Form and Space Studies, A20 Batch
Studio Co-ordinators: Prasad Shetty, Tamal Mitra , Kausik Mukhopadhyay, Apurva Talpade
Blog Post by: Tanushree Bhagwat and Sanjeeta Patil
This course was an attempt to open up ideas of the visual medium as a thinking space, and the nuances that influence the spatial experience and of a crafted form.
The Form and Space module analyzed the question of the mechanics of experience, where it lies, and how one uses the senses to define and imagine new spaces . It began with a reading exercise where students referred to selected texts from the book “The Birthday of the World and Other Stories” by Ursula K. Le Guin.
“So as a child I was a member of a flock, a school, a swarm, in and out of our warren of rooms, tearing up and down the staircases, working together and learning together and looking after the babies”
“All my senses were extraordinarily keen, as they had been all morning. I was aware of everything, the beautiful blue colour of the walls, the lightness and vigour of my steps as I walked the texture of the wood under my bare feet, the sound and meaning of the ritual words, the Doorkeeper himself.”
“The mist hid even the roof-peaks. Nothing at all was visible over the railing. He had to feel his way along, touching the railing. The wooden walkway was damp and cold to the soles of his feet.”
“The walls of the world deformed, bulging, shattering. The soundless explosion. A spray of bloody mist, a tiny smear of vapor in the starlight. They were all in danger all the time, surrounded by danger. That is the essence of safety, the heart of it: that the danger is outside.”
“We have left them trapped in a cage, a tin can, a specimen box, to live and die like laboratory rats and never see the moon, never run across a field, never know what freedom is!”
– Excerpts from ‘The Birthday of the World’ by Ursula LeGuin
These excerpts offered the possibility to inhabit emotions, alternate worlds, sensations, etc. through a set of drawings that resembled its meaning and depicted a logic with which the students had explored it.
Through the “sensorially” driven writing of LeGuin and works of artists like Georges Melies, Santiago Cajal, Ernest Haeckel, Hieronymus Bosch etc., we began investigating the concepts and charges behind their selected texts.
Keerat Kaur Gill, Jinal Trivedi , Madhuresh Adhate
In the next phase these drawings themselves were used to write about a character that would inhibit its space, offering newer facets to the experience of Ursula’s texts.
Emerging from the ambition of the drawing itself one’s character takes form of the wind, speaks to many versions of the self, becomes a hyper-conscious diary entry, a bleak psychological report, etc. each urging the text to advance the imagination of the inhabited space.
Mr. Radley eats by himself, talks to himself, spends 80% of time reading books (it provides a much needed escape from harsh realities), and avoids other people.
(Tanushree Bhagwat)
Sweeeeeeee…….Sweeeeeeeee…….SHHHHHHHHH…..oooooooooo……Shhhhhweeee……Shhhhhh….weeeee…..Feeeeeee……Shhhhhhooooo….Sheeeeeuuuuu…….wewewewewe……Shweshweshwe….Shweshweshweeeeeee……Shhhhhhhh……Shooooooo…..Shweeeeeeeee…..Shhhhhhh…..Shoooooooo…..oooooo…..shweeeeee….Shhhhhhhh…..weeeeee….weeeee…..shweeeeee….sheeeeee…..shweeeeoooo….ooooo….weeeeeooooo….shhhhhhh…..uuuuu….weeeee….shweeeee….phhhhh….
(Jayesha Chimanpure)
The excitement to experience it all makes my surface pound with exhilaration and felicity. I was completely surrounded, it was all around me, covering me in itself. The misty part always makes me feel lost and disappeared in it. The softness of the atmosphere never forgets to make me float in itself.
(Harsh Shah)
Two nights later I woke in darkness. The deep drums were beating all through the house. I heard other drums begin to beat in the temples of worship and the squares farther away in the city, and then others yet farther away.
(Krisha Dhairya)
Diffused, soft and graduated they seem….
A visible contrast within them and the space in between …moving through them is hypnotic
Dense and empty
Light and dark
All these juxtapose one another to give a spark!
(Anika Pugalia)
My brain rolling in a wave of black; a lift to a permanent high.
Time continued to flow, as the granules of space reached every nook and cranny of me. Uncontrollable form; dancing and floating on the spur of the moment.
(Nisha Shinde)
Its senses were agile perceiving the ambiance. Reposing and twirling; assimilating and stabilizing; inhabiting and experiencing; feeling and absorbing.
(Aditya Mahajan)
“Let me out, can’t breathe here”, can’t breathe in confinement.
All their cries so brutal, voices in my head, felt like whispers.
sweetest I’ve ever heard,
Boundaries blurred, of screams, of breathes, of skins, penetrating me, first one, two, and all at once
(Sharvin Jangle)
– A glance at a few characters authored by the students
Harshita Patel, Sanskriti Agrawal, Samiksha Bhagde, Vivek Khuthiya
The final stage of the studio was the volumetric interpretation which justified and followed the objectives of the inhabited texts and drawings by experiencing them through our senses. It would also provide a dwelling space for the characters generated by the students.
Uniting these sensorial experiments produced seven “planets/worlds” that had distinctive conceptual impulses which collapsed physicality, geography, imagination, and the space of the mind to open up and expand new ways of looking at the world.
Students with similar concepts and processes were grouped together to make 10-minute videos that would provide a unique experience of their text, drawings, and 3D spaces.
The planet of Shadows:
Non-materialistic spaces created by the dimensions and densities of shadows, which emerge either from solid forms or different experiments with light.
The planet of Touch:
A walk through a land of various surfaces that activate your skin and greatly trigger tactile senses.
The planet of wandering:
Vast and extensive landscapes that allow complete immersion and inhabitation. A world in which the body wanders around with a sense of exploration and discovery.
The planet of obfuscation:
The deliberate intent to un-clarify vision yields a world that is blurred and soft, evoking a sense of being lost in a labyrinth manipulated by lights, shadows and voices.
The planet of instruments:
A mechanical assembly of apparatuses, prosthetics and extensions of the body that awakens multiple senses.
The planet of fragments:
An environment that is both static and dynamic in nature, generated through the fabric of fragmented, frozen and solidified movements.
The planet of creases:
A diverse world of unique topography and terrains that originates from the folds, varying scales and undulations of different materials.
The performance that emerged is a film titled, The Itinerants in a nearby Galaxy. Each performing group narrated this experience in the form of a story which allowed wider readings and interpretations of the visual culture we encounter everyday. Continually confronting the ideas of space, and the bodily experiences in these newly created worlds we get a sense of the overlaps of the visual medium.
The broader objective of the course was to introduce the concept of sensory drawings, to familiarise students with the mechanics of experience and to develop the capacity to articulate and inhabit these experiences.
CLICK HERE TO EXPERIENCE THE FULL MOVIE
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UojMrhdJ-Vzh4AiY7ipC1EfOh24-ACfb/view?usp=drivesdk
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