Thursday, November 25, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Ahmedabad Panoramas
In order:
- Ahmedabad Textile Millowners' Association (ATMA)
- Centre for Environmental Education (CEE)
- Sarkhej Mosque
- Hussain Doshi Gufa
- Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT)
- Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya
- Calico Dome
Monday, November 22, 2010
Photo post
Now a days, I keep taking pictures of things that keep trigerring random thoughts in me. These days I keep feeling so lost that i tend to find meaning into everything, every action that happens around me. Here are some strings of thoughts that the following pictures have invoked (note the larger idea/reference below the pictures):
The shadow pattern of a flat grilled window on a warped cloth was so fascinating that i wondered if it implied any thing for designers to consider.
Descartes - Grid - Distortion
The convex canopy casting a concave shadow reminded me of my Graphics class that always used to stir up debates of resolving sciography of objects.
Graphics - Sciography - 3D to 2D
During Diwali, in India, it is customary to decorate the space you live in. If you look around in the night time in Diwali, the city buildings merge with the black sky and all we see is glittering colourful lights with which each house is decorated. chains of lights patterned on the grid of iron grills of windows, canopies of trees flooded with LEDs, lanterns, soft lights - all make the city even more spectacular. The picture of a bank below, with sparkling lights and ad hoc decoration speaks of how the staff must have wanted to do it with love, but ended up just putting things on the ceilings, walls, or cabinets.
Urban Aesthetic - Ad hoc arrangements
On my trip to Hampi, I got this bottle bag from a bamboo workshop in Anegundi. My mother ended up using it as a flask in the house to hold flowers. She also wound the snake around it that I got from the same place. This tiny piece of arrangement (the flask, flowers, snake) kept changing very frequently sometimes from day to day, while sometimes morning to evening!
Now it's no longer there.
Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki - Domesticity - Aesthetic
the potential of children to use every space as a play space in a busy city like ours in commendable. Look at this child resting on the bus stand and dreaming as if he's in a playground!
Architecture & Play
What originally used to be my house for the first 15 years of my life is now a full fleged workshop for my father who is an engineer. When i look at this house today, I wonder how we lived here - in a tenement literally 10' x 10'. Today we barely have any space to even lie around. It makes me so conscious of my body, which has grown big, adult and cannot accommodate the cozy space which this house once created. But other than that, also the fact that how every bit of engineering material was available for play - wires, registers, magnets - all of them.
XS - Extra Small / Chawls
The barsati on which we endlessly played - where neighbour friends would call out peeping inside the house, and we would sneakingly get out leaving our books on beds. This also used to be a peripheral garden for my mother. The smell of rajanigandha during the night would fill the entire space. The sharp shadows that the moon light would make, the rains in which we jumped out here - it was fascinating.
Public space
and also that an arrangement of multiple similar looking things can look so good. neatly arranged across a small vacant patch against the railway lines - almost lined up to the tracks.
Repetition - Arrangement and organization
The shadow pattern of a flat grilled window on a warped cloth was so fascinating that i wondered if it implied any thing for designers to consider.
Descartes - Grid - Distortion
The convex canopy casting a concave shadow reminded me of my Graphics class that always used to stir up debates of resolving sciography of objects.
Graphics - Sciography - 3D to 2D
During Diwali, in India, it is customary to decorate the space you live in. If you look around in the night time in Diwali, the city buildings merge with the black sky and all we see is glittering colourful lights with which each house is decorated. chains of lights patterned on the grid of iron grills of windows, canopies of trees flooded with LEDs, lanterns, soft lights - all make the city even more spectacular. The picture of a bank below, with sparkling lights and ad hoc decoration speaks of how the staff must have wanted to do it with love, but ended up just putting things on the ceilings, walls, or cabinets.
Urban Aesthetic - Ad hoc arrangements
On my trip to Hampi, I got this bottle bag from a bamboo workshop in Anegundi. My mother ended up using it as a flask in the house to hold flowers. She also wound the snake around it that I got from the same place. This tiny piece of arrangement (the flask, flowers, snake) kept changing very frequently sometimes from day to day, while sometimes morning to evening!
Now it's no longer there.
Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki - Domesticity - Aesthetic
the potential of children to use every space as a play space in a busy city like ours in commendable. Look at this child resting on the bus stand and dreaming as if he's in a playground!
Architecture & Play
What originally used to be my house for the first 15 years of my life is now a full fleged workshop for my father who is an engineer. When i look at this house today, I wonder how we lived here - in a tenement literally 10' x 10'. Today we barely have any space to even lie around. It makes me so conscious of my body, which has grown big, adult and cannot accommodate the cozy space which this house once created. But other than that, also the fact that how every bit of engineering material was available for play - wires, registers, magnets - all of them.
XS - Extra Small / Chawls
The barsati on which we endlessly played - where neighbour friends would call out peeping inside the house, and we would sneakingly get out leaving our books on beds. This also used to be a peripheral garden for my mother. The smell of rajanigandha during the night would fill the entire space. The sharp shadows that the moon light would make, the rains in which we jumped out here - it was fascinating.
Public space
and also that an arrangement of multiple similar looking things can look so good. neatly arranged across a small vacant patch against the railway lines - almost lined up to the tracks.
Repetition - Arrangement and organization
Friday, November 12, 2010
Techno-Cultural Schisms
me: so what happened?
why he got frustrated?
her: they (students) didn't want to know or see anything
me: that's a perpetual problem with today's generation
her: were blind*
yes na
why i wonder
me: they see everything thorough their cameras
and mobile phones
her: not even through those
not really seeing ever.
3 important points raised in our chat above:
1. Students have become unobservant
2. Students see thing through technological gadgets
3. Tutors feel irritated with this fact.
One can debate these points against each other. but let us try to come to a more relevant discussion after elaborating on the above 3 points.
Observation is a slow activity. Observation includes not only seeing, but also thinking about what one is seeing. It automatically involves an analytical process, where thoughts generated give rise to more questions and more thoughts. Learning in today's age still, particularly in our educational system is more instructive. Thus, 'seeing' is not 'learning'. 'Doing' is not learning. In the pace of life which students have been brought up in, where things around go so fast (fleeting), it is almost impossible to expect them to stand and stare. Although there might be time to stand and stare, who wants to engage in staring? because remember - staring is not considered learning by students.
So what does one do even if he/she has time and is not staring? One engages with objects that one can keep in your pockets. Mobiles, cameras, i-pods, now i-pads, etc. pervade and accommodate our free time. Listening to one song again and again, watching at videos of funny men repeatedly, passing on jokes and building up on them all the time is what accommodates our time reserved for staring otherwise. So, if we have to see around, we take our camera/mobile and frame a view - which as I said, can be seen again and again.
Are we in the process of generating information that can be relived in a later time? Media technology has immensely invaded our daily lives which keeps engaged in producing this data. I am using the word 'data', not 'knowledge'. Data is information, raw material. Thus, we see through our gadgets. I am using the word 'see', not 'observe'. To observe is to see analytically.
I shall jump back to the above two paragraphs to find new meaning (?) later. Before that, I must explain the third point.
We (myself, the '80s ppl) perhaps come from a different cultural background. We took birth in an age where the TV was the boom (but only with a national channel). 1965? A.I.R.! I will not get into my history with Television, but i must say, cable was a craze, and we were not privileged to have it till 2000 (millenium). Telephone was a luxury and we only got it during 1994. Computer was there at home since father was an electronic engineer - and we worked with Wordstar. There was a humble transistor where we would listen to cricket commentaries. Walkman was the newest invention perhaps? The digital diaries became famous in late 90s - they could keep addresses, phone nos and calculators. Solar calculators were priced possessions. Digital watches with light and alarm was a fad. All I am talking about is our interface* with technology.
The IT became a revolution in 2000. It was only during my FYJC (first year junior college) that IT was introduced as a vocational subject in the science stream for the first time. For us, it was alien? But - long live Rajiv Gandhi for bringing in the communication drive.
Technology is not in our blood stream. Or to be politically correct, i think technology is at least not in MY blood stream. But children today are born in this fleeting pace of technology. Electronic toys - they get as soon as they are born - children want to play with mobiles and computers - jumping electronic monkeys. Cartoons are full of electronic stuff. During our time, cartoons seemed only so hard to believe, and that's what glued us to them! Magic has always been a matter of play in space and time. But today I think we live magically* - Bluetooth/wireless/wi-fi/gps and what not!
The question is what do we do with it? We are too caught up with our space-time experience. We feel nostalgic all the time. We want everyone to live that same experience - perhaps only so that we feel at ease with the society (social pace) around us. But the society is bound to make us uncomfortable. How do we accept such change? How fast do we change? Perhaps the pace of this change is exponentially increasing. If we can feel the cultural schism now, I wonder what happens in the next 10 years.
But going into that discussion is another thesis altogether. We have to conceptualize a space within the new time dynamics. To do this, we have to accommodate two fronts - we have to make ourselves culturally forward and a the same time think of engaging the current technology into the system. It's challenging because it changes our pace of living. But i think, it also, at the same time makes the system more demanding. For example, if a student has a query, he/she can immediately call up/email his/her faculty today, and the faculty too can respond immediately - but what happens in this process is that the data sharing becomes almost immediate, to word it differently, the EXPECTATION of receiving data becomes immediate too, which is what pushes you to be sharper and thus pushes you to be demanding.
This dynamic of the space-time relationship has major cultural pitfalls*:
1. the older generation of faculty many a times refuses to accept such demand. they believe that it is not the correct system for addressal of professional exchange. they would rather trust personal meetings and physical exchange of data/knowledge. Due to the ill-information about usage of technology, the distance between it and the archaic user further develops a gap between the guide and the faculty.
2. many a times, in developing countries like ours (i must say in institutional spaces like ours), systems are not technologically equipped to handle any form of soft communication. This can be easily eliminated.
3. the younger generation (those on the receiving end) are not equipped with the skills that the oldies are familiar with/fond of. This is a major cultural schism which irritates the faculties. Such a schism ends up in recognizing skill itself as a practice. so to take an example, within graphic design, there are practices of printing, dying, making paper, cutting paper, laminating, typography, book making, binding, drawing, etc etc... - although a graphic designer must be equipped with much of the above.
So we are going into too much extreme and i would love to carry on. But the point remains to still find a way of working within this technological, cultural schism.
*(a lot more to be elaborated upon)
Responses on this post shall be highly appreciated.
why he got frustrated?
her: they (students) didn't want to know or see anything
me: that's a perpetual problem with today's generation
her: were blind*
yes na
why i wonder
me: they see everything thorough their cameras
and mobile phones
her: not even through those
not really seeing ever.
3 important points raised in our chat above:
1. Students have become unobservant
2. Students see thing through technological gadgets
3. Tutors feel irritated with this fact.
One can debate these points against each other. but let us try to come to a more relevant discussion after elaborating on the above 3 points.
Observation is a slow activity. Observation includes not only seeing, but also thinking about what one is seeing. It automatically involves an analytical process, where thoughts generated give rise to more questions and more thoughts. Learning in today's age still, particularly in our educational system is more instructive. Thus, 'seeing' is not 'learning'. 'Doing' is not learning. In the pace of life which students have been brought up in, where things around go so fast (fleeting), it is almost impossible to expect them to stand and stare. Although there might be time to stand and stare, who wants to engage in staring? because remember - staring is not considered learning by students.
So what does one do even if he/she has time and is not staring? One engages with objects that one can keep in your pockets. Mobiles, cameras, i-pods, now i-pads, etc. pervade and accommodate our free time. Listening to one song again and again, watching at videos of funny men repeatedly, passing on jokes and building up on them all the time is what accommodates our time reserved for staring otherwise. So, if we have to see around, we take our camera/mobile and frame a view - which as I said, can be seen again and again.
Are we in the process of generating information that can be relived in a later time? Media technology has immensely invaded our daily lives which keeps engaged in producing this data. I am using the word 'data', not 'knowledge'. Data is information, raw material. Thus, we see through our gadgets. I am using the word 'see', not 'observe'. To observe is to see analytically.
I shall jump back to the above two paragraphs to find new meaning (?) later. Before that, I must explain the third point.
We (myself, the '80s ppl) perhaps come from a different cultural background. We took birth in an age where the TV was the boom (but only with a national channel). 1965? A.I.R.! I will not get into my history with Television, but i must say, cable was a craze, and we were not privileged to have it till 2000 (millenium). Telephone was a luxury and we only got it during 1994. Computer was there at home since father was an electronic engineer - and we worked with Wordstar. There was a humble transistor where we would listen to cricket commentaries. Walkman was the newest invention perhaps? The digital diaries became famous in late 90s - they could keep addresses, phone nos and calculators. Solar calculators were priced possessions. Digital watches with light and alarm was a fad. All I am talking about is our interface* with technology.
The IT became a revolution in 2000. It was only during my FYJC (first year junior college) that IT was introduced as a vocational subject in the science stream for the first time. For us, it was alien? But - long live Rajiv Gandhi for bringing in the communication drive.
Technology is not in our blood stream. Or to be politically correct, i think technology is at least not in MY blood stream. But children today are born in this fleeting pace of technology. Electronic toys - they get as soon as they are born - children want to play with mobiles and computers - jumping electronic monkeys. Cartoons are full of electronic stuff. During our time, cartoons seemed only so hard to believe, and that's what glued us to them! Magic has always been a matter of play in space and time. But today I think we live magically* - Bluetooth/wireless/wi-fi/gps and what not!
The question is what do we do with it? We are too caught up with our space-time experience. We feel nostalgic all the time. We want everyone to live that same experience - perhaps only so that we feel at ease with the society (social pace) around us. But the society is bound to make us uncomfortable. How do we accept such change? How fast do we change? Perhaps the pace of this change is exponentially increasing. If we can feel the cultural schism now, I wonder what happens in the next 10 years.
But going into that discussion is another thesis altogether. We have to conceptualize a space within the new time dynamics. To do this, we have to accommodate two fronts - we have to make ourselves culturally forward and a the same time think of engaging the current technology into the system. It's challenging because it changes our pace of living. But i think, it also, at the same time makes the system more demanding. For example, if a student has a query, he/she can immediately call up/email his/her faculty today, and the faculty too can respond immediately - but what happens in this process is that the data sharing becomes almost immediate, to word it differently, the EXPECTATION of receiving data becomes immediate too, which is what pushes you to be sharper and thus pushes you to be demanding.
This dynamic of the space-time relationship has major cultural pitfalls*:
1. the older generation of faculty many a times refuses to accept such demand. they believe that it is not the correct system for addressal of professional exchange. they would rather trust personal meetings and physical exchange of data/knowledge. Due to the ill-information about usage of technology, the distance between it and the archaic user further develops a gap between the guide and the faculty.
2. many a times, in developing countries like ours (i must say in institutional spaces like ours), systems are not technologically equipped to handle any form of soft communication. This can be easily eliminated.
3. the younger generation (those on the receiving end) are not equipped with the skills that the oldies are familiar with/fond of. This is a major cultural schism which irritates the faculties. Such a schism ends up in recognizing skill itself as a practice. so to take an example, within graphic design, there are practices of printing, dying, making paper, cutting paper, laminating, typography, book making, binding, drawing, etc etc... - although a graphic designer must be equipped with much of the above.
So we are going into too much extreme and i would love to carry on. But the point remains to still find a way of working within this technological, cultural schism.
*(a lot more to be elaborated upon)
Responses on this post shall be highly appreciated.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Patterns & research
Researchers believe that there is a pattern in all random things that are happening around us. I am not sure if this was also the case in earlier researches. It would be rather better to indicate two kinds of research: Proposing new patterns or identifying new patterns.
A classic example of finding patterns is 'Learning from Las Vegas" - the method is such researches is primarily to work with some research material (data) and find meaning into it. Such researches always are constrained within the extent of data and generalizations. nevertheless, the merit of the research lies in extrapolating important points within this limitation.
Of another type is say - "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander. He proposes that there is a pattern to everything that we do.
In both the cases, the methodology still remains the question of debate. A method itself may be a pattern - chosen or assumed or proposed...Nevertheless, in all the cases, a research opens up new ways of seeing the existing abstract information around us.
we had an interesting session on discussion of "what is abstract" with Prasad Shetty in the first year design studio. It would take me another post to detail what we discussed. But one thing that was established in the studio was that we never know "everything" about "anything". We know all only in abstraction. There are a lot of things to archive from the first year studios, also second year to some extent. It seems like a big game of dots, where I keep joining them in different configurations to "see" different things. But i don't know what to do of these new things that I see...
It also becomes a question of suggesting/identifying a pattern...
So i maintain a book in which i keep noting things down. Now I have to have enough dots to be able to make an interesting pattern.
A classic example of finding patterns is 'Learning from Las Vegas" - the method is such researches is primarily to work with some research material (data) and find meaning into it. Such researches always are constrained within the extent of data and generalizations. nevertheless, the merit of the research lies in extrapolating important points within this limitation.
Of another type is say - "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander. He proposes that there is a pattern to everything that we do.
In both the cases, the methodology still remains the question of debate. A method itself may be a pattern - chosen or assumed or proposed...Nevertheless, in all the cases, a research opens up new ways of seeing the existing abstract information around us.
we had an interesting session on discussion of "what is abstract" with Prasad Shetty in the first year design studio. It would take me another post to detail what we discussed. But one thing that was established in the studio was that we never know "everything" about "anything". We know all only in abstraction. There are a lot of things to archive from the first year studios, also second year to some extent. It seems like a big game of dots, where I keep joining them in different configurations to "see" different things. But i don't know what to do of these new things that I see...
It also becomes a question of suggesting/identifying a pattern...
So i maintain a book in which i keep noting things down. Now I have to have enough dots to be able to make an interesting pattern.
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