Sarai Locative Media Workshop

 

Group 1

Amitabh Kumar, Swagat Sen, Sunil Sehgal, Bhagwati Prasad

The locative media project proposed is to delineate or bring to life a certain psychogeographic map of a place that acts like a microcosm of the city Delhi itself.

While selecting the area one was looking for an array of social lives and strata's and to try and find many personal 'areas' of subjective creation within that one location. The area being perceived and the perceiver are both legends through which the map can be decoded. While charting our route with the GPRS device and taking different routes through the journey to point A to point B we want to build as many alternate maps as we can through personal renditions of a space by various individuals. There will be at least four vectors involved in the building of these maps. The three individuals involved while mapping the route ( hmp4ng their own intrinsic way of looking at the space. What the space is? What do they feel about that space?) and that of the people living in that locality. The attempt once again is to build a map of that place which gives the participant more than just simple directions. It is to give the participant/reader various vantage points into the place. Another project within the realms of this one is to charter the area by asking people for directions. A possibility is to not ask for a place but ask them where do we go if we want to get certain things/ or do certain things? Prepare questions to lead us to a certain places within the chosen area. For example, Where could we get some shirts? Range of costs etc? Where could I buy an MP3 player? Where could I buy a Levis jean? Where could I buy vegetables? Etc.

We structure the question such that we end up in DU. the questions will be our signposts for that journey within point A to B.

We charter through a space of which begins with Sabzi Mandi and ends in the Delhi University.

Questions will be made on the spot and documented.

http://www.geotracing.com/gt/?cmd=showtrack&user=sarai1&zoom=14&map=satellite&id=2224089

 

 

for the high resolution images please see flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronaldlenz/sets/72157594418143878/

 

Amitabhs story

Our main guide who knew about the area that we were scanning was out with a bad back and we were left with no idea of what we were going to encounter. THE big map only gave me the directions. Not a sense of the place where I was going to. Did not give me its texture.
While on our way, I asked the RIckshaw driver about the place where we were going to. The Sabzi Mandi, was in fact not a place to sell vegetables as might be apparent by its name. The original MAndi had been relocated to Azadpur a while back and now the place was complex of small shops and hawkers. On reaching there the place was completely contrary to the image that I was holding in my head. The roads were much broader, the traffic was chaotic and the shops were bustling with people. My first task was to mp4e around the space given with a certain intent to buy something. The compass for my journey was an article for consumption because quite honestly I could not think of any other factor which could make the trip independent of the map and allow me to charter the terrain and eventually come up with my own sense of that space. The rickshaw wallah's route was the one that coincided with the one in the map... and so I went to watchmaker to ask for the way. I said that I wanted to buy a shirt. I switched to local cloth when the destination for the shop was two minutes away. I was asked to go to Ghanta Ghar. On the way to Ghanta Ghar we stopped to eat some Kachori .

Swagat got reprimanded for taking the photograph of a gentleman while he was trying to eat his Kachori. The conversation was engaging and exciting. He called the streets and shops a private space and anyone visually documenting it might be violating the others privacy. But everyone seemed so excited when they were being shot. Posing and stopping their work.

The houses above the shops were mostly old and run down. We entered a small lane only to find a very fancy jewellers shop. There was a row of 3-4 shops of film studios . The next row (3-$) was of medicine shops. On taking a left from there we entered what seemed to us the compound of a house. But a sign leading to PCO booth assured us that we weren't encroaching on private property. The lane there was so small that Ronald lost his GPS connection. We emerged on the main street of the Sabzi Mandi . There was a small film hall playing an old Mithun film. I found this The shops were small and had the feeling of a chaotic relic to them. The film hall and the film seemed perfect there. I went inside and requested for a few film posters. I got them and walked on. After a while I asked where I could find a mobile phone shop. We were pointed inside another lane which had a smaller vegetable market. These shops were temporary stalls and sold vegetables amongst other smaller things. there were a few electrical shops and sweet shops. We came out of that lane and were on a much broader road. This was the painter's lane. The hoarding board painters peppered with shops of the more modern computer Vinyl prints. The signboard painters were slowly being pushed out of the market because of the faster and more efficient vinyl prints. I asked one of the signboard painters how this was affecting their trade. I was expecting a sob story , but he very matter of factly that things were a bit hard and work was hard to find. These signboard painters had been there for the past 15-20 years whereas the vinyl printers had just come into the market. Many people who were previously signboard painters had switched to the faster and economically more proficient method. I didn't ask why he was still doing it manually. Being trained as a painter I didn't want to hear the answer.

The Ghanta Ghar was a two minute walk from there. Once there , I went to buy a new mobile phone and then we went on towards the Delhi University which was our destination point. The walk was fairly hurried. There were Mannequins with some captions on them which I thought were really funny. There was a man with a really bored look on his face sitting on his parked scooter on the side of the road. I had to ask him the directions even though I knew where to go. It was like a throwing a pebble in the still waters of a pond. We met a drunken mechanic who was convinced that Ronald was from Israel. I indulged him to believe so and he went on how he had had a good time with them in Manali. From there we went straight to the Khalsa College hostel premises. From there we went to the upmarket Kamla Nagar market. It had an entire row of shops with all the international franchises. But there wasn't an air of upmarketness to it. It was as rushed , as full of grime and as jammed with chaotic cars as the Sabzi Mandi market we saw. Of course, being close to a college it was peppered with a younger crowd.
WE got on to a rickshaw and went straight to Sarai.

 

Swagat's Story

I had not known of locative media before I saw the mail from sarai in my Ryze mail account. I thought it will be interesting to check out since I am interested in new media and related technologies. After many years of working in documentaries in a variety of formats I have got more interested in new media as a better way of doing documentation. Not sure about technological solutions to everything. Technology brings bigger headaches along with it. But why not play with a new toy for some time? See what can be cooked up?

The presentation on day one:

The concept of tracing the routes of people along paths is interesting.

Possible uses are many:

a) traffic management for one.

India has hundreds of religious festivals where people often get killed in stampedes.

While filming the Maha Kumbh Mela (approx 70 million pilgrims in one riverbed) I did a shoot also on the management of the Mela. Hi tech
cameras were used to monitor crwd mp4ement. I see a use of locative media in many ways at such events.

b) Also saw use of GPS by IMAX cameraman in Bandhavgarh National park and installation of GPS on top of Mount Everest.

c) Locative media ideas:

1) a common space which different people see with different eyes. take a wild growth shrubs, plants etc in a vacant area. An ayurvedic medicine practitioner may see natural remedies , free, literally growing on trees. A construction developer may see it as a place to build a shopping mall. So we can build a layer of these perceptions over visuals of the space.

2) a park in which if you take a stroll you come across 'hotspots' tagged with audio, photos, videos, drawing etc, which appear on a
handheld device. You see the actual space and read or see or hear what perceptions people have 'tagged it with'. You can also record your own.

3) idea can be extended to heritage walks, historical monuments, field trips, tourist trails etc.

The field trip:

I was not sure what or how much we could achieve within the short time frame. But we managed quite a lot.

The idea was to walk the sretch from Barfkhana (Ice factory) to Ghantaghar (clock tower) to Subzi Mandi 9wholesale vegetable market) Kirorimal college in Delhi University. We took an autorickshaw to Barfkhana and on the way saw a couple of little known monuments :

A martyr's monument built by the British. strange architecture , Church Like. After Independence, a change of plaque has made it a monument to freedom struggle martyrs. Nearby the forgotten Ashokan pillar (built as codes of conduct reminders and 'noticeboard' built by the Emperor ashoka all over his kingdom on trade routes)

At the beginning of the trip , I was taking some pictures of Amitabh while he was ordering some snacks and one man objected that we are
shooting pictures of people eating ,which is a private act and that we were intruding into his space. As is usual a few others soon joined in
the fracas.

There was another unpleasant scene later when a shopkeeper objected to my filming his newly made DTP art , clipart style Fruit jiuce stall
board . Others soon joined in threatening: breaking the camera, taking me to the police, trader's association etc. I had to show him the images
before being let off. It has become very difficult to take pictures even on a street nowadays. In my case, I think a beard and a kurta make for more interrogations everywhere, more checking at mp4ie hall entrances etc. Or is it my paranoia. Or everyone's. Any way, the issue of permissions of people before posting material on sites etc. has become important. And during the filming process itself.

I thought that the ghantaghar was an interesting landmark midway. there was no bell (Ghanta) it seemed to be an electronic clock. The
name remains. If we ask people around it all will come up with their own stories about it. Interestingly, while filming everywhere in the country, I have seen that such landmarks have attached with them one or two human derelicts, in rags, somewhat crazed , who are often eager to come and talk to you. Both the Martyr's monument and clock tower had such people with whom we came into contact.

The Painter's street was interesting. The rather nicely kitsch handpainted florid boards with their typography and art have given way
to larger, computer generated work. The aforementioned juice guy for example had a large (european) baby
and fruits such as strawberries in a basket . strawberries are not an ingredient of his product.

At the painter's , I met a student from the Shakespeare Society of Saint Stephen's college who was getting a banner painted. He said that
students at his college would be interested in such works being shown in their projection room. Perhaps some project can be worked out later in a longer time frame, involving Delhi University students (architecture, social work, history, geography, archaeology are disciplines I can think of)

The fact that we were walking along the stretch for the first time made the trip more interesting. We did quite well for about 21/2 hours of time spent. 300 GPS points. Some five audio and video interview type recordings. some impressions from the team also. about 50 photographs, maybe more.

We can augment this material with maps of the area from different sources and time periods. additional links to interesting things: like the changing iconography of signboards ,history of the clock tower. GPS co-ordinates of the places of origin of people we talk to at any place (most are migrants) etc.

Just some thoughts.