Wall art

We were given a topic "Body".
We brainstormed,concluded, and collectively agreed that body is a container.
A complex cookie jar.
The complexity was represented by a galaxy; a body that contains countless other bodies.
The jar we then stylized with fuchsia colored fumes in the background, and contrasted the jar even more so with an orange gradient background color.

Mapping of Yelahanka

Our eyes were opened towards how the roads and the navigation around the city is made for the youth, 18-35 year old, fit men. Probably not intentionally so, but just as per construction convenience and assumed population "majority". Not just around the city, but also in buildings, stairs, vehicles, crossings etc. but our focus was around the city, and narrowed down to our immediate area, Yelahanka.
We were assigned to map 4th and 5th phase of Yelahanka all while being sympathetic and solely focusing on the problems and the level of convenience the elderly, children, blind, women and physically handicapped people might have.
Our group walked around and we begun our mapping. we observed that the footpaths were pretty narrow and uneven so we walked beside the footpath and when we did there were cars, bikes, bicycles, and that made it only much harder to walk because then there was the roads with vehicles. We observed potholes and ditches. garbage in the middle of the road.
We conducted a small experiment where i tried and shut my eyes for about ten minutes as we continued walking around the area with my friend guiding me. I wanted a glimpse of what its like to be blind. What i learned was that you become dependent on your ears so you hear much more than what a person with sight can. I learned that sight is a distraction. I experienced what we were told about prior to this assignment, that the blind see more than anyone else.
As a designer i learned the level of importance that should be given to people in these categories. A good designer should always consider and try to incorporate the needs of people under all categories in their work. As a group we had a couple of ideas we really liked but we narrowed it down to one.
It was a fun and an insightful experience.

Hover Bubble

As a part of an activity, we had to take a walk around the 4th and 5th phase of Yelahanka New Town and create a map, all while being sympathetic to the needs of the elderly, women, children, physically challenged and the blind. Because navigating the city for the people who fall under the mentioned categories is a task in itself. It shouldn't be.
We were supposed to come up with a crazy idea which could serve as a solution to the problems we observed. Our group came up with the idea, the "Hover Bubble". It's a blend of several ideas which seemed to be catering to most of the problems faced by the target population.
The Hover Bubble, or HoveBub is a 5-foot diameter spherical, man-sized, personal air vehicle which serves aviation. It's features include a comfortable seat with a safety belt, controls on the arms of the chair, speakers on the side, a screen displaying map, camera live feeds from various angles outside, ventilation mechanism, storage unit, engines (nitrogen-cooled super conducting magnets perhaps) , highly mechanized motion sensors, voice navigation GPS and auto pilot.
The idea seems highly advanced and over-hopeful, almost insane, but sometimes great ideas start of this way. Perhaps it'll be a reality in the future.
Making of the HoveBub:
We made a prototype model, starting off by some research on the internet about the structure framework, pre-existing hovering and floating machines to get a a rough idea of how to practically go about making it.
 Making an inflatable chair as the seat was our first task.We went downtown and purchased all the material, after calculating the the required measurements. We learned where to find the cheapest material, and what adhesive to use with which material. The following day, we got nozzles inserted from the bicycle repair shop.
Next in line was the main body framework of our vehicle. For the structure we used slit bamboo, masking tape, and thread. Bending them into shape and fixing them together into a remotely spherical shape. We then covered it with transparent cellophane paper- to represent the see through, shatter-proof material we imagined our HoveBub to be made of and the bottom half with news print paper where the engines and storage compartment would be.

What is art?

Anyone who creates anything is an artist. Any creation is a piece of art, but good art is if it makes you feel something, if you think a little differently after observing it.

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist. Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.

She engages the audience in a strong sense of non-verbal communication.

In one of her performance art, invitation was open for a single member from the audience at a time to come and sit across a table, face to face with her, and she’d simply look up into their eyes, for as long as they were sat, and looked back down in the interval.

She wasn’t zoned out, she wasn’t daydreaming, she was a hundred percent present, to the intensity that the audience felt it. It is well worth noting that her presence of mind isn’t just for a few minutes but goes on for hours.

This particular performance art of hers got quite a few participants in tears, that was the power of her gaze.

“..there is nowhere to go except in yourself. It was shocking. But how simple it was” she says.

And this presence isn’t just in this performance, but also in another one where she laid down on a table, immobile. On another table she keeps 72 items like roses, thorns, a gun with a single bullet, feathers and such. There is a notice at the table which says that no one but Abramovic herself will be held responsible for what happens in the next six hours ( her performance period).For the first couple of hours the people in the audience were cautious but as time went by, the reaction from the audience got more drastic. Violent, inhumane actions were observed which came from just ordinary civilians, to the point where she was on gunpoint, violated, had had her clothes stripped off, bleeding.  She discovered if you leave it to the audience, they’ll kill you. She believed in her art so much that she was willing to go to the extent of dying.

Albeit, once the “performance” ended, she got up and slowly began to walk toward the audience. They immediately, literally ran away. The same civilians who originally came to observe a civilized art performance. No one dared to face confrontation.

Abramovic experimented along with the audience in a way. Neither of them knew what the outcome would have been. She has the ability to bring out extremes of emotions in people, love and violence, which I find incredible. It’s good art

Barbara Kruger’s art is verbal and visual. She took existing pieces and appropriated the art, mashed up meanings to create new ones. It seems to me like she was one the first to make pieces such as she did. Personally I couldn’t relate to it, although it was obviously relative to her generation. Her work is a lot different than that of Abramovic. Her’s doesn’t have that personal touch and that deep connection with the audience unlike Abramovic’s. Kruger’s work, I feel, isn’t timeless. I feel it was targeting the immediate generations problems.

To conclude, art is only art you find/ put meaning to it. If it spurs thoughts and discussions, if it spurs arguments and emotions, it is art. The art, isn’t important. The artist, isn’t important. What it makes you feel is what art is about.

The Venus of Willendorf

What we see in this documentary is the transformation of the image and representation of the human body as a form of art across the ages, dating to around 30,000 years ago. Professor V.S. Ramachandran explores why the Venus of Willendorf is as exaggerated and unrealistic as she is. The relation he made between this and the Herring Gull theory is very apt. They were living in a harsh ice age environment and features of fatness and fertility must have been highly desirable.  So their brains compelled them to exaggerate these features over other features.
  The 'exaggeration' they speak about isn't that extensive. At first it appeared as if perhaps details were avoided for convenience. But when observed closely, it's true.

“Not randomly distorted, but carefully distorted in order to exaggerate the brain’s aesthetic response to the body.”

Dr. Nigel Spivey then moves to the Egyptians, one of the most ancient civilizations. The nomadic way of representation of the human body appears and the primeval instinct exists no longer. Consistency and order prevailed their culture for over 3000 years and it showed in their artwork.

He then moves on to the Greece, and this is where it gets interesting.

They believed that if you looked good (physically), you were good.

The belief that God took human form affected more than just their vanity.

The transformation they made from making small figurines to life size, life-like images was extraordinarily fast. It was the most rapid artistic revolution in human history.

The Greek and the Egyptians were virtually isolated from each other.
Greek learned from, and bettered the style of the Egyptians. They were the first, ever in history, to depict the naturalistic postures and features that prevail in the human body.
Dr. Spivey points out how the statues they made were unrealistic exaggerations, how the curve in the lower back of one, was more than humanly possible, and the light groove in the life size figure of a mans chest, deeper; legs longer. They, like the nomadic way, exaggerated those features which were regarded as attractive. The "primeval instinct of exaggeration" was hardwired into the brains of all humans, even if it was suppressed in some cultures. The Greeks had the ingredients to create realism. Which is caused them to reject it.
To quote Professor Ramachandran, "If art is about realism, why do you need art? You can just go around looking at things."
It was mentioned that they abandoned this technique of realism within a generation. Which brings him to our generation and how the human is represented today. Today, one can only find unrealistic and "abstract" representations.

The image on the left is an example of the above. A painting of a woman by Picasso.


Like the Venus of Willendorf, many artists today seek such simplicities in their sculptures.
Very much like the Venus, people today exaggerate those features in their bodies which is considered attractive, they wear the type of clothes which enhances those features, they also get plastic surgeries and injections to pronounce it. If you look at it this way, it was predicted by nomads about 30,000 years ago the state of human body today. The need for exaggeration and not realism was predicted 30 millennia and very much exists today.

 What I learned from it as an artist and designer is that we must not forget to look at past and pre-existing artworks and designs, explore into it and question it. We might take decades other wise to figure out what already has been figured out.

Sour bomb

We were assigned to make a funny GIF or a stop-motion.
I thought it would be pretty funny to give my friend two really sour "candy's" at once.

Contemporizing Kalika

After some brainstorming, I decided to pick the Hindu Goddess Kalika, often called “Kali Ma” and referred to as Mother Goddess, great protector, mother of language. Her name comes from one of the names of the 7 tongues of the Goddess of fire.

She is the Goddess of Time, Change, Abode and Destruction.

Her mount is the Tiger and her weapons include a trident, scimitar, sword. She is presented as dark and violent. The way she is displayed is as she’s dancing on her husband, Shiva.

Kali Ma has no permanent qualities. It is believed that the concepts of color, light, good, do not apply to her. She is pure, unmanifested.

Physical features include 4 arms, black or blue skin, red eyes of intoxication and rage, disheveled, long, black hair and the iconic lolling tongue. She is often displayed either naked or wearing a skirt made of human arms, garland of human heads, accompanied by serpents and jackal.

There are several changes I’ve made:

1.     The way she dresses. The only garment she is clad in over here is a high-waisted “underwear” with a full-length translucent skirt. My idea of epitome of beauty is that she can cover what she wants to and not, what she doesn’t. And not only is it socially accepted, but also men don’t stare inappropriately.

2.     Jewelry. “Hindu Goddesses must be adorned with jewelry” She doesn’t have to, but she does, because she wants to. A simple nose ring as a cherry on top.

3.     Hair. While maintaining her extremely long, disheveled–state of hair, I chose to add my own kick to it and gave her (strategically placed) dread locks and also made her hair white because I think it looks really awesome on her.

4.     Feet. She wears flip flops because why not?

5.     Tongue. Her iconic lolling tongue doesn’t always loll.

I maintained some features as well:

1.        Her gorgeous dark skin.
2.       Her expression of rage.
3.           Intoxicated red eyes.
4.      The disheveled state of her hair along with the length.