A Field of Traces
Reimagining The Western Ghats| Splice: The Iconic Joint
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A Field of Traces Reimagining The Western Ghats| Splice: The Iconic Joint
Diploma Project 2015 Documentation by Sanika Sahasrabuddhe under the Law, Environment and Design Laboratory at Srishti School of Art Design and Technology.
Project Mentors: Ms. Deepta Sateesh, Dr. Dilip daCunha
This creative work is shareable under Creative Commons license 3.0
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For Aajji
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Table of Contents Acknowledgements................................................................9
Demonstration: Creating A Design Intervention................ ..47 Ideation................................................................................48
Introduction.........................................................................11
Immersion: Developing A Lens............................................ 25 Splice/Reimagining Landscape...........................................13 Material Exploration............................................................14 Crafting an Instrument........................................................20 Immaterial Exploration........................................................21 Diagramming and Visualising Plot......................................22 Articulating Lens..................................................................23
Visual Confections...............................................................49 Final Design Intervention....................................................50 Topography and Geography................................................52 Development of Text...........................................................53 Visual Style Exploration .....................................................56 Final Visual Treatment........................................................58 Reading the Confection.......................................................62 Production...........................................................................68
Places. Grounds. Practices....................................................24 Scope And Extent Of The Trace..........................................69 Exploration: Traversing The Western Ghats.......................29 The Field Trip......................................................................30 Looking at Landscape..........................................................31 Project Proposal...................................................................32 Multiplicity...........................................................................37 The Plot...............................................................................38 Language of Traces............................................................40 a. Trace b. Gradient of Traces Experience and Creating Data...........................................44 Insights................................................................................45
Trace through 5 Qualitas.....................................................72 Understanding Policy and its Language...............................73 A Method of Recording Landscape.....................................74
Conclusion...................................................................75 References...................................................................77
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Acknowledgements Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, under the resilient leadership of Dr. Ms. Geetha Narayanan, will always be the home of new learning that taught me that ‘Change is the only constant’ in its true essence. It has been a true honour to be a part of this design education. This diploma project is more permanent than ephemeral in many ways. It is a new way of seeing at not just landscape, but everything. Once initiated into this way of thinking, led by this unique methodology, I find it impossible to think any other way. I am ever grateful to Ms. Deepta Sateesh, who has efficiently mentored me through the journey of not only this project, but also the bigger jouney of the Law Environment and Design Laboratory that she has led. Dr. Dilip daCunha, is a teacher par excellence. His inspiring words and unique way of thinking are the foundation of my project. Dr. daCunha and Dr. Anuradha Mathur have done pioneering and inspiring work in reimagining landscape that has given us ground for our diploma project. Dr. Vivek Dhareshwar, Ayisha Abraham and Dr. Pithamber Polsani gave us valuable feedback that helped enrich and build our project to bring it to the level it is at now. Their critique of our design, lens and language during the seminars was always encouraging. The Masters program students of University of Pennsylvania, travelled with us to the field, and we were fortunate to the landscape through their ‘lenses’ as much as our own. Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) is a wonderfully informative and hospitable establishment that opened up the complexity Agumbe rainforest to us. The researchers and staff at ARRS made our experience in the field memorable. Ms. Manjula Kandula, my tutor, is kind, encouraging and wonderfully caring. Sharing my project work with her was a pleasure. I would like to thank Dr. Muthatha Ramanathan and Amitabh Kumar for their feedback that helped me further my project when I was stuck. Ms. Arpitha Kodiveri, has always encouraged me since the beginning of the LED Lab to look beyond conflict and unpack the law without fear. My delightful friends and class mates, famously called the ‘Splice Girls and Agent P’: Priyanka Mehta, Sreemoyee Choudhury, Henal Jain, Namrata Singh and Adwait Pawar, have taught me much about work and collaboration in the last few months. It was wonderful sharing a studio with them. Simran Monga and Kopal Joshy are the most amazing friends and co-dwellers who endured my panic attacks and loud existential meltdowns. Simran Monga encouraged me and been there through the entire semester. Shambhavi Singh is an inseparable part of my diploma project. She is a sister and devil’s advocate. Chaitrali Bhide, Spenta Wadia, Devangana Dash, Zoheb Qazi and Tanvi Ajinkya have been around for all the highs and lows and for sharing ideas and fears. Aai and Baba are the best parents. Aajoba and Aaji have been forever present by my side. And Anuja Abhyankar never fails to give a valuable lesson. A support system can be strong and robust even from a thousand kilometers away.
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Introduction The Western Ghats is many landscapes. It is a landscape of dynamic practices, emerging grounds and transformative processes. It is a context of vast ecology as well as local cultural practices that are not very separate from each other. UNESCO, based on the recommendations of the Gadgil Report declared the Ghats a World Heritage Site to acknowledge its biological diversity. The Kasturirangan report published, after the Gadgil report has de-politicized the Gadgil report and made way for what is termed as ‘developmental’ activity. The Western Ghats is a field of resources, naturally, with multiple stakeholders. The working committee reports drafted by Gadgil and Kasturirangan respectively, in their own ways define ‘zones’ in this field broadly as natural or cultural landscape. While traversing the field, however, what is revealed from the experience and understanding is the robust interdependence of nature and culture, blending in ways inseparable and integral to the living landscape.
The Ghats are nuanced with policy from the top down and ground-practices from the bottom up. While demarcation and delineation is the language of policy, reimagining the landscape as a splice, a joinery of two elements that make a third, was the operation driving this project to construct a new design possibility, with a new lens and vocabulary to reimagine and articulate the Western Ghats. Our world is abundant with pressing issues, and there are constant efforts to make our world a better place against all odds. Einstein famously said that we couldn’t solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them. So leaving problem solving aside, the Splice Studio journey was about the prelude to addressing issues and understanding them rather than rushing to solve them. And the most effective way to do that was to begin with seeing a thing as a thing: not what is said of that thing.
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Immersion: Developing A Lens
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Designers Dilip da Cunha and Anuradha Mathur pioneer this new way of looking at contentious landscapes. Their work is a magnificent inspiration to understand landscape through its multiplicity and in doing so, critiquing a colonial history (in the context of India). The plot as a device to create and arrange information, phototgraphing, inculcating drawing and diagrammimg to see different things in the field, are methods that inspire a reimagination of landscape, starting with the particular to apply it to the universal. This project is highly based on the visual as a medium to construct a design lens.
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Splice/ Reimagining Landscape Beginning an enquiry into landscape, using an idea such as the ‘splice’ that is as vague as it is defined is a way of seeing newer possibilities to image the landscape. Using a ‘particular’ and then finding resonance in the larger landscape is a tool of design as a research method. The methodology is based on the idea of constructing a lens by looking at a particular and then applying it to the universal.
St. Mary’s Island
Malpe
The ‘splice’ is an idea that involves joining two non-similar things to make a third. ‘Splice’ serves as an inspiration to see the value of joining two things to make a third, rather than dividing them with a third, and to see the multiplicity of the landscape instead of categorizing it for a singular quality or purpose.
Udupi
Photo: A transect of the Western Ghats in Karnataka, Mathur / daCunha, Splice Studio 2015
The transverse section of the Western Ghats that is the field of this project, is a landscape of multiplicity. It is a collection of multiple grounds, that are made of multiple materials, and manifold practices have an integral relation with this ground. The ground gets constructed by the marks imprinted by practices, activities and occurrences over grounds.
Agumbe
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Material Exploration
A Concealed Splice The operation of taking apart two sides of a Vecro strap, hence revealing a concealing splice.
We took up the operation of a splice, to initiate an inspiration. We looked elsewhere, at a particular object that brought out the idea of two elements creating or revealing a third. The material splice was a hook and loop fastener. A Velcro hook and loop fastener was a fascinating instance of a splice of two things.
This exploration was furthered by seeing and observing the interaction of various found materials such as bandage, cotton, cloth, bandage and gauge with the hook side of the Velcro fastener. Exploring the material of a Velcro (hook and loop fastener) as a splice (of the hook side and the loop side) brought to attention the interactions in pulling apart a ‘splice.’
In this exploration, I observed and recorded the changes in retention of wetness after a Velcro fastener is pulled apart. (In retrospect, this exploration seems to have a relevance to the idea of the ‘trace’ discovered and explored later in the project)
The moment of taking apart
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Further, taking the hook side of the Velcro as the ‘ground’ and seeing various found materials like; cotton, bandage, gauze interact with the hooks of a Velcro strap showed resistance and retention as forces in pulling apart two elements of the splice. In taking apart two things that adhere to or join with each other, they resist the taking apart and in certain cases retain material being pulled away.
Iteration of the plot for the material splice exploration.
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Opening the Velcro fastener reveals the way the components interact against resistance. Resistance provides a certain level of strength to the material in question. Materials show different resistance while some display retention. With a low resistance, sometimes a material leaves a part of it behind.
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Resistance and retention work along side one another. They depend on how much they can ‘hold’ or ‘leave.’ Furthermore, different materials offer different patterns of interaction with the hook-side of the fastener for a point of resistance to emerge.
Final Plot for material splice
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Top to Bottom: Series of Velcro straps and series of cotton and hook side of Velcro. Instances of different materials being pulled off the hook side of a Velcro, displaying retention and resistance in the moment of taking apart
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Top to Bottom: Both series showing gauge bandage pulled of the Velcro hooks. The two series show different interactions in the same material,
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An Instrument I created a unit/instrument to be able to perform this Velcro experiment repeatedly and record the moments of interaction. The instrument served as a way to make the experiment standardized. Recording Velcro and other materials on this unit, I used the photographing, to create a plot, leading to findings related to ideas of interaction, resistance and retention and ‘taking apart’ to reveal a third.
Bringing out the 'lines' of resistance and retention in pulling part.
The idea of the splice is present not just in the material, but the operation: the act of splicing, in the case the pulling apart of a concealed splice of interaction. It is the OPERATION that is key that begins the enquiry of the idea, more than what the material splice is, HOW it is operated and crafted is the core of the process.
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Immaterial Splice Exploration Splicing strips of film to create a narrative is a wellknown operation. My exploration of splicing to create meaning was bringing together two dissimilar texts about the City of Mumbai, a city in the Western Ghats - one is Maximum City by Suketu Mehta and the other is a short narrative by Pu La Deshpande. They are written in English and Marathi respectively, hence offering two scripts, and since they are written by two different world views, they offer their own ideas about the City of Mumbai. In some instances, the thoughts were ideologically similar, and evidently in some instances far apart from each other. Combining different texts, with different perspectives about the same place was an exploration of ideas resisting or complementing one another. The combination of text revealed a new kind of reading of the place that demonstrated that ‘resistance’ and ‘retention’ are simultaneous.
Note The way the two texts about Mumbai interact to bring together or pull apart ideas of the city, is similar to the ways the two policy reports interpret the Western Ghats landscape. What is said about the Ghats is very often based on the idea of resource management and land use. That is why it is a worthwhile exercise to see a place beyond all interpretations to begin crafting your own language.
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Drawing and Visualizing the Plot Taking the Velcro fastener hooks as ‘ground’ and the found materials as ‘practice’, the instances or moments of interaction assume a character in the terrain. In this diagramming of this imagination, the pulling apart manifests as the plateau, escarpment, coast, island, ocean and other landmasses.
The faulting created this great escarpment that revealed a new ground. The coastal ground of the Western Ghats thus revealed, is a remnant of the breaking apart of continents.
These various manifestations have characteristic material grounds such as basalt, laterite, sand, water, concrete etc. (which incidentally are also the ground material of the place). The Western Ghats escarpment was formed in a moment of rupture between the east coast of Madagascar and the west coast of India.
This design methodology allows imagination of new possibilities. Inspired by the operation of taking apart the material of the Velcro (splice), the moments of retention assume characters such as the coast, island etc. This diagram imagines the transect of the Ghats as a ‘pulling apart’ of landscape to reveal the many ‘grounds’ of the Ghats.
Madagascar
Ocean
Island
Coast
Escarpment
The fact that two joint landmasses revealed a new terrain in being pulled apart is coherent with the terrain that is occupied by many places that reveal new grounds.
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Articulating the Lens A major part of the articulation involved setting a vocabulary for the lens. The lens to see landscape through, along with a vocabulary to call out particular things and characters to see, was the critical tool of this methodology to reimagine the Western Ghats.
The material and immaterial splice explorations led to the construction to see the Western Ghats as a collection of places that reveal a ground through the practices carried out in the ground and the integral ground-practice relationship.
A ‘place’ is the moment in space where the interaction between the ‘ground’ and the ‘practice’ is revealed. Resistance and retention are phenomena that occur simultaneously in the Western Ghats. Measures of retention and resistance have constructed the ground for practices. The value of these grounds can be understood by the marks practices leave.
The diagram of the ‘pulling apart’ reimagination layered on the transect of the Ghats showing the geography. The Ghats is a collection of places that assume character.
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Places. Grounds. Practices
From top to bottom, the rows show grounds, places and practices of a fishing port, a paddy field and a quarry.
The place emerges as a moment of space of the practice on the ground. At the ‘place’, the threesome of ground practice and place becomes extraordinary. Along the trajectory of the practice on the ground, many such places are revealed that substantiate the value of the ground-practice relation and also the extent of the practice. While practices have an integral relation with the ground, there are many practices extended over the ground.
The ground is made complex by these practices and the multiplicity of the ground cannot be overlooked. The great divide between nature and culture ignores the multiplicity of landscape that the lens of ‘the Ghats are a collection of places’ grapples with. I see the Western Ghats as a coming together of a range of grounds from the ocean, beaches and towns to dense forests, fed by the southwest monsoon; the landscape as a collection of many practices, activities and interactions that are carried out in the ground.
A place is a splice. It conceals a ground and a practice: a fish market reveals the ground of water and the practice of catching fish in water. Paddy is a place that yields produce by the practice of harvesting and farming. This practice has an integral relation to the ground of soil.
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The value of these grounds can be understood by the mark these practices leave: marks of resistance and retention. As the plot thickens, along the trajectory of a practice on ground, newer places will be discovered that can be possibly identified in their different conditions at a given time.
Resistance and retention occur simultaneously in an act of taking apart. Traces are made by the grounds’ ability to retain or resist the interaction with the practice. A place is a moment that reveals its ground and its practices in measures of resistance and retention. Figuratively, the place is the moment of interaction between the ground and the practice. Constructing a ‘lens’ encourages seeing new things in the Ghats, in this case, fields of multiple practices that occur on the ground and the extent of these practices that spread across the terrain. The field expands in multiple conditions of grounds from the coast to the plateau. Various practices occur over grounds. These practices are not only human practices but practices and activities carried out by birds, insects, fish etc. The ground is seen through its integral relationship with the practice and not just by itself.
The idea of the trace started strongly emerging in the first iteration of the plot where I was calling the traces ‘marks by practices’
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The Plot emerged as a ‘field’ of multiple conditions of grounds. This is an intermediate stage in the development of the plot, to communicate the lens. From the left is Malpe Fishing Port, St. Mary’s Island and a paddy field.
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Exploration: Traversing The Western Ghats
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The Field Trip The field trip in the Ghats was along a transverse section of the terrain. The landscape manifests itself in abundant multiplicity and diversity. From the rainforest of Agumbe to the island of St. Mary’s, the landscape is manifold, layered and vast. Photographing the multiple ‘grounds’ was to see it in its various conditions, and understand the plural practices corresponding to the grounds too.
From Left to Right: St. Mary’s Island, Malpe Fishing Port, Udupi Temple Complex, Agumbe grassland. The top row of images depict the ‘place’ while the bottom row depict a condition of the ground material.
The landscape was recorded using digital photography, writing and sketching/drawing. The field visit was an approach to explore the landscape through different ‘places’ along with the ‘grounds’ and ‘practices’ they reveal. The nature of complexity of the forest is very different from the temple and also from the fishing port. But there is a coexistence of multiple practices that makes for this complexity.
The forest ground is nuanced and materially varied and dense. It gradually melds with the town of Agumbe. The temple complex of Udupi is extraordinary in the moment of its routine procession and worship. The intricate organization in the apparent chaos of fishing port of Malpe is a place for many phases of the fishing practice that occur simultaneously (right from unloading to transporting)
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Looking at Landscape The triad of the place and its ground-practice is the beginning of enquiring into the landscape. In the Ghats the intent is to look for a place, explore its ‘ground’ in all its conditions and witnessing activities and practices. The scope of the project was to expand this lens, going from particularity to universality, after collecting data from the field, to reimage the Western Ghats as a collection of such ‘places’ that reveal a ‘ground’ and a ‘practice’.
The the way the trace is depicted in this plot, is a kind of an ‘impression’ of the ground, an X-ray of sorts. The trace or mark in shown through and black and white version of the ground condition to see the pattern and texture of the trace.This treatment, also inpired the final design intervention. Seen here is the trace in the leaf bbecause of the butterfly’s activity (feeding)
This enquiry of a ‘practice in a ground’ with relevant evidence and clues will be used to extend the plot and design an intervention in the context of the Ghats. The understanding of the lens became stronger with an observation that places are multiple and so are ground and practices. But the essence of the integral ground practice relationship is common throughout.
Practices are performed in a certain way and temporality, based on characteristics of the ground. Time scales vary across landscape but a particular ground-practice relation has a unique temporality. It is during the field trip that the idea of the ‘mark’ left by the practice in the ground started becoming apparent across the terrain. The value of these grounds could be understood by the mark these practices leave.
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Project Proposal
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Left to Right: Temple, Fishing Port, Island, Paddy. Full plots showing multiple ground conditions, traces in the grounds, and practice that dwell in and beyond those grounds.
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Full plot of the Agumbe grasslands.
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Multiplicity Seeing ground in its multiple conditions, reveals its plurality. A certain material of ground may have the ability to hold different practices of varying temporality. Practices, as well, have the ability to exist in multiple grounds, across a ‘place’. During the field trip, the effort to document ‘ground’ and ‘practice’ distinctly was a conscious one. The intention of recording ground was to show its multiple conditions, texture and materiality. The practices were documented in their various instances of time (as a sequence) in an interaction with the ground.
The practice of a bird such as a kite or heron has the ability to exist in multiple grounds, across places.
The ground of the meadow exists in such multiple conditions, it allows many practices to co-exist.
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The Plot
Waves form
Waves crash
Heron fishes
Pebbles move
Waves crash
Gradient of Traces: Coast to Inland
Water seeps
Trash lines/ gathers
Salt deposits
Barnacles Crabs dwell dwell
Water seeps
The challenge was to arrive at a way of depicting the ground, practice and place to build the plot visual. A combination of text, illustration and photo-works was used to image the ground-practice-place.
Crabs burrow
Sludge remains
Catch unloaded
Fish catch Rope measured drops
The plot is a device, a design tool, to make a framework and then keep anchoring newer data on it. It is a visual reference to the developing of the lens over the time-line of the project.
Ice melts
Catch is sorted
Kites fly
Stone Stone carved carved
Stone laid
The design intervention is based on the vocabulary, findings and narrative of the plot, which becomes the foundation and inspiration for the final form.
Chariot tracks impressed
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Person draws rangoli
Camphor burns
People walk
Caterpillar forages
Water flows
People worship
The intent was to keep the eye away from judgment, but through the lens and vocabulary, see the landscape through particular places, multiple conditions of ground and seen and unseen practices.
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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v. The Language of Traces a. Trace as the splice Through the process of expanding the plot, finally the Western Ghats landscape is field of traces of varying temporality and permanence in multiple physical scales. The enquiry of the trace that I initially called the ‘mark,’ started with observing the different conditions of a leaf based on the activity of the caterpillar. This idea could be transferred to the meadow, where various practices left their marks in the ground (charcoal from burnt firewood gradually becoming one with the ground). In the paddy field too, plough marks, to streams of fertilizer in the water all seemed to reveal something about the practices in the ground.
In a much larger scale too, a geological trace, the columnar basalt in the place of the island assume the role of the moment of interaction of the pulling apart of Madagascar of the Western Coast of India. In measures of the impact of a trace, the trace transforms landscape, in some cases by becoming a new ground. New grounds are hence constantly being revealed in the Ghats. The trace is therefore the joint, the third revealed in the splice of two components. Beginning to construct the plot, allowed for this idea of the ‘trace’ to emerge.
The Western Ghats is a field of places that reveal the integral ground-practice relationship by the imprinting of a unique trace. The trace has a certain temporality and intensity based on the ground-practice pair.
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A field of traces of different intensities and temporality
b. Gradient of Traces A trace represents the ground practice relation. By values of temporality, permanence and intensities, the series of unique traces make gradients of many dualities. The characteristics of traces, such as ephemerality to permanence or distinct to indistinct help call out many possible gradients that bring attention to the traces and in turn shuffle up the various conditions of the grounds and corresponding practices.
Ephemeral traces (paths) become permanent grounds.
The impact or effect of a practice can be described through the trace in terms of its temporality, as opposed to calling the practice destructive or constructive for the terrain. The value of the trace can be seen by how much the trace transforms the landscape. A gradient of traces calls attention to the idea, that through traces impressed, grounds for nature and culture are not separate, but melded. There is a continuum of which nature and culture are interdependent components.
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Coast to Island
Ephemeral to Permanent
Distinct to Ambiguous
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Here, the traces are arranged through a coast to plateau gradient, how they are found geographically. In the next plot, with an understanding of their characteristics, the traces are arranged along an ephemeral to permanent gradient, and further along a distinct to indistinct (form or pattern-wise) gradient. Through this arrangement a trace can prove as a measure of impact, intensity and temporality of the practice in corresponding grounds.
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Experience and Creating Data
The value of traversing landscape adds a layer of understanding that is beyond the visual and text, and is vested in being present in the landscape to gain an experience-near understanding of practices. In the scope of this Studio, the value of experience and understanding was more crucial than secondary data and research. It is the difference really between a shot of a GoogleEarth or GIS image and a observing the multiplicity through walking across landscape. The project is an attempt to see new things in the landscape, beyond the language that has been served to us by a colonial understanding of the terrain that has trickled down into policy making.
With such a history, of layers of interpretation and so many eras of being subject under power of empires, what is indigenous is a matter of choice rather than the truth 1. Insights may offer more value than facts. The photographs, notes and sketches created during the field trip are ways of retaining the experience and understanding of the landscape. Data is not just statistical and quantitative but also experiential and empirical, which is the kind of data that this methodology encourages. The plot allows for such empirical data to reveal findings and insights about the complex landscape.
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Mathur/daCunha (2006), Deccan Traverses.
The mark of the kolam becomes bigger as the artist, adds elements, only to be erased by the festive procession.
Our language must suit changing time and space and re-appropriate itself to enable us to create meaningful interventions to address a contested landscape. The one inherent value of the Western Ghats is its ability to hold multiplicity. Accepting this multiplicity is a valuable way to understand that contention is merely a presence of two perspectives with complementing or resisting stakes.
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Insights The plot served a field to construct the imagined landscape that was derived from experience and understanding. The idea of the ‘trace’ was explored in the development of the plot. Identifying ‘Places’ and reading them through the ‘ground’ and ‘practice’ was the lens that led to the idea of traces. After articulating the lens and vocabulary further, every part of the vocabulary had its own characteristics. Grounds, practices/activities, traces and places have their own definitions in the scope of this project. The ‘grounds’, ‘practices’ and ‘traces’ as defined through the lens set the logic and rationale for developing the plot, and eventually the final design intervention. The field expands in multiple conditions of grounds, from the coast to the plateau. Various practices occur over grounds. And there is a gradient of traces of every ground-practice relation.
The kolam has the characteristic of ‘erasure’ that gives it unique temporality, based on the ground material on which it is drawn.
The ground has multiplicity. It holds multiple practices, human and other biotic practices have the ability to dwell in multiple grounds. Fish dwell not only in the sea, but also in streams of the rainforest as well as stagnant waters of the paddy. A material manifests as a ground for many places. The material exists in many conditions and forms. For instance, basalt is found as columns in the island and rock outcrop in the meadow. The quieter fishing village traced with dry fish dropped from baskets and sludge marks left of concrete. The sand is the ground material of the island beach and manifests as the material of the rangoli. The gradient of traces narrates the character of their varying temporality. 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 that bring out the multiplicity of grounds and practices. Traces may show evidence of practices that leave traces of different intensity and different temporality may coexist in a ground that is able to hold various practices.
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Demonstration: Creating A Design Intervention
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Ideation (Form) While beginning this project my aim was to be able to create a visual communication intervention that is able to convey the process of engaging with the context. All the initial ideas I had, were inspired by what form could demonstrate the lens and the essence of the reimagination and demonstrate my skill set as well.
Print making: The idea of a trace on a ground resonated with the technique of print making. Print making is a series of traces left on the ground of paper, and this medium was fascinating resonant with the language of the lens. Game: One of the initial ideas was to create a game or interaction based on the vocabulary established for the reimagined Ghats.
Ideation for form of the final design demonstration
Book/Editorial: This was a good space to use my skill set of graphic design, and visual communication to narrate the experience of landscape through the lens. Parallax installation: this kind of an installation has portions of an image one in front of another and seeing all of them together is when the image is understood.
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Visual Confections Edward Tufte, in his book Visual Explanations, explains a confection, as a composition that ‘combines images into concocted universes, showing all at once what has never been shown together’.
The idea of a confection was a fascinating reference to show many occurrences played out at simultaneously. I chose to envision the ‘Field of Traces’ in the Ghats using the frame of such a composition that uses a panoptic narrative to show multiple practices.
Creating this imagery was to arrange simultaneously a series of moments in human, biotic and geological time in one visual. It attempts to narrate landscape, accounting observations in the field and an amount of tacit knowledge as well.
Image references from Tufte’s Visual Explanations and Envisioning Information respectively that depict different moments in time in one image.
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Final Design Intervention Eventually, the final form I chose was strongly inspired and taken from the plot structure: a field that shows many conditions. The plot was a bank of data, to anchor design ideas in. It was tool to structure the design intervention, along with inspiration from Tufte’s explanations of depicting information.
I was certain that I wanted to retain the essence of being able to see the part and whole at the same time. The challenge for the design intervention was to be able to demonstrate the world of traces, and to bring out the multiplicity of the Ghats.
The form of a confection is simple. it is a tapestry of many activities. The collection of many activities, and the resultant traces cumulate into a panoptic narrative, that is an attempt to make the viewer experience the lens; to read the particularity in the image, and see its parts, not just the whole.
The confection was composed using insights from the plot of ‘traces’. Once the idea of the trace was established, it lead to including places and practices that reinforce the idea of the lens but were not seen in the field trip. The practice of quarrying is such an example, but is valuable in depicting the idea of traces left by practices. The paddy field seen in the visit, was not in as many stages as has been depicted, but it enforced the idea that the ‘ground’ exists in many conditions.
Rough composition of the ‘places’ coming together to make the field of traces.
The practices and grounds illustrated in the confection are composed to draw connection across places, so that the ‘place’ is not autonomous but a part of the ‘field’ of traces.
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First iteration of the ‘Field of Traces’ in the form of a confection. The final form depicts the ‘particular’ practices and ground conditions recorded in the landscape.
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Topography and Geology
The continents separated and the reimagination of the moments of retention becoming the trace.
In a design demonstration, that narrates the reimagination of landscape, including geology, which is the real foundation of our landscape was very important to really describe ‘ground’. The idea of the ground and its materiality is derived from the complex geology of the Western Ghats. The trace is described as evidence of a geological occurrence, mark of human practice, right to the tracks of organism-level activity. I included the element of topography, to break the ‘pasture-like’ continuity of the confection by adding the Deccan trap formation that is a dominant landform. The traps, like the columnar basalt of St. Mary’s are traces of lava flows and geological occurrences.
Composing the confection with elevation and geographic elements to break a ‘pastoral’ composition.
The vocabulary of ‘ground’ only became stronger by beginning the narrative, with a geological scale right till the scale of a leaf. Water manifests in varied forms in the Ghats. The ground of water is ubiquitous with in a rain-fed terrain. It flows ephemerally in a stream or is permanently stagnated in a paddy. The landscape and its activities including the breaking of landmasses dwell on the ground of water. I included water as the ‘backdrop’ of the terrain of traces.
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Development of Text Before the form was finalised, I was certain of the importance of text to narrate the reimagination and lens. I was able to bring out the interaction and dynamics of ground and practices through writing. The initial iterations included text with the final illustrations. But as the image developed, it became a ‘field’ full of detail. I hence decided to separate text from the image.
There was a constant and conscious attempt to keep the confection away from ‘representation’ and make it an experience of the lens. The text reinforces the experience of the lens its vocabulary. The text is placed separately in the form of a booklet that guides the viewer through this field of traces, describing with words, some of the ground-practice relations. The text describes ‘acts of leaving traces’
“Our solid landscape once flowed like rain flows in a stream. It is as dynamic today as it was a few million years ago. In its solid condition, we have a ground for our practices. Practices of all time spans and different durations play out in a landscape along side on another.”
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Development of Text While I started writing the text, my initial plan was to work with text and image in the piece. As the visual detailed and nuanced, I decided to offer only image to read and no text in the confection. The intent of the text was to allow the 'experience of the lens' of traces and so, I compiled a book of traces as experienced in the field as an extension to the final piece. The book narrates different practices that leave marks, coupled with an image of ground texture, seen in the field. The ‘Field of Traces’ booklet is an extension to the final confection. It is a series of text-image.
Images of pages from the booklet
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Visual Style Explorations The visual style was taken from the visuals collected in the field, and the explorations were an attempt to capture the ‘ground’ in its essence and particularity. Below are explorations were I used photographs to create the texture. The final visual style also uses photographs to create the traces in ground, combined with hand-drawings.
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Final Visual Treatment In the plot of ground-trace-practice, I represented the traces in a gray scale for a sense of the imprint and texture. Taking that visual language forward, I choose to illustrate the traces through a gray scale. The practice and trace are consciously illustrated in different visual styles, to show a distinction. The final composition is a combination of hand drawn and digital treatment.
The elements of various practices depicted in colour (mixed media) drawn by hand and digitally, both.
The gray scale is a combination of hand-rendered textures and photographs to make the texture nuanced and detailed. For the practices, shown in colour, I used an array of media to bring out particular textures. For example, the kite and crab are rendered in dry pastels while the humans are rendered with a combination of watercolours and digital colouring.
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The field of traces in ground, depicted in a gray scale, using hand-drawn illustrations and digital photo-working.
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The images taken in the field, keeping the lens in mind, offered a bank of textures and ‘traces’ that I used in working the final piece. Adjustments were made digitally to photos clicked in the field, made black and white to bring out traces, patterns and marks: sort of an X-ray of the ground, to see traces.
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Media such as dry pastels, colour pencils and water colours were used to illustrate the practices, while the field of traces in gray scale, was created using, graphite pencils merged with photo-works.
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Reading the Confection I composed text, keeping in mind the vocabulary of the lens. It describes the imagination of landscape using vocabulary of the lens constructed. The text that elaborates the ground-practice relation in the instances illustrated in the confection. The image of the confection is illustrated with the intention that the viewer reads it, and not simple sees it. Every texture is nuanced and it attempts to bring out the ‘traces’ in landscape. The booklet of text is a guide to read the imagery, that takes the reader across the landscape in the confection to experience the of the lens of the trace. I found the involvement that written text evokes, alongside such imagery, more valuable than sound narration. I believe a viewer feels more comfortable to walk around holding text, rather than, stand and listen to it. The narrative of the confection is panoptic. The confection shows the whole, while the text allows the reader to explore parts of the field of traces. The confection shows a nuanced boundless field of traces, while the practices are the subordinate element of the confection.
A drawing of the proposed exhibit. The viewer at the confection exhibit with the accompanying text booklet.
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Pre-final Composition of the ‘Field of Traces’, combining the ‘places’ by joining ground and trace.
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The field of practices.
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The field of traces in ground
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From top to bottom: trace in ground, place and practice. From left to right: Temple, paddy, rainforest, island, fishing port, grassland, quarry.
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Production And Exhibition
The final confection was printed on vinyl (first iteration) and then non-tearable paper and then mounted on sun-board to exhibit. Cloth was considered to print on, but paper was finalised to bring out the texture in the image, that would have been subdued by the weave of cloth. A vertical mount allows the audience, to go close to the image and read it. The vertical mount was decided on over a horizontal carpet like laying for the final exhibition. The final confection is 5 feet high and 8 - 8.5 feet in long.
The final confection was printed at Print Express (first) and then KolorKode (final).
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FInal Confection
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Scope And Extent Of The Trace
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Trace through the 5 Qualitas The trace can be described in the 5 ‘Qualitas’. The discovery of the ‘Trace’ was made through the initial exploration of starting to look at particular places. The place is where we start looking for traces. Every trace has a unique temporality. A trace can be identified as a result of an occurrence or practice across multiple scales. The trace is evidence of interaction between ground and practice. The practice (work) reveals the trace as well as product of its activity
Traces can be seen as a way to assess the impact of a practice in ground. The significance of traces is to see the temporality of practices. Could the trace be the vocabulary to see multiple scales. The language of traces is different from the language of policy used to administrate the landscape. Is using the language of the ‘trace’ a valuable method of reading landscape.
The idea of reading the environment through these five qualities was proposed by Ezio Manzini in Philosophy talks at Cumulus, Kalmar. (DESIS Network)
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Understanding Policy and its Language What the language of traces can do is to recognize and understand the adaptive ability of practices to coexist and grounds to hold many practices. Landscape is studied, mapped and represented in a number of ways in different disciplines of study. Land use is one way in which landscape is marked into zones especially in policy. Can ‘traces’ be a new way of reading landscape?
Can the language of traces be used to understand ground of landscape and the impact of practices?
Excerpts from the Kasturirangan report
A trace makes evident the ground material as well as the practice hence bringing out the relationship. The language of Traces, as opposed to ‘land-use’ is a possibility for inclusion of practices opposed to their exclusion. If a practice plays out in a way that its trace is of a relatively ephemeral nature, is it possible to allow that practice, seasonally, or based on a partial time span?
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A Method of Recording Landscape The ‘trace’ may serve as a parameter to gauge and assess impact. It could prove as a mode of operating and recording the changes in landscape through the intensity and mark of these traces. It is illusive to say nature and culture are separate and that human activity can be kept out from a gated forest or inversely that biotic activity can be kept out of a city. It is only with understanding that human existence as well as biotic activity transforms landscape with a very different with its unique trace and temporality.
Visual journal entry drawings to capture the landscape strewn with traces of geology and human and biotic activity
Environmental Impact Assessment is a protocol that is followed to acquire clearance for human practices that hugely transform the landscape, leaving large traces in the ground. Practices can be allowed or disallowed by understanding them with respect to the traces they leave. Land is designated for practices based on land-use. This method however, allows the trace to be the criteria for assessing impact, and enable multiple practices. The trace is temporal. Can we engage design interventions in time, based on the temporality of landscape and not based on spatial or land-based criteria? Can practices be credited for carrying their trace or leaving a trace of no permanence ?
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Conclusion The Western Ghats Project is a wide field for exploration. The ‘Field of Traces’ is only one offshoot of what lies in this way of thinking. The importance of this project was its unique approach to data collection, and the importance of experience and empirical data to arrive at insights. Design is many things. The Splice Project methodology uses design as a research methodology. This project engaged me in the context in a very unique way. It enabled me to be counter-intuitive about discovering this that might be absolutely contrary to popular belief or imagination. Design is not problem solving. Design is about new possibility. A project that does not begin with a problem statement, but an abstract idea allows for many more possibilities of divergent and lateral thinking. This is an important lesson this way of working has taught me. This approach has allowed me approach projects and situations differently, with no preconceived notions about a context. Every context is unique, and through this project, I have explored the possibility of circumventing generalisations about problems and norms. The process and methodology is endless. My design intervention is only a small offspring of the many possibilities that this project has opened up. Studio learning and collaboration are the key valuables of the extensive learning that this project has provided.
The one critique of this work, especially my approach, is that it is highly influenced by ‘what is seen’, the visual. This might bring up the question of discounting other measures of impacts in a landscape. A learning outcome I had hoped to achieve through this project was to be able to create a visual piece with the insights from the plot. The visual is however only a small portion of the idea of the trace. What really engages the lens is the intermediate process of building a reimagination and potential of the plot to grow in size, data and insight. Experience is much more valuable than ‘research’. In the age of information, a project such as this seeks the input of insights and not facts. Insights and facts is the difference between seeing a satellite map and sauntering in the wilderness. Complexity is more rewarding than oversimplification. This project demands making the work bigger than the personal statement. The context is so dynamic, that the work is a reflection of that complexity itself. My offering to the process is my tacit knowledge about the landscape. This project space was unique, and the vast complexity opened up by starting with an object as mundane as a Velcro strap. Being lost in the unknown, as Thoreau describes, is exciting and what makes it exciting is to see the world through things and not what is said of them.
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References Kasturirangan, K (2013) Report of High Level Working Group on Western Ghats Ministry of Environment and Forests Gadgil, Madhav (2012) Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Sahlins, Marshall (2005) The Western Illusion of Human Nature Zimmerer, Karl S.(2000) The Reworking of Conservation Geographies: Nonequilibrium Landscapes and Nature-Society Hybrids daCunha, Dilip & Mathur, Anuradha (2006) Deccan Traverses daCunha, Dilip & Mathur, Anuradha (2001) Mississippi Floods
Tufte, Edward (1997) Visual Explanations
Bhat, Sunanda (Director) (2012) Have You Seen the Arana? (Documentary)
Tufte, Edward (1990) Envisioning Information
Abumrad, Jad & Krulwich Robert, Radiolab (2014), Galápagos (Podcast)
Robbins, Paul (2003) Human Ecology, Vol. 31, Beyond Ground Truth :GIS and the Environmental Knowledge of Herders, Professional Foresters and Other Traditional Communities
Kapoor, Rajat (Director) (2014) Aankhon Dekhi (Motion Picture)
Thoreau, Henry David (1862) Walking Konner, Melvin (2015) The Evolutionary Roots of Altruism on ‘Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others’ by David Sloan Wilson http://www.prospect.org/ Guha, Ramchandra & Arnold, David (1997) ‘Nature, Culture and Imperialism
Nag, Shankar (Director) & Lankesh, Kavita (Director) (2004) Malgudi Days (TV Series)
Diploma Project 2015 Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology