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June 2001
Dear Friends
Let me first extend a warm welcome to all the new members who have
subscribed to the Sarai newsletter. I also thank all those who
forwarded the newsletter to these friends and to those who wrote back
appreciating the list.
The Sarai newsletter list has now close to 800 members. For this
reason, and also because primarily it has been envisaged as an
informative list about Sarai, we do not post responses on the list.
Please address any responses to the newsletter to saumya at sarai.net or
dak at sarai.net. If you wish to involve a wider audience, please
subscribe to the Reader-list, which is a discussion list that grew out
of the responses to the Sarai Reader 01: The Public Domain.
The Reader list has grown into a lively community of programmers, web designers, artists, academics and media practitioners, and anybody is free to post on any
issue related to communication and media technologies and urban
space. To subscribe, please go to the url
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list, or mail
monica at sarai.net.
Workshop Report
Sarai was a lively space the whole of the month of May. The
Cybermohalla workshop - a collaboration between Sarai and Ankur,
Society for Alternatives in Education - was attended by ten children
between 14 \15 years, and what a time we all had. The adeptness with
which the children took to the computer, the camera, the audio
recorder was truly amazing. The work generated by the workshop will
soon be uploaded on to the Sarai website. The project is now on at the
Ankur Centre at the Basti Vikas Kendra, J.P. Colony, Turkman Gate, New
Delhi.
Hindi Sarai
For those of you who are comfortable in Hindi, please go to the url
http://www.sarai.net/hindiweb/index.htm for the Hindi Sarai site. You
can also go to the Hindi Sarai by clicking on 'Sarai' written in
Devnagari script on the Sarai homepage.
Hindi Sarai is an offshoot of the Language and the New Media project
at Sarai, and is still under the process of development. An
independent Sarai Hindi site is on the cards. In its current
structure, apart from two introductory articles (one inhouse, the
other by an observer, published in a newspaper), the Hindi Sarai Home
page carries a small statement of intent, facility for font(Shusha)
download, and links to its three constituent segments: Sancharkosh,
Websadhan and Muktsoftware.
The first is a lexical resource, of new media and humanities terms, to
be developed by contributions from the contributions from the public
domain. We have made a start with a list of 200 words, and in future,
we plan to make it interactive by allowing for space for language
users to write in the words, meanings and quarrel over these. A
discussion list will also be initiated.
The Sancharkosh carries an article by Aditya Nigam on problems faced
by Hindi. The Websadhan page provides linkages to some important Hindi
sites and portals - literary and journalistic - some newspapers and
lexical resources. The Mukta software page will carry
documents/articles and manuals on free software that Sarai will
develop.
The page on the popular culture is much more substantial: a couple of
articles by Sanjeev Kumar, Tarun Bharatiya's poems on Shillong, some
couplets of Firaq Gorakhpuri with translations by Prof. Noorul Hasan,
and a note on the Hindi public sphere by Ravikant. Sanjeev Kumar's
memoir on the Vaishali Cinema Hall in Patna is hilarious. And the
poems by Bharatiya convey a different sense of 'touristy' Shillong.
We could be glad to receive your comments, criticisms, suggestions and
contributions for any of the themes/pages. Please mail your responses
to ravikant at sarai.net
Event at Sarai
A Discussion Meeting on Information Technologies, Regulation and Civil
Liberties
June 15 (Friday) , 2001, 4:00 pm
Sarai will host an introductory discussion meeting to examine the
implications legislation on new communication technologies
As you may be aware, in India legislation such as the Information
Technology (IT) Act 2000 and other extraordinary legal measures that
have been implemented recently to restrict access and freedom on the
internet. The draft Communications and Convergence Bill (2001) which
has received the assent of the Group of Ministers (GoM) promises to
further attack freedom of expression. Concurrent with this are plans
to create massive citizen databases and identification mechanisms to
erode privacy and increase surveillance.
We hope that this meeting can initiate a regular process of
interaction and dialogue between people working in civil liberties and
democratic rights related issues, information technology and new media
practice and research.
Films at Sarai
Sarai starts a weekly film series from the 22nd of June, 2001. The
films will be screened every Friday at 4:30 pm. We start with a series
of Japanese films and the first two titles are:
Akira 1987, (animation, directed by Kutushiro Otomo)and I Live in
Fear, 1955, (directed by Akira Kurosawa)
Akira
Friday, 22nd June 2001, 4:30 pm, Seminar Room, CSDS, Delhi - 54
Akira is a brilliantly drawn tale of impending apocalypse set in 2030
Tokyo. A brilliant flash envelops the city eleven years after World
War III. Teenage gangs, psychic children with devastating powers,
government agents and underground resistance groups course through the
city's dilapidated visceral landscape. Compared by critics to classic
masterpieces such as Bladerunner, Clockwork Orange and Mad Max, this
anime or animated film derives from comic artist Otomo's six volume
cartoon strip epic or manga, a widely translated work which won many
awards, spawned video games and merchandise ranging from t-shirts to
lunch boxes and toys. Otomo's current work is the six part The Legend
of Mother Sarah (with Nagayasu Takumi ) and Hunchback (with Alexandro
Jodorowsky) for comics and Roujin Z and Memories as film director.
I Live in Fear
Friday, 29th June, 2001, 4:30 pm, Seminar Room, CSDS, Delhi - 54
Toshiro Mifune, almost unrecognizable under layers of make-up, stars
as a graying patriarch whose fear of nuclear annihilation leads him to
make plans to move his large family from Tokyo to a farm in Brazil.
Thinking his fears irrational, and expressing grave concern over the
dispensation of his estate, they take him to court and, like a good
judge, Kurosawa lets both sides exhaust themselves without drawing a
premature judgement. Fear offers a hugely compelling glimpse at the
post-war Japanese mindset, and at the Cold War mindset in general.
Thanks
Saumya
Let me first extend a warm welcome to all the new members who have
subscribed to the Sarai newsletter. I also thank all those who
forwarded the newsletter to these friends and to those who wrote back
appreciating the list.
The Sarai newsletter list has now close to 800 members. For this
reason, and also because primarily it has been envisaged as an
informative list about Sarai, we do not post responses on the list.
Please address any responses to the newsletter to saumya at sarai.net or
dak at sarai.net. If you wish to involve a wider audience, please
subscribe to the Reader-list, which is a discussion list that grew out
of the responses to the Sarai Reader 01: The Public Domain.
The Reader list has grown into a lively community of programmers, web designers, artists, academics and media practitioners, and anybody is free to post on any
issue related to communication and media technologies and urban
space. To subscribe, please go to the url
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list, or mail
monica at sarai.net.
Workshop Report
Sarai was a lively space the whole of the month of May. The
Cybermohalla workshop - a collaboration between Sarai and Ankur,
Society for Alternatives in Education - was attended by ten children
between 14 \15 years, and what a time we all had. The adeptness with
which the children took to the computer, the camera, the audio
recorder was truly amazing. The work generated by the workshop will
soon be uploaded on to the Sarai website. The project is now on at the
Ankur Centre at the Basti Vikas Kendra, J.P. Colony, Turkman Gate, New
Delhi.
Hindi Sarai
For those of you who are comfortable in Hindi, please go to the url
http://www.sarai.net/hindiweb/index.htm for the Hindi Sarai site. You
can also go to the Hindi Sarai by clicking on 'Sarai' written in
Devnagari script on the Sarai homepage.
Hindi Sarai is an offshoot of the Language and the New Media project
at Sarai, and is still under the process of development. An
independent Sarai Hindi site is on the cards. In its current
structure, apart from two introductory articles (one inhouse, the
other by an observer, published in a newspaper), the Hindi Sarai Home
page carries a small statement of intent, facility for font(Shusha)
download, and links to its three constituent segments: Sancharkosh,
Websadhan and Muktsoftware.
The first is a lexical resource, of new media and humanities terms, to
be developed by contributions from the contributions from the public
domain. We have made a start with a list of 200 words, and in future,
we plan to make it interactive by allowing for space for language
users to write in the words, meanings and quarrel over these. A
discussion list will also be initiated.
The Sancharkosh carries an article by Aditya Nigam on problems faced
by Hindi. The Websadhan page provides linkages to some important Hindi
sites and portals - literary and journalistic - some newspapers and
lexical resources. The Mukta software page will carry
documents/articles and manuals on free software that Sarai will
develop.
The page on the popular culture is much more substantial: a couple of
articles by Sanjeev Kumar, Tarun Bharatiya's poems on Shillong, some
couplets of Firaq Gorakhpuri with translations by Prof. Noorul Hasan,
and a note on the Hindi public sphere by Ravikant. Sanjeev Kumar's
memoir on the Vaishali Cinema Hall in Patna is hilarious. And the
poems by Bharatiya convey a different sense of 'touristy' Shillong.
We could be glad to receive your comments, criticisms, suggestions and
contributions for any of the themes/pages. Please mail your responses
to ravikant at sarai.net
Event at Sarai
A Discussion Meeting on Information Technologies, Regulation and Civil
Liberties
June 15 (Friday) , 2001, 4:00 pm
Sarai will host an introductory discussion meeting to examine the
implications legislation on new communication technologies
As you may be aware, in India legislation such as the Information
Technology (IT) Act 2000 and other extraordinary legal measures that
have been implemented recently to restrict access and freedom on the
internet. The draft Communications and Convergence Bill (2001) which
has received the assent of the Group of Ministers (GoM) promises to
further attack freedom of expression. Concurrent with this are plans
to create massive citizen databases and identification mechanisms to
erode privacy and increase surveillance.
We hope that this meeting can initiate a regular process of
interaction and dialogue between people working in civil liberties and
democratic rights related issues, information technology and new media
practice and research.
Films at Sarai
Sarai starts a weekly film series from the 22nd of June, 2001. The
films will be screened every Friday at 4:30 pm. We start with a series
of Japanese films and the first two titles are:
Akira 1987, (animation, directed by Kutushiro Otomo)and I Live in
Fear, 1955, (directed by Akira Kurosawa)
Akira
Friday, 22nd June 2001, 4:30 pm, Seminar Room, CSDS, Delhi - 54
Akira is a brilliantly drawn tale of impending apocalypse set in 2030
Tokyo. A brilliant flash envelops the city eleven years after World
War III. Teenage gangs, psychic children with devastating powers,
government agents and underground resistance groups course through the
city's dilapidated visceral landscape. Compared by critics to classic
masterpieces such as Bladerunner, Clockwork Orange and Mad Max, this
anime or animated film derives from comic artist Otomo's six volume
cartoon strip epic or manga, a widely translated work which won many
awards, spawned video games and merchandise ranging from t-shirts to
lunch boxes and toys. Otomo's current work is the six part The Legend
of Mother Sarah (with Nagayasu Takumi ) and Hunchback (with Alexandro
Jodorowsky) for comics and Roujin Z and Memories as film director.
I Live in Fear
Friday, 29th June, 2001, 4:30 pm, Seminar Room, CSDS, Delhi - 54
Toshiro Mifune, almost unrecognizable under layers of make-up, stars
as a graying patriarch whose fear of nuclear annihilation leads him to
make plans to move his large family from Tokyo to a farm in Brazil.
Thinking his fears irrational, and expressing grave concern over the
dispensation of his estate, they take him to court and, like a good
judge, Kurosawa lets both sides exhaust themselves without drawing a
premature judgement. Fear offers a hugely compelling glimpse at the
post-war Japanese mindset, and at the Cold War mindset in general.
Thanks
Saumya