A4 DRAFT report DCja1410_A

clipped fiction // palimpsest // gestural palimpsest // palimpsestic accordion

++ soho as a gestural space
++ latency
++ flux
(words of interests and potential from the first term)

The reactionary phase led by repetitive assertions of the previous terms work potentially opened up newer possibilities with greater architectural manifestation for my base ideations.


WHAT ?
The Project is about Gestures and Palimpsests with Soho enacted as a Gestural Space. The term FLUX means flow or continuous change or movement. Since the primary aspect of the project is about the gestures and motion; I felt the need to mix two scenarios for greater deliberation and intent pushing the exigencies of the idea of a gestural space.

FLUX _ for me would be like a tale of two cities for instance here, CHENNAI (formerly Madras in India) and London. Chennai being a British colony in history has lot of British traits and reminiscence. On the other hand Britain hasn’t had much of Indian impact yet. The relational dynamics and differences in art and culture of these two cities are full of potential to be explored.

_ The idea is to fuse the south Indian Classical performative art BHARATANATYAM as a gestural act in SOHO.


WHY ??
After reading part of the book, NON REPRESENTATIONAL THEORY by Nigel Thrift; I was consumed by the notion of existing social constructions and precincts of our so called democracy and the lame political order across the globe. The book also illustrates the mutilated and curtailed human aspirations into limelight and the only respite being it’s our own fascination through art, music and dreams or sometimes a parallel world too. Indeed a true sense of freedom, expression, discovery and invention.

It’s my fascination to see the fusion of an Indian art in Soho. Bharatanatyam is a classical dance which has Hindu mythological references. It is believed to be the cosmic dance between SHIVA and PARVATHI (Indian God and Goddess). The dance form is still practiced in southern India with innate details of hand and bodily gestures and predominantly performed by females.

_ I would like to use Bharatanatyam’s ADAVU (sets of hand/body gestures) as a derivative for a metaphorised performance in the perceived gestural space relating to SOHO.


HOW ???
The term ‘LATENCY’ interested me from the very beginning. That’s the first thing I felt about SOHO. Latency formally means the interval between stimulus and reaction.

I want to explore the latency of this gestural act in Soho. Any per-formative art is always frozen in time. I would like explore the merger of the Indian act in an active gestural space and expose the architectural manifestation which is like affect seeking response for the next act.

_ It’s continuous like a string of FLUXES and LATENCIES intertwined conveying the merger of the art form with the gestural space which is like a stage. At this stage, it’s full of potential waiting to be explored. It could be anything from a set of eruptive explosions, series of shadows to a multi-modal drawing frozen in time.

FIRST TERM review - dec 15 2009

CARTESIAN DUALITY - inspired from a picture from the National Portrait Gallery. This represents the body mind duality  layered in a Cartesian Space with the human brain as the central force of all events within the X Y Z Axes. This multi modal drawing traces the illusionary paths of human brain about itself in space as seen by its other self. 

  










GESTURAL PALIMPSEST - Palimpsest (recorded and informed motion) induced spatial sweeps of the human bodily motion. This drawing is to manifest the extent of involuntarily / voluntarily volume swept by human motions in the cartesian space. Projections of the body and the motion of the light source traced are represented in blue and red respectively. 

GESTURAL PALIMPSEST 2 - Light used as means to draw objects of references enabling actuation in the real space. The gestures are recorded like palimpsest information to understand the formal implication of the light traced in the given spatial condition. It's the future of object making through light and photons to enact the instances of referenced objects ephemerally.  

PALIMPSESTIC ACCORDION - metaphorised accordion depicting the stretch of urban information. The sample case is of a notice board from SOHO. The notice board stretches itself like a jukebox of light projecting itself on the wall with the people actuating them like reeds which flow on the pedestrian surface. 
The intent of the this exercise was to understand the architectural metaphors that can produce new insights to revolutionize the objects of day to day interest into more natural and self thinking beings.