Wednesday, October 28, 2009

rushing the impressionist to safety




dramaqueen:
"
Paul Gauguin: All I see when I look at your paintings is just that you paint too fast.
Vincent Van Gogh: You look too fast!

















"



sludge:
"
BLUM

"

intoxicated elephant:
"
3


..."

Q: "what is animation,again?"
A:.. (while sludge and dramaqueen await the reply from the merry elephant,the howlin' wolf sings in the distance, the speech bubble hovers over the audience patiently.)

Monday, October 19, 2009

Thursday, October 15, 2009

I have often wondered at the resilience of the raw brick and concrete building at my design school at NID..
The electrical wires are all stripped bare and tied together in knots
It has always charged me to see the wiring just so.
It feels raw and waiting and responsible and truthful.
It feels like great things are possible, that things can be cleaned out, that many heads have leaned back against these very brick walls and thought the same.


Prashant Miranda breathed around the same corridors at another time around my institute. And this is where we loop back,..
The electrical wires are all stripped bare and tied together in knots



The Intoxicated Elephant is an experiment with image,words and sound.
I'm posting there for a couple of fortnights.
duplicating one post here,
thereon we'll be snuggled in there for a bit.
.
.
While reading John Steinbeck's 'East of Eden' which reads quite like this,
and watching Shiva Soundsystem compose for the innards of an auto rickshaw factory in Aurangabad quite clearly for the sound of it,
I work on that feeling of noire which creeps as we explore that particular shade of blue

It then proceeded to melt into all the colours at once and mellowed into sounds from Fever RaY
with

Lucy and
.
.














.
Bart
.
.













.
.
and well,with both of them
.
.















like just so..
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.

Sunday, October 4, 2009



Jean Luc Godard making an appearance in his film 'Prénom Carmen',1983.
The place of the young adult in every day living is a thought JLG pulls out into the sunlight for airing now and again, sometimes bang in the middle of a perfectly linear storyline.
Especially in his films after the Maoist period,...why there's the Nouvelle Vague,Forever Mozart, Eloge D'Amour,this after his complete deconstruction of cinema,breaking it down to sound and visuals,putting the two tracks of sound up against each other,dragging them to the other ends of the room till they stayed there stretched,tortured ,reaching once more for their halves.
He made his peace with their inseparability.
He raised them to life through the years till they had reached a peaceful lull in Eloge d'Amour. The critics applauded the madman's return to 'watchable' cinema ,and sat down to nibble at what he offered.
The critics save some are never interested in the ghosts between the frame,the awkward silences,.. what it took for these silences to gather their full throated tone.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Clip

This is Beats Antique from Istanbul,Mochu shared this nugget with me awhile back,and I thought I'd put it up ,since it's on an infinite loop on my machine anyway..

I would actually download it from Youtube and upload it on Vimeo for the love of a better interface,but here it is till then.



The dancer travels with the troupe,and I think it's a superb way of emphasizing the bands draw between traditional music making and the digital appendages.
In fact,that's why I feel the video fits in well as well,not a bad job done at all,..
I especially love the interspersing of WW stock footage with the treated concert videos,...like this could be happening in a preservation jar in some biology lab with snakes from the other jars looking on or something..
.
.
.
:):)

.

Just thought I'd FIFO this article I came across, amongst other things I find his breaking down of life between lenses hilarious.
then I like orange.
ahah
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.


Here's the article: Covering a Dust Storm: Tim Wimborne
an excerpt..
"..6). Multi-task. After making an initial file of 6 pictures, my morning included shooting more in the continuing red gale. I shot more as commuters started pouring into the city by road and foot, capturing television footage for my RTN colleagues, filing more, ducking back across the harbour to take my sick wife to the doctor, texting colleagues so we were both on the same page, dressing my son, packing his lunch, taking him to a friend’s house, eating breakfast, filing video footage and getting more pictures on the wire as the dust began to thin..."

Observation: Is it just me or does the Reuters logo look like a minimalist DoorDarshan logo(of the old watch-the-logo-form-fullscreen type from the 80s)!
.
.
.
Oh and for those who still can't listen to drum and bass from the last post,I've got the perfect track attached to get you to hear a ''golly rhythm''.
maths,it is.

Music Club by Chase & Status  
Download now or listen on posterous
02 Music Club.mp3 (8763 KB)

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Ola.

Can't Get Enough by Chase & Status  
Download now or listen on posterous
01 Can't Get Enough.mp3 (8139 KB)

hello me hearties
something to charge your mornings up with
fooling with music and the visual,you'll know more about it in a bit.
but then you've heard a lot of my 'in a bit's
ahahahhaha
introducing drum and bass
create your entry points into watching my films
I'm shooting like a manic.

This is Chase & Status.

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Sunday, September 20, 2009



We're kicking it off.
We went
and then we went again.
This a clip we cut while traveling,with the animation shot on the nice white washed wall outside our bathroom in Leh.
All fingers and nudges,but yea sometimes the best stuff comes on the go.
Shot on a wee little digicam we bummed offa a friend of mine from engineering.



There's a site
and then there's a reading.
You will be invited.


Welcome to Ladakh.
:)

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Rohtang

In Rohtang...
that’s when I saw them first, the wild horses..
I must learn to keep some things safe in my mind, away from words, away from film. Away.
That's what I thought when I saw them.

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.
.

I walked up to this beautiful brown muscled mare and sat on the ground reaching my hand out.
I sat and kept the hand out.
She was grazing by a little stream.
She stopped and looked at me and stood still too.
She walked up.
She came a foot away from my hand and looked at me, raising her head to my eye level.
We stared for a bit.
She touched my hand with her muzzle, and stepped back. A second later ,she leaned it into my palm. I could feel her weight in the push.
We could have ridden, I know.
We could have ridden.
There will be time soon.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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the Pang bowl

We reached the Pang bowl today, 40 kms of land stretched out greenish purple in between the watching, immovable,.. almost merciless mountains.
Aditya and I walked far into the open.
There was a strange vacuous feeling in my throat.
I felt like running.
In the middle of these unnamed, opaque entities.
You know those parallel streams of consciousness running at the back of your head? They lurk around in your head a lot here, this land seems to invoke them. Siddhartha and I have developed a method to deal with them..we let them out into the mountains for some air, then we take them back in when we’ve had enough time on our own.
It works.
The mountains seem to be able to take a lot.


It was my grandfather’s death anniversary today,

We’re in the middle of the clouds.
I can feel him around.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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En route to Leh

We reached Surajtal late in the morning
the air was getting chillier,
lighters find no combustible air to combust, the oxygen levels are very low..

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Manali,Himachal Pradesh

We stayed at Pachan at the Army transit camp, ten kilometers from Manali(Himachal Pradesh). Pachan is a village by the Beas,the river that strings all the people of this region together.
It has been only a day in the valley and Aditya and Siddhartha want to live here.Siddhartha imagines a studio and Aditya says all he’ll need is a net connection.

Distances seem large. We walk a short distance and are out of breath.After a brief spell of headaches,a little sleep and an ink pen breaking open in Siddhatha’s pen box again, order seems to be restored for the time being.

We stopped at a little tea stall by the river, the little tin roofs are dripping from the rain and huge highway trucks thunder past,the diesel fumes seem unbearable for some reason in this aseptic air. We sat on wooden benches facing each other, Siddhartha got out his sketch book and I set to cleaning his stained pens.
That’s when I saw the carpet weaving looms inside the shop, and got talking to Khila, the lady who ran the tea shop.
Khila sells ski suits to tourists, has a running kitchen and teaches girls from surrounding areas weaving in the evenings. She says it doesn’t earn her much, and there’s no use for rich people to learn how to weave a carpet, but it does become useful for young girls from the surrounding areas who are from struggling families.

We spoke to her about why she wove carpets,and she said it was a way to remember where she is from.She said her sons studied in English medium schools,because it was needed to survive today,to be taken seriously, but culture was ‘something like child birth’. When a child is born, she is attached to the mother by the umbilical cord. It must be cut, … but the memory of it will pull the child back. It must.
If it doesn’t, then no mother can do anything.
The child must remember to remember.

I’ll upload our conversation through a short clip soon.


See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Monday, July 27, 2009

we've got a brand new video up here
the journey til Manali,part of the crew coming together for the recce!!
we need pledges everybody!!

sarchu

we landed at the army transit camp at sarchu,
that's our hut,far in the distance at the right.

wait till you see the videos of this place.

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blotted

siddhartha's pens can't handle altitude change.
i seem to be the only one getting my hand stained.
black ink all the time.every time.

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manali

we reached manali after spending a night with a joint family which somehow managed to focus the whole night on eating.
children were wailing.
uncles were staring
siddhartha amused himself with the blue night lights
Aditya kept seeing his mother.

In Manali,we offloaded 2 very wet rucksacks from the base of the bus.
Sid obviously had wrapped his clothes neatly in plastic.That's him jumping around in the background.with mirth.
BL*$%&  $ell.

lesson learnt:
blankets soak lots of water.
don't carry them.ever.


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Thursday, July 9, 2009

Siddhartha

...and this is one of our fugitive artists furiously at work, at his desk at the National Institute of Design,as we speak,..as you read :)
Siddhartha,who's going to help piece together the puzzle in Ladakh...and who has created the caricatures of the team,down below, for a start
gogogo!

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Z

This is how education used to be in Ladakh
By the side of a hand dug irrigation canal
a mani wall running through the fields...

I'd have loved to be taught how to write a story here..
or even engineering graphics for that matter!




a pity education everywhere is becoming like this.
A school in Ladakh,in 2009,looks like the image above.
from Milann's posterous

elementary

I believe the one thing that gets me about exploring Ladakh is the absolute evidence of us not being able to get anywhere without the elements
earth
wind
fire
water
ether
imagine a place where you see the people living by the forces
bowing before it
embracing it
writing their songs on the elements
on rocks over which the water can flow and push the song ahead
writing the stories on flags,so the wind can sing it to the mountain sides
it's all about the motion,isn't it?
writing it on the divine circle,the prayer wheels in natural motion singing singing through their natural course
round and round

it's our responsibility to remember the song
to sing it out and let others know
to remember what we are,and what our origins are.

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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

and hopping :)


We just went from 5% to 13% in 3 days here :)
We're going to keep the steam! So people really know that if a couple of people really believe in something,it can happen!
Every 5$ counts.

Thank you for all the support!
A big thank you to all the people who've seen me through a lot already over the years and who have joined in here as well :)
and to all the people who don't know me but still believed in the idea,welcome aboard, we will make sure this is worth it!

I'm excited to announce a new addition to our team since this project kickstarted, Siddhartha Tripathi, an animation film maker and fluid illustrator, who has decided to collaborate with our explorations in Ladakh!

AND
with Siddhartha on board, we've decided to get all people interested in a little more detail on board as well.

So for a 100$ Pledge, Siddhartha will tinker to make caricatures of you,something to maybe catch the essence of the person you are!
We plan to couple these sketches with the artwork we will produce in Ladakh, in our showcase event.
Bringing all the faces of the people who made it possible,together :)

Presenting the first set of caricatures in till now, of the team
.
.
.

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Friday, July 3, 2009

stepping it up. 5% and looking.

I have been absolutely blown away by the number of people coming forward to support . But we still need more pledges!!
.
.

over the last couple of days we've gotten offering to play the guitar for children
from a potter
from film production workers who still wonder at the super lack of a purely 'entertaining' objective in this project and hence want all the more to be a part(!)
from a graphic artist
from an installation artist,a product designer and close accomplice
from an artist who became an animator
a textile artist who's worked with the Indian Army
a songwriter
350.org
from a native who feels the organizations working in Ladakh, work only for themselves
from 2 people who have served in the Indian Army in the region
from a senior from engineering school who might bring forward the film projectors his company makes
from a loaned DSLR
from my favorite resident poet preparing to skip in whenever she wants
to my mother who is the most excited, about us reaching Zoji la Pass

I have no words to communicate my feelings for these who have given of themselves so selflessly.

I read this line today which I found fitting,
'

Everyone who is honest,is interesting

'
So it seems. :)

The problems seem to be how to get the foundations in top shop shape before letting people in or figuring a way of doing this inspite of all those of corporate origins craning their necks to look for the source of these thoughts.
:):)
Some people have not known how to react.
They've called me and have wanted to just talk.
I've been talking.
:)

More in a bit,I'm on the road..

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Dajo

Thank you all my backers for pitching in your support so soon,we're 3 % funded at Kickstarter !

I'm super excited to let you know that we just got a confirmation from a master shadow artist, Radha Kumud Sharma (fondly called Dajo by people who know him), belonging to Bolpur near Vishwabharati Santiniketan, West Bengal. Priyanka Chhabra,one of the core members of our film collective had shot a documentary with him awhile ago,and his story is humbling.

So,Dajo says he'd love to be a part of our explorations through the region.:):) And if all goes well with the funding, we'll have some super magic coming your way as soon as we get started on our recce!

Dajo, has been touring for the last 40 years through Jammu and Kashmir across Himachal to Gujarat by foot, in India teaching science and narrating stories to the school students in villages and towns across the country. He uses the play of light and his finger movements to create different animals, birds and human beings.
 
In basic science, he covers subjects such as Geography, Biology, Chemistry; some favorite topics being the solar and lunar eclipse and cell division in plants and animal. And the kids love him :)
Have a look ...



Jaya, you will absolutely love his narrative on the 'Life of Buddha', shadow art with hand cut stencils, waiting for him to come into town so we can start working with him :)

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Monday, June 22, 2009

Hello world :):)







Come,come be part of the idea.
I pitched it to these guys at Kickstarter.com in the US and they loved it.
Tag.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Project Edza for Ladakh



just taking you along my visual journey...
digging for the common thread..this will be a series..

I'm writing, and it feels like I'm onto nitro mode already :):)
thank you everybody who's jumped onto the same ship with me,it's only going to happen if these energies are fused.
looking out for more people in the water who'd like to jump on
feel free to share a thread you pick.






Below,The Namgyal Tsemo Gompa above the town of Leh, Ladakh.


Below, a lama puts on a mask before performing at the
Hemis Festival at Hemis Monastery, also called the 'Roof of the world'.


Below,A cow grazes along the shore at Pangong Lake,near Spangmik,
Ladakh.

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