Confluence Thesis Essay by sohini16

Something– put forth

Introduction The following is my atristic statement (edited slightly) that I submited for my application to Boston University Masters programme. Looking back, I thought it would be interesting to include this and see how it relates to my thesis and overall philosophy, working methodology. 01/17/2019 I have been raised in a middle-class nuclear Indian family. My parents were busy tackling adult life's usual humdrum, and my ambiverted nature dissuaded me from socializing. To curb the loneliness, I sought recluse in a world of imaginary characters and hidden patterns in mundane things. I believe those were my initial subconscious steps towards design. My work is an overarching exploration of my own Identity. Understanding myself and my place in the world is essential to me, and I explore these ideas by projecting myself into my work. What started as a pure means of escape slowly transformed into a quest to deciphering the various complications in my personality. Growing up, I had always felt out of place in a sea of sane and logical people; I felt that my thought process was bizarre compared to most, alienating me from the rest of the world. An oddball with a height of 4'11", I thought I wasn't designed to fit in. I came to uncover more sides to my personality in due time and slowly opened up to accept the ingredients of my construction. As I opened up to the world, and it greeted me back with open arms. I realized how much of a difference it makes to love yourself to make others love, respect, and accept you. My work has also evolved with the ebbs and flow of my growth and acceptance towards myself. It became a way of documenting my journey thus far. I am a person who strives for change because comfort never evolved me. One could rephrase this as I find comfort in challenges, taking risks, pushing myself, gathering new experiences. Being comfortable with a certain kind of life makes me anxious about not trying hard enough to grow. I like to be adventurous with my style and process to test my limits. I have inexplicable gravitation towards accuracy with which I have a love-hate relationship, not unlike many other designers or artists. Owing to my humble roots, I never had an overwhelming inclination to luxury and was very much aware of the value of money. I have always Thesis— Sohini Mukherjee

been a sensitive and empathetic person, and growing up in a country like India with many issues at large around me has always made me angry and frustrated. As I come from a family of limited influenciality, these issues were beyond my help at a young age. Being an adult professional, I feel it is my duty to address these issues and make conscious efforts to create change, however small or big. With experience, I have observed that more than creating lucrative work, I obtain true satisfaction with my work if it is about helping a cause that I believe in or seeing that my effort is impacting another's quality of life. As an Ambivert, my focus has never been to run after popularity or seek attention. However, I like to express myself very openly. Similarly, my work does not strive to make a statement but create an impact. I want to explore the uncharted territories of the human psyche and emotions. My work is redolent of familiar feelings that evoke a specific thought process, breaking barriers, melting the ice, creating conversations, constructing a safe space to think past judgment about the worldly ideas of perfection. To tease one's imaginations with questions like "What if?" and "Why not?". Sometimes my work represents studies with the theme of finding beauty in mundanity that deems appealing to me. I love to work on such subjects with hands-on mediums to convey the texture of vulnerability and the organic transience of life. As a creative, I am open to criticism, different perspectives, and feedback. I started with little to no exposure to the design world. However, with experience, I was intrigued by how a few things that might be of utmost importance to me might be something that another person from a different culture or context will not even consider. With my work experience and having worked with a varied range of customers, I have observed the stark differences in the idea of taste and what is considered to be "Good design." Thesis Essay

It made me humble about what I might be regarded as decent work might be looked down upon by someone else who is conditioned to think differently. It makes me happy to live in a world with so many different takes on life and priorities, and I wish to explore this relativity of contexts to evolve my work further. My Interest in Boston University School of Visual Arts came with the sense of openness associated with the institute. The collaborative and explorative atmosphere of Boston University with a varied range of departments, culturally diverse talented students, and an excellent line of faculties makes me believe that the experience of an MFA at such an institution will be the experience of a lifetime and a life-changing one at that. I also love that the students are allowed to work with different mediums and choose electives that best define their directions. It will stay true to my self-exploratory theme of work while giving me the supporting academic knowledge necessary to support my dreams of becoming a designer worth looking out for.

Thesis— Sohini Mukherjee

My work has evolved with the ebbs and flow of my growth and acceptance towards myself. It became a way of documenting my journey thus far.

Thesis Essay

Express + Explore

Sandesh Children Magazine covers by Sukumar Ray and Upendrakishore Raychaudhury

Thesis— Sohini Mukherjee

Part 01— Express I am going to begin with a short excerpt from an article to help explain the context-“Over the years, Calcutta acquired many names: City of Palaces, Black Hole, Grave-yard of the British Empire. In 2001, it was christened Kolkata— slower, rounder, ostensibly more Bengali-sounding.To me, it has always been the city of green shutters. They are a singular fixture of old Calcutta houses. They glow in the steamy heat of the afternoon. Trees sometimes sprout from moldy ledges. Calcutta today is as parochial as it is modern. It lives in the past as much as it lets its past decay. India’s first global city, it is littered with the remains of many worlds: the rickshaws that the Chinese brought; an Armenian cemetery; dollops of jazz left by Americans in the war years.. Calcutta from the start has confronted some of the most acute debates of modernity. Over three centuries, the folly and ingenuity of global capitalism have left their mark on my city, and then, too, so have the Communists, who have been elected to power for an uninterrupted 31 years. Now New India pokes its finger into Calcutta’s languid belly. The old houses are making way for tall glass and steel, their Calcutta Deco details tossed away like fish-heads. The hammer and sickle remains the refrain of Calcutta graffiti, interrupted now by posters for English classes, the hammer and sickle, you might say, of Indian aspiration today. ‘Great cities get old and somehow renew themselves’, said Mani Sankar Mukherji, whose remarkable 1962 novel, Chowringhee, chronicled life inside a roaring mid century Calcutta hotel. Calcutta, he confessed, cannot be called a great city.” [1] My birthplace Kolkata has always been doused with the junk of inheritance. It tries hard to fit into the contemporary narrative with the rest of the world, but what becomes of it, as a result, is a chimera of the old and new. It is common for people living in this city to not know where they stand. Some people dress traditionally but have liberal ideas. Some people look, talk, and appear like a product of western ideologies but are very much conservative at heart. And then Thesis Essay

Sat Isabgol Packaging

Children book cover by K.G. Subramanyan

there are people like me who love this confluence. I love that Kolkata cannot be defined in a box; I love the coexistence of old, new, the mix of cultures, pizza, and phucka, planes, and hand-drawn rickshaws. Kolkata is plural, existing at different times simultaneously; the people from there also often tend to do so. My city defined my dislike to be boxed into one definition, one identity, one way of being as a creator. I like the dichotomy of existing in the old and new; I want my past and present experiences to evolve me organically. I think this summation is beautiful, sometimes flawed, but inevitably human. No one I was related to in my hometown knew what graphic design meant or existed, yet we interacted with it every day—the ripped-off movie posters on the walls of the streets, the hand-drawn political campaign murals. Sandesh magazine covers from my maternal grandmother’s collection, which was a a Bengali children magazine started by Upendrakishore Raychaudhury, they were designed by him and his son Sukumar Ray and this magazine was eventually passed on to his grandson Satyajit Ray. Children’s book covers by K.G. Subramanyan were also an all-time favorite. Movie posters by Satyajit Ray and his films inspired me. Being Bengali meant, our parents proudly expose us to his masterpieces early on in life. I was also attracted to some random packaging that used to be lying around the house. My favorite packagings were from a soap brand called Mysore sandal soap and a laxative company called “Sat Isabgul”! My mother’s family used to stay in Agartala, Tripura. We used to travel there by plane, and the few minutes up in the air used to make me highly ecstatic and curious. I used to re-read the flight evacuation manual every time and remember approving the Indian Airlines logo with know-it-all nods because I could spot the I and A. Years later, I learned that this logo took form at the renowned NID (National Institute of Design), the first design school in India introduced by Charles and Ray Eames. [2] I also had this strange hobby of collecting objects to designate a memory. I remember having a collection of nearly perfect spherical pebbles, which I searched for high and low. I had one which I collected from an amusement park which was almost spherical but slightly elliptical. I had brandished this accomplishment in my school, and the kids got scared and called it “Ghost!”, “God!” and “Magical stone!”. I remember being so proud of it. It used to sit on a cushion that I fashioned for it with a bit of this and that. I waited for

Thesis— Sohini Mukherjee

Satyajit Ray, Devi, Poster, 1960. Image Courtesy of Ray Estate and Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives.

Satyajit Ray, Cover designs for Ekhan, a literary journal edited by Soumitra Chatterjee. Image Courtesy of Ray Estate and Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives.

Thesis Essay

the day when it would grant me magical powers, but alas, that never happened. Similarly, I liked to collect fake gemstones and pearls that peddlers used to sell on the beachside in the seaside town Puri in Orissa. My family loved visiting that place just as much as I hated it, and hence I spent all my energy and attention looking for fallen-out gems in the sand. I did find a few! My parents bought the rest of my collection out of pity for me (they were cheap because they were fake). Likewise, I collected crazy bouncing balls; I was always on the lookout to spot size, color, or pattern that was rarely found anywhere else. My favorite were the ones that were clear with sparkling confetti inside. The craziness continued. I collected pens, tazos, trading cards, comic books, different kinds of figurines of small animals, jewelry, pins, magnets, etc. Eventually, this habit came into my work, and I started basing my work on personal experiences to collect those as memories and document my life and growth as a designer. Apart from all this, I also remember forming a powerful attraction to the handicrafts of Bengal. Leather crafts, block prints, Kantha embroidery, Dokra (metal craft), Pattachitra, and there were so many more! I was always very interested to see what innovative products they made out of these crafts and collected those that I could afford. I loved the idiosyncratic imperfections of the hand attached to the handicraft. These imperfections were a certificate of authenticity in the cusp of a digital age, which was very dear to me. Years later, this love for materiality and authenticity drove me to fall in love with textile design. My love and respect for ornamentation grew as I studied the different handloom weaves and textile crafts. I started appreciating local traditions, culture, and history more deeply. I started respecting the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi which celebrates the imperfect, transient and incomplete. It made sense to me because even though I strived for accuracy in my work, I never had a fascination for perfection. I also loved the product-ness, materiality of textile, and always looking for new ways to evolve the interaction between my audience and my work. Weaving gives me life because it feels like giving birth; the act of creating a brainchild out of raw materials that you can touch and feel and interact with was so magical to me. However, I wanted to learn more to increase the breadth of interactivity in my work over the years and hence decided I wanted to study graphic design. I always thought

Indian Airlines brand manual

Thesis— Sohini Mukherjee

Thesis Essay

visual design was a powerful connection between materiality and perception. My love for motif making got translated into Typeface design, passion for pattern making became love for typography. The love for building a product became the physical/ perceivable form of my work. I was the first amongst my parents to travel outside India. Being a single child was hard for us to deal with, but unfortunately, the unforeseeable global pandemic prevented me from going back home. One and a half years is the most extended period I have been away from home. It feels very disorienting. Having spent a significant amount of time in Boston inevitably meant that I would imbibe some of its culture, visual frequency, and Western taste and ideologies. When I celebrated my culture, I did not intend to exoticize it; when I practiced swiss typography, I did not intend to abandon my roots. It made me feel guilty and gave me an existential crisis. It was difficult for me to accept a divorce from my precious familiarity, my city. However, I fathomed soon enough that my city is woven into my identity; it might be dormant but very much alive.

Glass of Beaujolais, 1994 by Alan fletcher

Part 02— Confluence This thesis is a body of work that celebrates this coexistence, this marriage of native culture, and imbibed culture with the lens of uninhabited, authentic self-expression and documentation of my memories and experiences through design. It explores celebrations, memories, funny incidents, accidents, collections, conversations, reflections, mindfulness and mind space, and finding inspiration in the mundane. According to November Studio[3] , Plurality accepts and respects the possibility of a multitude of experiences, opinions, and ways of life. In that sense, this body of work displays a complete acceptance of the plural narrative. In the article/ interview they mention that Pluralism is a practice that isn’t constrained by a field, style, medium etc. A practice that looks at all opportunities and projects as an excuse to experiment and explore through the widest possible angles. A pluralistic practice is not the same as being multi-talented or multi-disciplinary. It is also about multiple identities, realities and approaches.

Thesis— Sohini Mukherjee

Poster for lecture, 'Things I had no words for', 2017 by Benedetta Crippa

Part 03— Explore

Enshrine – The elements as freedom fighters: Freedom is composed of inseparable connective elements by Somnath Bhatt 2021

Bound togetherworkshop by Elaine Lopez

‘Confluence’ explores the very essence of a system like my design idol Alan Fletcher [4] used to do. It explores the meaning of authenticity in a digital age, or recontextualizing traditions in the current zeitgeist like what Benedetta Crippa[5] and Ishan Khosla [6] practices through their work. It explores the possibilities of personalizing tools, sometimes to use their glitches and errors to quench the need for imperfection like what designer and artist Somnath Bhatt[7] involves in his process. It explores various forms of making and interactivity, engaging the user and creating an intimate, personal experience like Georgia Lupi[7] practices through her expressive data visualizations. Tools and forms of making often determine the outcomes and the feelings they evoke. How can we repurpose that? Karel Martens[8] and Kelli Anderson[9] are popularly known to toy with those ideas. And last but not least, finding ways to engage the audience into the act of designing through finding tools that can easily be accessible for them to participate in. This communication opens up a larger cultural dialogue that is missing in the current design narrative similar to Elaine Lopez’s [10] design practice. This body of work might sound very ambitious, but whether successful or not, it is a manifesto of the work that can most hopefully be expected from me in the future. I would always like to keep unlearning, accepting, and fusing what I know and keep evolving.

END NOTES: [1] https://www.nytimes. com/2009/05/03/travel/03calcutta. html [2] https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/inthe-1960s-the-national-institute-ofdesign-trained-indias-first-designeducators/ [3] https://walkerart.org/magazine/ pluralism-indian-design-november-shiva-nallaperumal-juhi-vishnani [4] https://www.alanfletcherarchive. com/biography [5] https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/ what-is-visual-sustainability-and-

Thesis Essay

how-can-designers-challenge-power-through-form/ [6] Refer to interview at the end [7] Refer to interview at the end [8] https://medium.com/@giorgialupi/bruises-the-data-we-dont-see1fdec00d0036 [9] https://www.maharam.com/products/dutch-clouds/colors/001 [10] https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3erffO75QCs&t=2s&ab_ channel=Typographics [11] https://makingcommonexhibit. com/Bound-Together

About Sandesh Magazine http://aakarpatna. blogspot.com/2016/01/ sandesh-and-satyajit-ray-some-beautiful. html About Satyajit Ray's Graphic Design work https://www.artsillustrated.in/art-heritage/ drawing-new-meaning/