Techno Cultural Schisms

Today morning as soon as i entered office i saw parmeshwar and we involuntarily struck off a casual conversation. He passing told me that he forgot his mobile phone at home. As he was leaving, he remembered something and turned back. He asked me if he could borrow my phone to make a call at his home. Initially i felt he wanted to inform his parents that they must not call him during day in case they wanted to contact him. But he went on saying later that he must inform someone at his him to switch off his phone.

I offered him my new touch screen Samsung ace and he was perplexed. He honestly and boldly requested me to dial his residence number passing a quirky remark on 'touch screens'. I enjoyed it. He waited patiently for his mother to pick up and respond. As soon as his mother picked up, she herself reminded him of the fact that he had forgotten his mobile at home. Going on further he asked his mother to switch off his phone. He waited for his mother to get his phone and then began: "press the button on top left and the bottom left...', and then kept on repeating... Although his mother tried hard, she couldn't figure it out. He went on explaining her to press the 'red' button. She didnot register. Paro silently gave up as if he already anticipated his mother's failure. He concluded suggesting her to get it switched off from his father.

This is the story of our struggle with the technological revolution. We crib, talk, try, cry and adjust with technology. We use universal references like top, bottom, red, white, etc to make others understand about it. These references too fail. The idea of serial pressing and operations donot work. Manuals of technical languages for operating gadgets fear away the older generations. The older generation would have been happier if they only had to press a single button. Or just pick up a call like that on the landline. For some.like marketing people, such struggles become USPs of their innovated products that resolve some cultural issues in technology. Others build up on agencies that can demonstrate to them...

Inspite of all this, i think we can only get to the next level of technology digesting the half baked developments in this sector.

Naiharwa / Kabir

Note the Lyrics. Personally, I like the Kailash Kher version more from his first album Kailasa.

To be read with this post on dagagiri

Seven Social Sins

Internal aggressions

Why does one look to move away from one's own context? What is the need to travel? Why does this occasional internal desire of fleeing away occur? Which kind of space constructs such circumstances? Are these implications of social space? One of the prime reasons i want to go away from my place is because it has remained too conservative for a very long time. From parents to seniors to friends to students to most colleagues, all are so narrow minded and so closed to the world that this place seems almost suffocating. The social institutions bask in their own rotting principles and it is almost impossible to overturn the educational instituions anytime soon. Hypocrisy is another large value, the inheritance of which always puts a fake mask on the name of progression. Everyone claims to be open, but want to be in their own comfortable positions. It is like a moving wheel just lifted slightly above the ground. Everything seems to be happening but we don't seem to be moving ahead.

We have hardly been productive, since we seldom commit. Commitment is a responsibility. Every responsibility has risk. Perhaps that is why we fear to commit. Being productive would mean opening up ourselves for judgement. If we become productive, we can look back and see we have created and thus can evaluate ourselves. We hardly leave such traces behind thus making ourselves difficult for interpretation. Perhaps that is why we are a land of mythology and poetries. We take a lot of pried in our history of non-building or the idea of nothingness. Everything is layered and open for interpretation. For some time, i too would have loved such layered past since it allows deep penetration. But it also makes us an extremely slippery and uncommitted race.

We take a great pride in this legacy of ours. I am fed up of such slipperiness. Perhaps this is not an age to afford slips. I can not slip now to damage my crucial bones. I need to stand and therefore develop a position to be able to open up different perspectives. Perspectives will allow multiple views. Poetry shall follow - after all, i began my life with it. I want to go out to become more rational to be able to appreciate my own context of irrationality. Irrationality perhaps may not be a correct word that exactly defines the spirit of this place.

Although they say that the grass on the other side is always greener, still at least from here, other developed countries seem to be much more progressive and receptive to different ideas. "My world" is only a construct of my own limited exposure. It is made up of people i know and things i am around. I need exposure to make comfort with the place i live in. I need to know if other contexts are as difficult to live. I want to test if i can stay with myself for long enough to produce ideas.

Peeling History

Falling buildings have along railway lines of western suburbs have revealed to me another layer hidden behind the facade of an existing interesting building. Layers of urban fabric morph into new forms in the process of which they expose glimpses of hidden cultural manifests that are never available to us otherwise.
One wonders how to capitalize on such events to record moment which will be soon lost to the monsters that will again cover the temporarily revealed history.

The city is an evolving script which changes its own interpretation depending upon the position of the viewer. The changing visuality through the door frame of my train compartment manifests the above idea in reality. It seems as if suddenly someone decided to cut a new section through the everyday city.

Academy of Architecture: Studio Space

Fruits again

Terrace Cultures

The absence of terraces in high rise buildings has disrespected an old atmospheric culture of people in India. People in India share a distinct relationship with the sky and celestial bodies. They begin their day by worshipping the sun and eat their food on certain special.days only after seeing the moon. Festivals like Id and karva chauth are so closely tied to the worship of moon.

High rise buildings hide them off, create difficult viewing tunnels. Pent houses further eat up terraces. The space of the terrace in a building which was once public and readily available to every member of a building has now been lost to wealthy people who prefer to live above everyone commanding grand views of the city. This reflects the capitalistic culture of the city that has eaten up old customs and traditions which people still follow.

Gardening, kite flying, feeding birds, keeping offerings for birds after deaths are all activities intrinsic to our culture which kept terraces as an active place. Even when buildings were four to five storeyes tall, one wouldn't hesitate to run to a terrace during the evening where everyone would meet up, play, walk, etc. Although four storeyes still maintained terrace culture, seven made it difficult. Later, these were too sold off to the communication companies or advertisement companies, to earn money for individual societies. Communication antennae occupy large amount of space on terraces and leave no space to move. Further, their installations are hurtful. Similar is the case with advertisements that come up on buildings. I remember going to a friend's house to view the Halley's comet when it crossed across Indian skies during the '90s, the then recent tall building completely blocked the view of the north sky from my old house.

Thus, the new urban forms have disregarded these very activities of people through which people connected to the world outside them. The sky scrapers have not left any room for people's engagement with the sky. Forget terrace for people, we do not even have enough open space to run out to in case of fire. We thus do not appreciate the different shapes of clouds, the hues of the evening sky, the moonlight or the pole star - which we all once gazed at through our benevolent barsatis. The sky is perhaps the only space which forces us to think that there exists another reality beyond our own. It allows us to penetrate deep into it and takes us to a macrocosm that we are only made familiar of primarily through our mythological texts. It is the space which the grand mother points at hinting to the devil's house and the place from where Santa Claus arrives. That patch of sky, which has stitched the quilt of memories is now a luxury of the past. Shrinking into the balcony, the terrace shall soon disappear (or has it already disappeared?) as an architectural gesture which allowed human imagination far deep into a cosmos that once chiefly structured our lives.

Why Vertical Studio gets low response at AOA?

It is clear thar students who opted out of  NASA did so because they wanted their share of relaxation time. They perhaps avoid NASA so that they could avoid any extra work. In the competition between  NASA and vertical studio, the latter will never afford to take the lead since
1.  NASA always shall suck up the enthused students.
2. Remaining students would never give their 100% to the vertical studio.

It is therefore critical to reconsider the assumptions that we made regarding  NASA and students participating in it. Firstly that we assumed that  NASA doesnot produce highly analytical work and that its analytical methods are age old and have never been revised. Other assumption we made was that students working for  NASA donot undergo all round development. In making such a categorization, we subconsciously grouped the people not participating in  NASA as wiser. We completely forgot or misread that people not working for  NASA are those who are generally uninterested in extracurricular activities. Their priorities are different and their interests do not fall completely within the realm of architecture. However, the vertical studio, over the last two years have revealed strange results.

Methods of  NASA may be outdated, but students who are enthused unquestionably gravitate towards it and within their boundaries and cone of vision, produce just decent work. These are students who have the skill and motivation to take initiatives.  NASA undoubtedly attracts the better of the student lot - perhaps because the end product is defined and predictable.

This makes NASA a preferred option. There is a format to it which academites have mastered. They love to work within that and keep winning. It is something like being a Lata Mangeshkar and singing only Bollywood romantic songs and winning a filmfare award consistently for multiple years. However, if we were able to bring these students out of the fixed thinking framework and show them what the world is doing, and make them believe that they can conceptualize, initiate and work on newer and more interesting projects, it would be a great departure. On the other hand, if they also understand that they needed to revise old frameworks and challenge existing practices of researching in NASA, they would be much more receptive to what is going around them. Unfortunately, the NASA award at the end of the event is too lucrative for them to understand and push projects that they undertake towards knowledge production.

However, I personally do not think that we have been able to produce good enough work through the vertical studio to be able to challenge the cult of  NASA . In my vision, it shall never even be possible. Until the better students themselves understood that knowledge production is different from just documentation and analysis and that it's a serious affair (don't conflict it with the seriousness of winning an award at an event), we shall keep struggling for good product from our vertical studios. Vetical studios according to me are much more progressive, innovative and exploratory. They are more open, unlike the closed circuits of NASA where data is consciously guarded. Vertical studios also expose one to a variety of people - highly respectable people from various disiplines. It is so much more exciting to talk to them on wider issues and use ones skills towards learning more about a field. I think vertical studios must be tried apart from  NASA period to see if my above theory is true. I am quite confident that the results will be different.

Drawing on the Phone

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