First class on Artistic Research- 25th July'12

Being away from the artistic scenes and locked up in the outskirts of Bangalore makes me a little distraught. So when I met Rakhi Peswani, I was quite relieved. The difficult part here is to ensure that you are walking in the right path, while you create your own road-maps for the next two-years. The hardship lies in the fact that time is too short and mistakes can be pretty expensive in that sense.

Rakhi’s class has been a stress buster. I go through literally so many ideas every time we meet. Today while sitting in the class, we started discussing on sketch books and drawings. Going through an old sketchbook is like reading an old map. Often time you look at an image and wonder how you ever even came up with the idea. It is soothing to know that I can finally discuss my work with someone.

What I plan to do this semester is to get the ideas onto something more tangible. So I am not talking of paper but computer generated drawings, something like processing.

There are few broad areas that I am interested in, like space/architecture/environment/ interactivity. The question is how I develop these ideas furthur and be more focused. I think drawing will play a critical role here. Coding is one way I want to proceed, then making small prototypes to get a clearer picture on what I mean by the above keywords. The reason behind emphasizing on coding is that it would give me an idea on how to play with space.

Coming to the course structure, I feel that certain modules are missing that can otherwise help me in building the skill sets. Agreed that this is a research course, but during interdisciplinary studies an integral component for a researcher is all to expand the skill set, whether it is by understanding another domain or simply practicing. So it now remains on how pro-active I can be. Another issue is that the assessment is extremely vague. I think that it’s a course that is still developing and in a sense that is good. But on the flip side, experimentation can be detrimental to the output of students at times.

Getting back to the point of action, I have started to take help from various sources to help me get initiate into coding. Talking of which I started reading on Processing from today. My initial impression has been pretty good. I went through the basic tutorials and I found it quite simple in execution.

As I get back to finish an old painting, I would like to end the post with a note I found from Paul Valery’s comment on the writing exercise he would engage in the morning hours and his take on that:

 ‘Having dedicated these hours to the life of the mind, I thereby earn the right to be stupid for the rest of the day.’

And that sums it all.