Sunday, December 30, 2007

immersive experience

We need to create an 'immersive experience' on India, to the foreign students on 6 Jan, i think. Anuj, Sanjay and I had a discussion about what represents India. We were trying to figure out two things, content of the presentation, and how to present it. The topic seems endless, to me at least, how can we give them an experience of India in an hour at the most? And the dilemma of what is the 'real' India? What do we want to show them about our country?

One of the many random thoughts we had was using RK Laxman cartoons, but then we decided against it, because at the end of the day, that is one individual's perspective, even if it is humourous and witty, we don’t want to provide a skewed perspective. We thought about how to show issues that we all struggle with. Another theme we came up with was ‘roti, kapda, makan’. The three things most Indians still struggle and strive for. Perhaps we could have a conversation between three people, each one personifying roti, kapda and makan. We realized as we talked, that most issues can be traced back to these three basics, everything stems from there.

Any ideas on the immersive experience are most welcome. Please do share :)

4 comments:

Ruchita Madhok said...

hmmm..I agree that in order to introduce the role of design in India to people the "roti, kapda, makan" approach would be an interesting one with lots of scope.

However, we are introducing a country and its culture to fellow designers from the other side of the planet. So I think we first need to establish the context i.e.India and then delve into how one can deal with it i.e.thru the "roti, kapda, makan" route

Context ko pehle introduce kaise karein??

Shilpa Das said...

people, you have an entire day to present your immersive experience.

Rohit Iyer said...

I think the key word here is "immersive". Rather than try to stylize our content, we should first try to GET content. Once that is done we can decide how it should be presented.

Having said that, the day should also be more of an experience. Perhaps something as off-tangent as a walk through old city can create a more "immersive" experience than just a slideshow-type presentation.

Thoughts?

Avinash Rajagopal said...

the logic for roti kapada makan is indisputable. Of course everything can be traced back to that, but lots of stuff is more complex: religion, for instance. social structures will also be a little morer difficult. It might actually make much more sense to take a slice of life through a city, and use that to talk about basics.

We all have photos with us of various cities and parts of india. I suggest we delve into material we already have, and bring along anything we think makes an interesting image to study/interpret/take apart and thus talk about India and design.

how about also bringing found objects / artifacts/ textiles? might make the presentation more interesting, so people can "touch and feel".