In preparation of Exhibition 2

For the second exhibition, we received a few guidelines. We were to use a 'frame' and an 'archival object' in order to bring forward a memory.
Quite early on, i had decided that the subject of this project would be my late uncle. he was first husband to my mother and also elder brother to my father. He was killed during the violence in punjab in 1984. i never got to meet him, and i only ever heard of his death when my family talked of him. losing him was traumatic, and my family could never really heal. I rarely got to hear them talking of his life in a celebratory manner. Hence, i got to know very little of him while growing up.
I decided that i would get to know him through this project. I wanted to immerse myself in the stories of his unfortunately short life that my family would tell me, and then detach myself a little. I wanted to get to know of his life and his work. I wanted to be able to celebrate his life rather than remember him dead, and to build a relationship with him.
Initially, I was drawn to exploring the nature of his death: the violence and the sudden end. i thought of installations that would make the viewer feel the violence of 1984, through visuals and soundscapes, and by entering suffocating space set ups.
from here, i wanted to show how there was so much to his life, which was so easily taken away. the robbing of a life became my prime focus.
later on, i was drawn to my only memory of him: a photograph i grew up seeing. i wanted to frame his photograph in a size bigger than the average human body. i wanted people to walk through the frame, by lifting or drawing the fabric printed photograph. they would walk into a small room that would represent his life, using pictures, footage and his belongings. the belongings would seem to be floating upwards along with a rain of red petals symbolic of bloodshed. the installation would be a time freeze of the bloodshed robbing his life.this became the idea i wanted to go ahead with. from here on, i tried to simplify the idea to fit my budget, time availability and recourse availability.
I went through three to four stages of simplification, where i had to reduce, replace, add and clean out the arrangement. this was an interesting process because it required for me not to get too attached to the elements and symbols i chose, and at the same time, it required for me to retain the layers and thoughts as i reduced its complicated structure.

Feedback and Learning from the Exhibition

This was our first exhibition, and like every first time, it came packed with lessons. My project was well received by the viewers and they found it easy to interact with my installations. Some felt that i had succeeded in recreating the simple joy and awe of childhood, when there was ample time to try and make a kite and play with fish in water by moving a stick around in water. They also felt that i was able to bring out the importance of a past and present in a relationship and how they shape one.

  However, some felt that my two installations were distributed and far apart ( in terms of physical location). I felt this too, as i had been  dealing with the challenge of linking the two projects in a manner that would guide the viewer to either sides of the project. I had put up an element of my project- a kite, as a guiding line that connected the two installations, but i feel like i could have figured a stronger connection out. I thus realized, that details within the presentation of a finished project need some thinking and time as this is what minimizes confusions for the viewer, making the whole experience easier to take in. i learnt to look at my work from the viewers' point of view, and made a note of the things that would need attention in the next exhibition.

Exhibition

By the time of the exhibition, I had converted my illustrations into an animation with certain elements of each illustration in motion. I also gave each moving image asound piece that was in sync . I got to experiment quite a lot with the mode of narration and I found that adding dynamics and sound give a lot more strength to storytelling. my project went through a lot of change based on the feedback and my attempt to make it better.

My final exhibit consisted of a 63" by 69" projection of the underwater, which could be played around with, and an animation about memories my father and I share and about the cherished time we spend fishing.

Another video incorporated the reflection of a girl looking into the water and finding a similar underwater scene as the one the viewers create while interacting with the medium.

The second part to my exhibit was the installation where viewers made personalized kites of a memory and contributed it to the memory scape where everyones kites were hung against a glass wall looking upon the sky.

Object and reflection.

The next step to this assignment was to add an object and a reflection to support your narration. I chose the 'kite' as my object as it was a common part of our childhood, and also in the illustrations telling of it. I decided to make an installation with my chosen object rather than display it.

I thought of making a memory sca

pe with kites. I designed an interactive installation where the viewers would come and make their own kites with the help of simple manuals and ready-to -use material availed to them. The viewers would think of a memory

and personalize their kites accordingly before letting it hang along with all the many such memory kites. Together, they would make a memory scape of memories afloat.

For the physical reflection, I decided to show the girl in my narratives looking into water and her reflection. the medium i chose was the OHB projector, which would project water itself on my exhibit wall. I experimented a fair amount with this medium built on my idea by even showing what the girl looks at underwater. I made detailed cut outs of fish and let them float in the water, and at the same time let colored inks diffuse in the water giving interesting effects. The viewers would be provided with inks, straws and sticks to blow bubbles, move the fish and create waterlike effects. This experience of playing with the excitin

g mediums, would bring them close to my first experience with fish and water. The newness that i felt then, would hopefully be felt by the viewers now.

Shared memories.

The first assignment we had, was to tell of a memory through sound and image.

I chose to work on the rare time my father and I get to spend while fishing and kite flying, as it is the most special time we get with each other. I went back to my father's first experience with fishing to bring out his keen interest for it.

For the images, I made illustrations to narrate his story. Later i added soundscapes as to bring the illustrations to life.

Larter, I added to it my first experience with fishing. I remember being scared and getting rid of his catch in order to let the fish live. In the following years I remember putting in effort to try and like fishing, as it was the only way to spend the long sunday afternoons with him.

Finally, i added an illustration 0f us fishing in today's time to conclude the narrative. i liked how his past, my past and our present all came together through this narrative. thats really what i wanted to bring out- we share our pasts through our present.