imposed structures and the resistance. The task
in the domains are distorted and cramped by the
is to understand both the distortions and the
dominant frames received either through the
superimpositions that have rendered invisible
colonial past or contemporary disciplinary
different ways of conceptualizing the domains,
lenses. The distortions are all the more acutely felt
which may be geographical, ethical or aesthetic.
in domains where there were alternative frames,
We believe that like thought & everyday practices,
where the very structuring of the lived domain
scholarly discourse too is boundless and open.
was different. We see the effect of such
Non-disciplinarity—the freedom from territories
distortions in our social world where the
and boundaries that bind thought and practice to
fine-grained practices that sustained the social
compartments of knowledge —will free scholars
and ethical world have been distorted and
and practitioners from constraints and normative
rendered invisible by disciplines that had no
requirements and open possibilities for radical
resources to understand them. But such
thought. Our goal is not an avant-gardist
dissonances are common whether we take
rejection of all that is traditional, inherited or
eco-cultural spheres, the built environment,
historical. Nor do we aim to renounce
political and educational institutions. In
philosophers, theoreticians and scholars of past
domains as far apart as geography and ethics,
and present. Instead, our aim is to rescue and
but also in many other domains we encounter
highlight non-disciplinary ideas, frameworks,
a problem that is both cognitive and practical.
practices and theories from ancients and
How to understand this dissonance in different
moderns alike to enable us to think anew. We
domains and to practically and creatively deal
wish to bring together a small group of
with it is a question that we can no longer evade.
distinguished practitioners and theorists from
Implicitly or explicitly the models have come
a variety of disciplines to explore the new ground
from elsewhere (colonial inheritance in the case
in a day long workshop to be held in Bangalore.
of education, politics and administration, but
The task for them would be to a) identify the
more generally western frames in other domains)
problem in their domain b) describe their ways
and the implicit frame has had to assert itself
of dealing with the dissonances 3) articulate
obliquely, often only in the way we have had to
their sense of how alternative framing can begin
cope with the inhospitable structures. The result
to develop 4) discuss the feasibility of starting
often enough has been distortion, of both the
an e-journal.
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Images of Symposium held at Srishti Institution od 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.
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