ASSIGNMENTS TO TEST LEARNINGS

ASSIGNMENTS FOR MONDAY APRIL 23

1. Individual exercise

Take the object that was randomly assigned to you.

Objects

1. Flute – Pallavi Manchi

2. Booba – Ruchika, Priyam

3. Spectacles/Shades – Tariq, Dhanyaa

4. Ghatam –Khushboo, Samia

5. Google – Shyamli, Hazel

6. ATM - Arjun

7. Smarthoovers - Bharat

8. Scarecrow - Nikhil

9. Amulet/Charm/Bracelet/Ring – Somesh, Govind

10. Grass chair - Pia

PROCESS

1. First, try and sense the object’s animistic affects and list them.

2. Isolate/extract at least three principles of animism from the object that product the affect(s).

3. List the conditionalities that follow the principles to generate the affect(s).

FORMAT: The format should be powerpoint using rich visuals and appropriate text.

GRADING: This exercise is being graded to test your learnings and understandings thus far.

2. Group exercise:

Instructions:

1. The groups that worked on their earlier objects will hand over their product explorations dossier to the new group that has been assigned to work with their respective object.

2. The objective of your assignment is to create an A-ha affect on the assigned object using some of the master principles.

MASTER LIST OF PRINCIPLES

Adaptability

Sensing and response - consciousness and sentience

Surprise

Dynamic - evolving, growing, regression - not static

Will

Ability to memorise and learn

Survival - resisting "death" or "abuse"

Needs nurturing

Life-span

Assumes responsibility

Forges relationship and communication experiences

Loopholes and imperfections

Narrative - myth, story, lore, history

Customisation - personalisation

Form - materiality, resemblance, tactility, organcity, biomimicry

Behaviours - resemblance, gesture, biomimicry

Breathes

Reproduces

Consumes

Beat-rhythm-pace

Quirkiness

States

Hackability

Framing/staging

Closer to skin

Merely representational (iconic) versus Experiential

WHO DOES WHAT?

Pia-Shyamli-Samia will do the umbrella.

Ruchika-Govind-Dhanyaa will do the chappal.

Nikhil-Bharat-Tariq will do the plate.

Somesh-Pallavi-Arjun will do the shoe and laces.

Hazel-Priyam-Khusbhoo will do the lock and key.

FORMAT:

Format for presentation is drawings on A3 sheets, one CONCEPT plus drawings per A3 sheet, and a total of at least three A-ha concepts per object/group.

Deadlines for both exercises:

Monday, April 23. 10.30 a.m. – All materials to be ready. Drawings to be pinned up neatly across classroom. Powerpoints ready for projection.

(THE END)

ANIMISTIC PRINCIPLES THAT DRIVE DEVICES

These are the principles that are animistic that drive devices, according to the perceptions of each group.

Arjun-Polo-Somesh

1. Adaptability – changes with individual needs and time (perishable, natural, recyclable)
2. Communication – feedback in some form or the other (evokes, reacts, emotes, interacts, reflects)
   
3. Dynamic – non-structured, individual in its own right (has character, fluid, no moment of stagnancy)
4. Will, randomness – Not always predictable (imperfection, uniqueness, variety)
5. Symbolic – moves beyond the physical/visible (maybe has a myth/story, significance)

Ruchika- Dhanyaa-Govind

1. Health-Survival
2. Unpredictability – erratic behaviours
3. Ability to memorise
4. Stories, myths, memories built around a device
5. Efficiency - keeps you happy or lack of it
6. Space or atmosphere it creates around itself
7. Action, inaction, interaction, relationships
8. Growth
9. Movement
10. Ability superior to humans – technology

Khusboo-Priyam-Hazel

1.Sensory and thus responsive
2.Perceives – and enables you to do so too

3. Needs nurturing
4. Time-bound
5. Familiar – associative
6. Carries responsibility
7. Give and take –establishes
8. Capacity to hold memory
9. Conscious
10. Random – unpredictable
11. Adaptable

Nikhil- Bharat-Tariq

1. Breathes

2. Grows

3. Survives

4. Sentient

5. Adapts

6. Consumes

7. Reproduces

8. Imperfection – random, organic

9. Ability to perceive

10. Ability to memorise

11. Ability to learn - comprehend

12. Time span

Pia – Shyamli – Samia

1. Loopholes + imperfections

2. Growth +evolution+regression

3. Needs external stimulation or nourishing or dependence

4. How well you project animism into something

5. Myth – context – history – story

6. Customisation – how it reflects the user

7. Unpredictable – has a will of its own

8. Figuring out how something works best

9. Material/texture – the more natural the better

10. The degree of sensitivity to your needs

11. How it resembles human behavior - cognitive

WHERE WE HAVE REACHED

The readings we have done so far:

Jean Piaget - The Child and Animism excerpt
Don Norman - Emotional Design excerpts
Sigmund Freud - The Uncanny
The Reality of the Unseen - William James
Augmented Nature: Activated, Actuated and Animated Small Natures with Pervasive Computers
What things know: exhibiting animism as artefact-based design research
Animism in Burma

I have noticed that students like Shyamli and Pia are reading up outside of the readings that have been set for them. Thank you Shyamli for the readings you sent me.
The discussions have been lively in class and that is interesting.
We have many areas to cover before we become creative though.

PRESENTATIONS:
The presentations for your task on identifying some of the principles that you feel contribute to artefacts being "alive" or having a "soul" were interesting. Your followed up this task by listing out these principles and then creating a presentation consisting of objects that you felt had qualities of "animism", "life" or soul.
I think your most interesting discovery was that even if some of these properties appeared in an artefact or object, it did not automatically make the artefact come alive or infuse it with soul. So the problem of how this can take place looms larger still.

ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE
Nine of you had the opportunity also between April 10-13 to go out on an Environmental Exposure trip to BR Hills and had the chance to encounter a tribe called the Soligas who worship in a sacred grove and have shamans and are primarily animistic in their belief system.
Here are links to materials on BR Hills and the Soligas, and the organisations that played host to us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_R_Hills
http://www.vgkk.org/
http://www.atree.org/

As an aside: Did any of you get to know that the endangered species called Malabar civet has been reported to have been spotted in the BR Hills region? If Siddharth, the friend we met there, succeeds, he will track this creature down to its lair and photograph it. If this report of spotting this animal is true, then the possibility is that they can be preserved and helped to multiply.

MONDAY APRIL 2 PRESENTATION TASKS

Thanks for coming up with interesting research and cool presentations.
(Hazel, Priyam, Khushboo - you need to move towards objects.)

Here are your tasks for Monday, April 2.

1. Go through the two readings (attached to this mail):
(a) The Uncanny - Sigmund Freud
(b) The Reality of the Unseen - William James.
Highlight paragraphs, sections, sentences which you think relate to our theme of Animism. Think of qualities and properties that relate to artefacts or can be related to artefacts.
2. Come up with a presentation that provokes discussion centred
around the following notions:
a. What is the "essence" of my being?
b. What are the criteria/qualities/properties by which anything can be termed as " living". Illustrate visually with notes going across humans, animals, birds, reptiles, organisms, plants, materials, objects. Draw up similarities and differences.
c. What is sentience and how do we recognise sentience in any thing?
3. One of our objectives is that every team has a good database of objects/atefacts that you collect and collate (visually or in reality). Each object must be accompanied by notes that tell about a characteristic, quality, function, colour, texture, tactility, responiveness, behaviour which you believe brings it "alive" and where animism is at work in terms of its relationship with human beings. Take this collection/collation seriously and build this up so we can take a look at the entire collection on Wednesday.
Captain Furry

QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE PRESENTATION

Too many of you guys have been meeting me with consternation on your faces about the presentation to be made Saturday, March 31.
Come on, guys, grow up! This place is not linear.
You might be doing other work but you need to learn to farm out your work between different disciplines and projects and time-manage it.
I expect the presentations to come in.
Somebody was saying: It will be shabby.
So be it.
Shabby is shabby. Cool is cool.
We will differentiate the boys from the men in this manner.
Cheerio.
Captain Furry

ONLY PLANET 2007 PARTICIPANTS - EMAIL ADDRESSES

This can help us all keep in touch.

SAMIA SINGH - samiahere at hotmail.com,
HAZEL KARKARIA - haze218 at gmail.com,
PIA ALIZE HAZARIKA - industrialgroovemachine at gmail.com,
PALLAVI MANCHI - pallavimanchi at gmail.com,
ARJUN GEHLOT - snow.frost.ice at gmail.com,
PRIYAM DAVE - priyam187 at gmail.com,
KHUSHBOO HIRAK DESAI - rhythms0918 at gmail.com,
TARIQ FRANCIS THEKKEKARA - tariq at gudalur.com, tariqft at gmail.com,
NIKHIL MORE - nikhil.mo at gmail.com,
RUCHIKA JAJODIA -ruchikajajodia at gmail.com,
BHARAT JOSHI - bharat.joshi87 at gmail.com
SHYAMLI PANDA - sinnamons at gmail.com,
GOVIND MOHANDAS - govind.mohandas at gmail.com,
DHANYAA BALAKRISHNAN - dhanyaa.deofavente at gmail.com,
SOMESH KUMAR - shammi_4444 at yahoo.co.in
ARVIND LODAYA - arvind at srishtiblr.org
AVY - avy.gravy at gmail.com

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

I. THE TEAMS

Here are the groups that you have decided upon. Work closely together and you will see exciting results.

Group 1 - PALLAVI, SOMESH, ARJUN
Group 2 - PIA, SHYAMLI, SAMIA
Group 3 - HAZEL, PRIYAM, KHUSHBOO
Group 4 - GOVIND, DHANYAA, RUCHIKA
Group 5 - TARIQ, NIKHIL, BHARAT

II. THE TASK

The task ahead of each group for Saturday March 31 is:

Come up with a strong and well-researched, well-organised  presentation that deals with the following two aspects:

Analyze
a. Animism, foundations of a belief system
b. How it has Influenced practice in design

Let your research be powerfully VISUAL in nature,with appropriate NOTES.

When you look at animism, connect it to cultures that practice it and THEIR ARTEFACTS. So collect images of artefacts and see how the belief has been manifested in which way in the design of these artifacts.

Then go on into modern artefacts in whose design you see aspects of animism manifesting.

You must try to come up with varied understandings of how you see animism as having contributed to the design of these artefacts.

Don't panic about level of understanding - just dig deep into the subject, live it and breathe it and analyse it in terms of artefacts.

Also, each presentation must SOURCE its material. For instance, if you have taken an excerpt from some Internet article - footnote it in the presentation. Or have a bibliography slide where the name of the book and author and publisher, or title of article and magazine in which it appeared and date of publication, or URL are recorded. This helps others to reference the same material you have come upon.

Let's get rockin' and rollin'. Ciao!