In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. John 1:1. This explains the significance of “Nada Brahma” or the world of vibrations. In this workshop, we will first establish the intuitive co-relation of music and colours, connecting our sense of hearing with our visual sensation. We will... Continue Reading →
You can not re-write the history of India doing away with the religions. Spiritual quest has left its mark again and again in its various layers. Now that "spirituality" and "religion" have become so difficult to separate, it has become safer to throw both out and dwell in a cleaner space of neutralism where either "we don't talk about religion at all" or "if we do talk, we should include all in carefully measured equal proportions".
With the popularity of yoga, "chakra" has once again become a word that is heard sometimes. What can we learn about ourselves through the understanding of chakras? How can the problems in our lives be better tackled if we learn to balance these energy centres? We will create our personality colour-charts after we learn to evaluate our chakras. We will thus be aware of our negative and positive sides and be able to see many unknown links behind our traits that affect one another. We will explore colours in a new way touching upon a part of this ancient practice of chakra yoga.
Why is Saraswati in white attire? Why does Durga have 10 hands? Why is owl the vehicle of Lakshmi? What do the gods and goddesses mean and why are they so many in number? Can the deities be useful in our daily lives or are they just part of our rituals? In a step by step manner, as we pick up the visual language through the understanding of colours, symbols, metaphors and personifications, we will gradually get closer to the secret messages the deities hold for us.
To understand India it is important to understand its soul. This is a country with a strong spiritual core. When Krishna guides Arjun encouraging him in battle, he still discourages him in violence. Now this itself is a controversy that a mind which is not trained in this school of thinking cannot penetrate. This kind of controversy is in the lengths and breaths of India. To understand India, one has to train. This is a course outline for a design institute which could prepare its students with that stronger base.
When the designers themselves grow without much understanding of India within the discipline, that fight continues leading to the fight of ideal within the country. In an institute like NID, which puts so much emphasis on understanding the surrounding, whose very root was set to empower India through the understanding of India as documented in the India Report by Charles Eames, one still feels that missing links and history. When I visited other newer institutes, this missing factor was even larger to the extent that it distorted the very purpose of "design".
Different cultures over the period of time have developed different ways of "problem-solving". If you look at it that way then design and culture seem to follow similar routes. What is it then that the culture has to contribute to design? What is it we have missed out on? Is culture only about orthodox practices? Or can we rather add so much to "design" if we only understood its contribution.
When a man needs nothing to survive, he basically is above a problem and hence there is nothing to solve. Is that the point where “design” becomes obsolete and useless for an individual? In a country with a background of such when we overthink the curve of a chair or the shift of a font it does somewhere clash with our own stories hearing which we grew up.
BELOVED INDIA 