Unpublished Archives

Looking back in my archives, I have found that I have a plenty of un developed writing ideas that I thought of in my past. Those ideas are outlines (literally) and I have had no time to write elaborately on them. There are ideas to write on the city, people, self, architecture, things around - all of them are just lying as ideas. I dont know what will happen of those outlines. there are intensive documentations of certain events that I experienced, phases of time, reflections on the self...

But meanwhile, i have started collecting some significant stuff on areas of my interest...and so I am slowly turning into more focused thought and writing. Due to this, I observe that the nature of my writing has changed to a documentative mode rather than the earlier self-exploration mode.

I wonder whether people stop blogging when they get absolutely serious with writing? I think I will too, at some point of time. I can feel that strain - especially when there is already so much that has already been explored in writing, what new do you produce? Rather, you question if whatever you produce is even significant? But on the other hand, you write for your readers, the assumed ones, whom you think are interested in you - isn't it? And one can so conveniently overrule their desire to peep into you! And when you know that you can make some people happy by sharing a slice of yourself with them, you feel that you are so powerful...

Nevertheless, I think this writing can remain till I keep struggling with my thoughts, myself...But one day, I will also be able to decide or put all the undeveloped writings that I have on my PC! Till then, I keep working on ideas.

Recent Bold Buildings

in the city

The Mondrian Shop

My recent Interior project.

Here is some process work. 

More details later.

Measure of an Idea

Architects produce ideas. They produce ideas for consumption, if we may say so. They also earn a living out of selling ideas. Selling is an exchange of things for money. In monetary sense, what is the value of ideas? How was this value of ideas produced by architects fixated? So, the COA said that the architects' fees shall be a percentage of the project cost. The project cost is essentially the cost of the material and labour used in the project. The labour cost issue is again somewhat like the "valuation of ideas" debate. But it could be well understood through the Marxist theory. 

But Marx didnot really talk about the compensation of the intellect!! In a Marxist sense, either we are labour, or we must not be compensated the way we are.

Anyway, coming back to the COA, it said that, for example, the fees of the interior designer shall be 10% of the project cost. It says two things:

Money --> directly proportional to bulk of used material

Value of ideas --> directly proportional to cost of material.

Ofcourse, thats why we have some interior designers fiddling with a lot of materials and costs.

But could it also mean, that the price of an idea is the amount of material manifest it can bring about? That might be a very small, at the same time very large question. Then what about ideas that never manifest yet have value? How are they priced? What I am intending to say is that in this world, its not only the material that has exchange value...how is the immaterial valued then? Who decides it? How? And why cant be an architect's ideas regarded as ideas and paid as the measure of an idea. How do you measure an idea? The COA has conveniently measured through its material manifest...

The question still remains, how do you measure an idea?

Television v/s Internet

These days I dont engage in television at all. I mean i dont know what to watch on it!! Funny.
But some time ago, my friend Ankit shared an interesting observation. The television is something that keeps on showing you images even when you dont ask for it. You switch it on and you have a plethora of choices for consuming any kind of image you want. This can actually be a two way thing. People can see TV, rather even stare at it for no reason and it will still keep on changing its content. Thus, probably it will keep you engaged, even if it's the most mundane way.

Ankit stays away from his home in this city. So he has no television to kill  his time at home. He feels bored sometimes. I told him: "Dude, you have the net, why do you worry? You can watch anything over there and now-a-days all TV stuff is available on you-tube"

Now this is the interesting part of the answer. He said: "Yes, but you have to search the internet for what you want. It doesnt give you things just without asking." Probably thats why we call TV the Idiot box - it's actually a transferred epithet. It makes you an idiot, without you knowing what you want to watch sometimes.

These days, I spend a lot of time with the internet digging out things, reading, collecting, putting different things together, talking to people, their ideas...and all that. And TV seems really futile to me. What this suggests is that not only I have become too focused with what I want to do, but it also suggests a shift in culture of spending time with an object. In this focus, I overlook a lot of things, which are a constant botheration to my father. My father is perpetually interested in knowing the current. And I keep telling him, the current is too distracting for me because I am interested in history! That may be very naiive answer right now. But I just avoid getting into a debate with him, particularly when I know I am going to lose over his wisdom that I does not approve of!

The fact that you have to know something to be able to use the internet as opposed to just staring at the TV which gives information for free (in a conceptual sense - ofcourse you pay your tv bill), was interesting.
In another conceptual sense, the television can be seen as a producer of a vast archive of societal constructs of images. It can become good amount of growing data for research in various subjects.

However, things will soon change when TV becomes digital. Then, everything will be available on the net and you can consider internet as another idiot box. And we shall then have infinite images strolling all around us with us not being able to decide where to invest our time...That will be absolute madness. That's not far really, we are almost on the verge of this technology taking over!

Why does my skepticism propound I don't know. What makes me insecure with this, I don't know...

Electronics & culture

Before the christian era, the knowledge of self was constituted through the awareness of the physical sensations (touch, smell, taste, see, hear). Knowledge was a collection of sensory impressions.

As the electronic age takes over, a great insecurity of losing this sensorial information / perception looms over many people. Will the electronic take over the senses completely? Can it only replicate our perceptions? does it operate only in the mental virtual space?

The transformation of existing objects and the creation of newer ones constantly bring about cultural changes in our interaction with the material world. After all, we exist for the material and the material exists for us.  Does the e-world lay more emphasis on the non-material. The electronic makes us realize the phenomena of how we have actually converted so much of the non-material world (ideas) into material. For example, books, maps, or all kinds of representations of the world! All representations will now change their physical manifest due to the change in technology. A book now, in its physicality is thus a silicon chip. For that matter, a lot of different forms of physical data is going back to a absolute form - the silicon servers!

In some way, because the electronics change the immediate physical space around us, we as humans change too, in the way we behave, engage, move, etc. Thus our bodies will change, because our work cultures will change...

But more than anything else, what intrigues me is the emphasis from the physical world to the non-physical...Didn't the jain philosophy say that the world is an illusion? maya? Are we confirming it? I wonder...