Cityspinning

a poster

SMS a query to a local weather station. Receive a reply with the temperature, humidity and noise levels of the spae. Decide if you want to go there or someone else.

Maybe a good place for a quiet evening is Khirkee and a good place for a drift is Chandni Chowk and and good place to sweat is Connaught Place?

an introductory graphic for the project

Often it is just a question of putting one up.
But after it is stretched a claim is made.
And accepted.
A claim to shade. A livelihood. Space on the street. Protection from rain.

And then in some months, it will get torn. And replaced. Or patched.
CANOPY scripts some stories in between

CANOPY is a series of temporary (flexible, mobile, sturdy), multi-purpose roofs for shops on Indian streets.

The first set of canopies are for tea-shops in Chandni-Chowk (New Delhi) and will attempt to have these features:

1. water collection (rain, dew, fog)
2. storage
3. marking (creating an identity for the tea-shop through art on the canopy)

Some drawings and sketches will be posted soon.

Day 6: responsibility of continued care and documentation of the farms, plans for next time, sharing contact details, feedback, plans/ideas

We talked about how each child will care about his plants, tried to gather some feedback about the process and discussed ideas for next time. I described the soil workshop to them and discussed the concerns behind it.

I saw the design for your self-watering container garden on the CitySpinning/CEMA website this past summer, and since I was going to be working with kids and literacy on a native reservation in rural Canada, I decided to “borrow” the model.  We wanted to base literacy activities on eco-literacy and create an awareness of the local bio-region as well as foster healthier and self-sustained eating habits.  Here’s the area we went to on a map of Canada, and though it might not seem that rural, if you consider that most of the Canadian population live near the border, trust me…

So anyway, not knowing much about the feasibility of using local soil, since the land is mostly muskeg, we brought two giant bags of potting mix and a wealth of seeds with us on the plane.  The captains (who had to load the plane) didn’t seem too impressed, but we were giving them about 500 CDN each for a two-hour flight, so we didn’t think too much of it.  The ages groups we were working with were 5-9 year olds and 10-12 year olds.  We found many empty water containers up there because although they don’t have much in terms of supplies on reservations in Canada, they almost all have a water treatment facility, so the design was really useful for that.   I made a kit for groups of four kids, containing a sawed container, seeds, popsicle sticks and arrows for marking, an 8″ by 8″ piece of cotton cloth for wicking and a step-by-step “how to” instructional page, so that they could figure out by themselves how to put it together.  Looks like they turned out all right, no?

 

 

We planted zucchini, chives, beans and radish seeds, and the radish seeds actually sprouted after only three days!  The zucchini and bean plants grew to over 4 inches by the third week, and the kids would run in and track the progress of their plants each day, balancing precariously on a chair so they could see better.  It was nice.  Even the staff at the school where we were running the program became interested in making their own, so I gave them some soil and seeds as well.  This year, the community is planning on building a greenhouse behind their school, and they said that it would be useful to incorporate the container gardens.  Here is a picture of the container gardening page from the “plant book” we compiled (now in their school library for reference):

overall, good design, thanks.  Pictures of the fully-grown plants, soon to come…

Day 5: containers (all kinds… bought from a flea market), sow seeds, audio blog activities, work on the “public fruit map” @ googlemaps

From a nearby flea market I managed to get some petis (wooden cartons used for transporting and storing fruits and vegetables. With a few modifications, the petis were usable as containers to grow plants in. We spread gunny bag at the bottom of the petis, put a mixture of soil and compost in it and then sowed the seeds.

The “Delhi Public Food Map”:

View Larger Map

Photos

Day 4: prepared more soil, invite a gardener to visit, sow seeds in baskets + pots, post the group’s experience on the audio blog, talk about the “public fruit map (delhi).”

From the nearby Qutub nursery, I requested the head gardener, Ram Shankar, to come over to the shelter and demonstrate and explain to us the process of sowing the vegetable seeds and preparing the seedlings. I am interested in seeing if I can get the children connected to the gardener community over the long term. I see a lot of potential there for exchange of knowledge and skills.

Later we started talking about making a map of fruit which the children had seen or eaten in the public spaces of Delhi. The children described jamun, banana, amrud and mango. They also described temples, gurudwaras where they go food for free on a regular basis. We worked on a map of many of these places on Day 5.

Day 2: a simple discussion on nutrition, diet and vegetables. in simple flower-pots we sowed chilli, radish and spinach seeds.

Day 3: get baskets, setup baskets, get containers made, talk to neighborhood gardeners, put audio recordings on the Internet

Read more about the workshop at http://st.ation.in/wiki/projects:invisible-farm

More about invisible farm at: http://st.ation.in/wiki/projects:invisible-farm

Today we talked about growing vegetables and why, „unknown“ friends and sharing, mapped places around their shelter where they can grow vegetables and learnt to record short audio narratives using audacity.

Mitti Chakkar (Hindi), Soil circle (English), exploring urban soil ecology

An effort to sample/archive soil from public spaces around Delhi, grow mustard plants (sarson) in it. Sarson acts as a phytoremediation agent and cleans the soil of toxins like Lead by storing it in its cells instead.

For a detailed description and find out more about the effort go here: http://st.ation.in/wiki/projects:soil-workshop

I will post some sketches from my note-book soon.

updated: September 8th, 2008

BLIP is now open!

I am initiating and curating BLIP in collaboration with Khoj. The first few projects by four artists (including me) from Baroda, Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai are up on the site now. Read about the project here and about the participating artists here.

BLIP is an inter-disciplinary platform for prototyping new models of “spaces for autonomy.” Projects and interventions happening all over India are coordinated through a web-site and are documented in the blogs and photo galleries.

Each year [from this year onwards] invited artists, architects and others respond to themes posted by BLIP and receive some support for their projects. The theme for BLIP 08 is “alternative cultural spaces.”

One of the objectives of the programme is to enable groups of artists to work on projects where they live and at the same time initiate discussions/collaborate with their peers around the country by documenting their work on the web. Participating artists from India would hopefully discover the place of web publishing (blogging etc.) and sharing in context of their artistic workflow and contribute more to the cultural commons on the Internet and beyond.

I am working on a bamboo bus as a part of BLIP.

Will post news about BLIP and my project in the coming weeks.

A big thanks to Khoj for making this happen!

Note: In the coming month the BLIP site will be shifted to the Khoj server and integrated with the Khoj web-site. The above link will then re-direct to the new site.

The Pioneer (New Delhi Edition) published a feature on the “Voice” project on June 21, 2008. Its been written by Timsy Jaipuria.

Was happy to be a part of some conferences, workshops and forums at the International Symposium 0f The Electronic Arts (ISEA) 2008 in Singapore.

I presented the PetPuja project at the Urban Climate Camp organized by FutureSonic,

presented some scenarios for support-structures for new media arts in India at the “ASEF Mini-Summit on New Media Arts Policy & Practic” organized by the Asia Europe Foundation (ASEF) along with the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA). I was re-presenting Khoj from India.

I also had the wonderful opportunity of being a part of “Luminous Green : Reflecting on the role of the arts, design and technology in an environment of turbulence” organized by fo.am and others.

More notes about some of the meetings and interactions there soon. Thanks to Khoj for making this possible!

The message behind the jacket says: “Yeh meri jagah hai” (this is my place).

The old Yamuna bridge is a two-level bridge (one for railway, one for traffic). It has long been declared to have outlasted its life-time and it actually wobbles vigorously when traffic or trains pass. With the Yamuna river having steadily degraded over the years, the bridge has become many more things: a patch of darkness, a shelter (under the bridge we found many temperory hutments). Being there I could sense decay and neglect. This performance emphasised the marginal space I occupy in Indian society as an artist.

on the bridge

under the bridge

sitting near one of the houses

The message behind the jacket says: “Yeh meri jagah hai” (this is my place).

In a marketplace like Basant Lok, the perceived value of space (occupancy, advertising) being so high, this performance is a study of how this space is used in different ways everyday and a demonstration of some ideas of how this space can be apropriated and used.

in front of the vodafone store near nirula’s

in the lobby of the axis bank, somebody’s temperory bedroom

in the window of the priya cinema

The message behind the jacket says: “Yeh meri jagah hai” (this is my place).

In a marketplace like Basant Lok, the perceived value of space (occupancy, advertising) being so high, this performance is a study of how this space is used in different ways everyday and a demonstration of some ideas of how this space can be apropriated and used.

in front of the vodafone store near nirula’s

in the lobby of the axis bank, somebody’s temperory bedroom

in the window of the priya cinema

The message behind the jacket says: “Yeh meri jagah hai” (this is my place).

With this statement, I was responding to the way refugee communities under political asylum go through the process of re-creating their “place” in an alien country. The environments I stand in and walk through speak of the rich culturally assimilated world they live in.

a neighborhood TV-watching booth. they are watching a Tibetan-language channel.

talking to a student near a wall used for demonstration/protest posters

another “wall of protest”

the Tibetan flag and a drunk guy on on the pavement

at the entrance/exit of the “refugee colony”

The message behind the jacket says: “Main ujala hun” (I am the light).

I was interested in performing there because no infrastructure exists in informal settlements like Okhla. Most of the streets are dark or lit up by privately set up lights/peripheral lighting from homes.

explaining the project to some curious onlookers near a tea shop

walking near some embroidery factories

another conversation and a kid trying to read

walking past people bathing on a street

standing near a dark patch, mimicking a lamp-post

standing again

a lot of activity in the only lit-up square. I got two requests for similar jackets!

The message behind the jacket says: “Main ujala hun” (I am the light).

I was interested in performing there because no infrastructure exists in informal settlements like Okhla. Most of the streets are dark or lit up by privately set up lights/peripheral lighting from homes.

explaining the project to some curious onlookers near a tea shop

walking near some embroidery factories

another conversation and a kid trying to read

walking past people bathing on a street

standing near a dark patch, mimicking a lamp-post

standing again

a lot of activity in the only lit-up square. I got two requests for similar jackets!

Across last month at Khoj, I worked on a processing sketch titled, “Before I Visit Vidarbha.” It attempts to carry forward my exploration of urban food systems as a part of the PetPuja project.

Background: Some 90,000 farmers have killed themselves in parts of India. Many reasons have been ascribed to this. And the government has gone from denial to acknowledgment to offering limited solutions. The media has of course been following this extensively. Some deeply, some not. More can be read about here, here and here.

This project explores how highly complex issues like this could be experienced in some interactive sonic/musical way.

Description of project: This is a musical instrument which sonically interprets the farmer suicide cases reported in the English media. There are two two layers of sound, one a chant and the other a groan. The buttons at the corners of the red triangle can be pressed to add sounds to the soundscape.

The comment here is on the way grassroot situations are dealt with at macro/governmental levels it becomes a play, a game. The visitors to the installation were invited to similarly play with the situation. The way they want. The repetitiveness of the keywords which are picked up from news reports hints on the limited vocabulary the media works with to interpret this situation.

Technical description: RSS feeds of news reports of the farmer suicide cases are pulled in (thanks newsrack) keywords are extracted and built into a chant (using the text-to-speach for Processing: RiTa). The groan is built by chanting the same words very slowly (words/minute). The buttons manipulate Sine waves of different frequencies.

Documentation:

the program starts. the green circles represent the character-lengths of extracted words.

 
more and more circles… (a lot of words)

photographs of farmers and their families are pulled in from flickr

when the red buttons on the triangles are pressed they become gray. you can add sounds to the soundscape by pressing the buttons.

this is how it was installed. the canvas was projected on a wall and it could be controlled using a mouse on a “wobbly” surface

This is the recorded sound of one of the sessions: vid1.mp3

The project works best when run as a desktop application:

linux
mac os x
windows

(from left) prayas, attia, sandeep, nisha and manmeet

at work on the processing sketch for “Before I Visit Vidarbha” in my studio

putting up the photographs of my performance with the modular jacket for our “open studio”

 
one of the walls of the display

a visitor

more jackets on the facing wall

a conversation with pooja and her friends

 
the installation for the processing sketch, “before I visit vidarbha”

another picture of the installation

giving a demo