DETAILS OF WORKS

I] LETTERS TO A THOUSAND WORDS, 2010

Nabina Das + Gaigongmei Gangmei + Niha Masih

Writer and poet Nabina Das responds to photographs by Niha Masih and Gaigongmei Gangmei. This collaboration emerges from their previous work ‘Thousands of words’ first shown in EXB 10.02

Images can evoke thousands of work and thousands of words can conjure an image. It is to see this interplay between poetry and photographs that we bring forth this collaborative venture. Reading the poems might create  an image beyond the accompanying photograph and the single image in itself might provoke thoughts not explored in the poem.

Both forms are evocative and by blending the two we wanted to recreate a differential experience for the viewer and the reader.

Nabina is an Associate fellow with the City as Studio process.
Niha Masih and Gaigongmei Gangmei are graduate students at MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia.

II] GHUMAKKAD BAJA, 2010

Prayas Abhinav + Hemant Babu +  Ram Bhat + Nishant Sharma

The creators of Ghummakd Baja used an amplified and meshed version of 2.4 ghz (Wi-fi) transmission, through high powered 4 Watt ERP transmitter-antennas, at city scale, to make unregulated open-to-air audio broadcasting. They are also developing a low-cost device which can receive these audio broadcasts on the move. Leveraging the potential of an open community of content creators, existing professionals, they will be populating multiple channels of community, local and entertainment content on this infrastructure.

India has a heavily regulated and censored radio-spectrum use policy for broadcasters. There are no ways for people to create and share audio content in a widely-accessible way. Internet-radio is not localized due to bandwidth access. Community radio is very restrictive, low power and does not allow news and political content.

The radio industry is dominated by commercial music syndicates and public bodies which restricts the kind of content possibilities. In comparison, other media (like TV, print, Internet) has much more diversity to offer. Audio platforms have remained mostly one-way, and have not exploited opportunities of p2p broadcasting networks.

A meshed Wi-fi local network (wireless ethernet) offering audio content on a low cost device, so that news, local content and entertainment in audio form can be accessed widely. The use of amplified wi-fi bandwidth delivers high speed, interactive audio content city-wide.

This solution will provide a platform much like satellite TV, but on audio and in a on-the-move, outdoor-friendly format. The solution will inherently be capable of being used for p2p data exchange and audio streaming. This will enable people to be active broadcasters and not just passive consumers.
 

III] WIPING PINK MOUNTAIN, 2010
Installation, performance

Goutam Ghosh

Material: Face massage cream, vaseline petroleum jelly, transparent thread, black plastic sheet,transparent pipe, nylon cosmetic hair, soot, shaving foam, drip syringe and drainage pipe, fog, shaving spray, printer, paper, umbrella

The Pink Mountain is a skin that has been hung to dry.
Sandwiched between layers of mist, and fluctuating shadows, this skin is opaque and transparent.
It forms a diagram of restlessness: some dissolving, some drying, increasing, decreasing.

Acknowledgement: Bhagwati Prasad, Agat Sharma


IV] IN BETWEEN DAYS, 2010

diF
// Ish S + Konrad Bayer//

 [sound reasons records/ Sarai-CSDS]
Mini DV

6’4”

‘In Between Days’ 2010 is a post-modern sonic+visual interpretation of Delhi. The video’s composition style has a Dadaist approach to it. Here a split screen reflective effect is used to bring out other hidden spaces and activities of the city which are basically over looked in plain video and perception. The video generates a life of it’s own while bringing to light objects that fill city spaces.

For the aural landscape sounds like car horns and construction sounds to compose the tracks have been used, as these tracks in some way represent the urban utopia/distopia of materialism hitting a brick wall. On the track ‘Blue Hour’ car horns which are the most common sound/noise in urban Delhi’s soundscape are carefully manipulated to create a trumpet like sound which is juxtaposed with a piano and drums with glitchy highs which are always going in and out of equilibrium. This in turn reflects on a personal unbalanced experience of excessive cars and traffic jams in Delhi.

V] SO THAT AFFECTION FOR THE CITY ENDURES (Ver 1.3)

Shamsher Ali + Love Anand + Neelofer + Suraj Rai

Material: Circuit boards (Mother boards, Switches, Computer Cards, Key Boards, LAN cards, RAMs, SMPS), CPU fans, wires, speakers, microphone, adapters, props, lights, cycle rim, Fan motor, Rim stand, miscellaneous objects.

Year: 2010

 A world gives a glimpse of its existence through symbols that it creates. When these symbols come to form a cluster, they come in contact with other  such clusters. It is then that an imagination for a new world begins.

The city is being pulled towards a force as if its wants to get enchanted and then get lost. It almost feels like the entire city is waiting in anticipation and something is about to unfold .

 

VI] SENSE LENS, 2010

Deepankar Gohain

Material: Tires, ply boards, canvas and oil paints, mirrors, papers, Cloth, wires, bulbs, electronic gadgets

Year: 2010

The idea behind the making of this larger-than-life mobile camera is to indulge in an interactive space in the public arena, to understand the binary between the inner and outer landscape of everyday things and life, the banal and the bizarre—all in a more scientific manner. This camera, entitled Sense Lens, comes from the senselessness and the sensitivity of modern senses. Sense Lens, which is a work in progress, will have a vivid display inside depicting the artist’s perception of the modern cityscape. It will endeavor to portray the dichotomy associated with the evolution of modern day machines that have made it possible to move across time, but at the same time created new anxieties.

The concept of the camera as a spectacle, an entity with a life of its own that distorts perception, is explored in this piece of art. However, this is only a generalized idea of the work as a whole. It has a wider frame of interpretation and understanding and possibilities.  

Acknowledgement: Bhagwati Prasad, Agat Sharma