On Cartoons

Tom & jerry / rat race

Road Runner / 

Jungle book / Animals

Popeye / strong, spinach

Donald Duck / Impatience

Duck Tales / miserliness

Shinchan / Celebrating brathood

(i have to elaborate the idea of cartoons here)

Roland Barthes might be useful here!

Blind Sound

Since the past two months, I have been observing two blind beggars on the railway footover bridge/s in Goregaon. Both of them play musical instruments.

The first one plays the bulbul tarang. I don't know where he got it from...probably it was a rejected piece from someone's house or from his own house, or may be its an age old hierloom from his family back home - I absolutely don't know. What I know for sure is that he has no clue of what he is doing to it / with it! He produces sound, not music. The bulbul tarang is thoroughly abused (like the beggar) - its buttons are eroded, strings are lost, case is broken and the feather through which he strikes the strings has lost shape. He strikes each of the remaining buttons and strings continuously multiple times trying hard to make a tune! Whenever I pass by this man, I try to identify what raag might be just possible from the remaining buttons on his instrument! It's rather funny - but what fascinates me is what he can still do with the instrument possibly! But he continuously keeps on playing it, playing it, playing it...

On the other hand, the other blind man plays the dholak. His dholak is intact - definitely seems someone gifted him. Neat. It has a fairly good naad. He always tries and sings with the random beats he produces! Although all songs (kirtans) he sings seem familiar, he just alters their rhythms to suit his silly musical beats! He hits the dholak with a certain amount of uninterest. Probably he just heard John Cage and was absolutely inspired by him.

Both these men compel me to wonder if this is how the first people who engaged with these instruments in the history of civilization behaved! They interact with the instrument as the nomads in the film Gods must be Crazy - as if somebody flying in the air dropped these magnificent musical instruments in their lap which they fiddle with non-visually (by virtue of them being blind) to produce random sound. What aesthetic of sound do the blind understand or create? Do they like to just move hands on it? Do they like to engage with the instrument purely because it allows them that tactile sensation? I am sure one can beg without the formality of playing an instrument.

Further, I kept relating it to the idea of a 'practice'. If practice is about perfecting something, then how are these  people not able to even strike one harmonious chord yet in their engagement? Or is our sense of harmony and aesthetic of sound structured by the classical rules of music? I keep trying to like the 'blind' music they create, but I have yet not been able to come to terms with it.

Finally, I am fascinate with this interesting condition of 'blind sound' and where these blind men go with their timeless exploration of the instruments - playing for the world that remains their audience (whom neither they see, who neither listen them back)!

(I haven't taken their photographs thinking that it will be too sadist to take photographs of blind men)

Untitled

In support of my "technology" blogpost earlier, I want to present how librarians at Academy of Architecture handle or look at books. Here is a newly ordered-for book "Atlas of Novel Tectonics". A lovely black book with rounded corners. It has pages which are somewhat handmade type. 

Look at how carelessly the bar-code sticker has been stuck, hiding the name of the book. Inside, in the first page, the tape sticking the bar-code is folded, crooked and everything that goes contrary to the care that the book maker must have taken while making the book. The stamp and the handwriting that decorates the book add to the irritation I go through every time I take this book in my hand.

Our people personify the saying "Kaala Akshar Bhains Barabar" ( काला अक्षर भैंस बराबर). And this gets termed, quite simplistically as "Indian Culture". 

Answer sheets

Correcting examination papers is like solving the same question paper 40 times (the number of students you have). It is like improvising on every answer each time and evaluating yourself till the last paper. Like how a musician would keep doing till he could sustain the speed. Like music, it has its own highs and lows - a point where you suddenly start writing "YES" or "NO!" on the sheets of students! Its hallucinating - since it takes you back to the exam hall. If you know the students, it feels that they are speaking off the answers to you! In the mind, you keep nudging - "no, just a bit more, a bit less"...It makes you do aha if all what is expected is there...a strange kind of confidence that arises in you. Checking a well written / well answered paper is delightful, since it reassures you of your knowledge, that you shared with the students.

And there are mercies with borderline cases, where you question your own morals, but give in to an assumed larger interest of the time of the student, hoping that eventually all will be well. No one goes beyond, to check what ever happened to the border line cases. In the pragmatics of the world, all pass. They make their means, sometimes, even without the (academic) examinations.

And with cases of either extreme, you end up feeling disgusted or silly and just end it with a shrug. How do you build up that reasonable amount of interest such that a ward is just able to manage and pass...it's not that difficult.

But sometimes, (since I am so much into reading and research at this point of time), I get into unnecessary and unrequired semantics of language, which I myself reconsider and reevaluate again....

Courses & Course Structures

I see that more and more people are wanting to design semester long or year long "courses" to teach architectural subjects. Courses can be meticulously drafted with a lecture-wise and topic-wise schedule with reading lists and tasks or loosely structured giving a broad idea of what would the faculty want to cover. In designing a course, the tutor assumes an "ideal" student in mind. This ideal student would read all the essays for the course on time, prepare for all lectures and work out all assignments in time. The course would keep on reeling throughout the term where the faculty would keep imparting data/knowledge to the entire class at a time. There is a certain generalization of the intellect of the entire class. This generalized body is the ideal student, not necessarily the average student. It could vary depending on the ego of the faculty.

Courses help build faculties a good amount of research material and stray questions that could build up papers for argument. Generally, such is the agenda in the graduate courses designed abroad. The making of courses is quite a graduate study idea. I am not sure if the same works in the undergraduate field where students are still grappling with basic ways of working and thinking. In preparing a course, the reading list is imposed on all those who might not be inclined towards such study. These students would least contribute to the discourse. Courses ideally are product oriented, unless the faculty is aware enough to understand it as a process. 

While choosing post graduate courses, students are aware what they would possibly want to invest more of their time with. Hence, the idea of a course makes a lot of sense then. Courses in graduate studies not only help the researcher faculty, but also the student the privilege to access the researcher. However, at the undergraduate level, all of this could be so vague for the student that although the faculty might be able to put any kind of information generated in the studio in some perspective, the student has large chances of being on the flip side. 

But courses help structuring knowledge. They must be used to open up fields of inquiries. Courses could be broad enough to suit each one's interests. Ofcourse, it largely depends on the tutor how he/she conducts the course. Passive interactions never help, unless you have a great set of students. But why am i writing all this? Because I want to get out a lot of garbage out of my head. I have been somehow strongly thinking that course modules are being "tested" on students here, improvised and applied to "better" places thereof. I may be horribly wrong here, but as I said, this is just to remove all the junky debate that I have been having in my head since some time now. There is so much ambiguity in the course structures itself that I have been seeing (since one could interpret all of it in so many ways and do it in so many different types) that I have come to believe that the focus is not that the student gains, but the focus is pointed inward to the faculty.

Why do I think all this? I have become quite suspicious of things around me...May be it's all because of the political games that intelligent people keep on playing all the time. It's better to be aware than feel bad later! Atleast the impact of shock is lesser...

Basic Design Jury at AOA 2011

I was called for the external jury for the Basic Design work of the aided wing of AOA today. I have never evaluated Basic Design work earlier. I have never taught Basic Design before. I never felt there was any thing to teach in BD. Anything you do in BD is an exploration. So what do you actually critique? The projects that have been going on in AOA since ages are the Line Dot Curve or the Draw a simple machine-sketch-pattern-3D. None of the faculties ever explain the students what the purpose of that exercise is. I softly complained (during a core meeting) about the same  project we did 8 years ago (in our first year) to one of the senior faculties who taught us BD (ofcourse now, after that I've graduated, and being in a stronger position to pose a question to him). He cleverly escaped the question by answering that "you were not supposed to know the purpose then"! It's a completely escapist technique he used then - I refuted. But then I chose to not pinch him enough. They themselves were not sure what they wanted to impart then! They still don't know. If they knew, they would show us Escher, they would show us Renaissance paintings, they would show us what is composition, they would show us what is balance in composition, they would bring in art theorists, visual communicators -  they did not do any of this. They feel as architects they are too high to call people from these streams.

Well, I am not talking about the present BD team. I am talking about a team which taught us. And conveniently, when I asked this grey-head for answers, he tried to ask me who was the faculty team then. Basically he wanted to put all the unclarity of the course on the other members of the team. The hypocrisy with which the oldies operate in our college is commendable. No one questions them what they teach - what they say is a dictum. Very conveniently, they paint a completely floral picture to the higher authorities of what they are doing. That is only because they are able to theorize the entire process. The students struggle in the hindsight. They do not know what to speak! They cannot justify their thought processes. The answers you get are: "I did so because the faculty told me to do so..." On the other hand, the oldies boast about themselves and put down others blatantly (there is to comparison to the effrontery) say that they have "30 years of experience". The fact is that in the span of thirty years, they haven't developed their minds at all as teachers - or else, why do you see the same exercises being repeated for decades to come? The ego of a teacher must never allow repetition of any project that they did with students in their history.

New experiments face severe criticism and loss of a number of interesting faculty. Perhaps I have been too harsh with my comments on them above, but I am frustrated over the fact that I had nothing to carry back home after spending a good 12 hours with 20 students today! It was almost a formality to comment on each project which almost had very little content, which did not even push their imagination further with a plethora of things that surround them! No references, no criticality, no theorization - and this is the result of the kind of exercises that we as faculty develop for students. I do not blame the students at all. It is the intellect that drives the students. There has been no drive. You could see 65 excellent minds being wasted only because a certain senior faculty decides their fate, a faculty that is stuck to a time period 30 years back in history.

How can students allow this? Students have to rise up against this! They have to make us realize how much more we can do! The whole world is open to them - they can listen to lectures, talks on the internet, books are available, library is loaded, references and friends are around, art galleries are all open - when will they engage with all this? When will the ask intelligent questions to the faculty? I could detail out problems with each projects along with their merits. May be I could do it later. But the key to such processes is the amount of time to spend with a particular project. There need to be intensive form building exercises in Academy - they never teach you how to evolve form - and hence you have Hafeez Contractors. Students love to make forms, they crave to do interesting looking objects - why not dedicate one project on form building? It's only when the enter the practice that they meet "design-hungry" people who push them to give "interesting" objects.  So we have forms that have no meaning. Had we engaged with a meaning generation - form based exercise, we would have a lot of interesting stuff around.

But, all that can go on.

I shall upload some pictures - the only activity that kept us busy apart from listening to similar sounding explanations that we got from students. They all were highly skilled, talented and had a lot of potential.