Design Junction - Where Designers Connect: November 2009

29.11.09

Bead Jewellery

Bead Jewellery in Chota Udepur
The ladies, housewives in Chhota Udaipur are the ones who make bead jewellery. They source the beads from Ahmadabad and Baroda, since these are the 2 places easily accessible to them. They buy the beads in bulk as it is cheaper that way. All the jewellery they make is very colourful. All the ladies have a different colour sense and all their jewellery have different designs.

Silver Jewellery of Chota Udepur

Silver Jewellery
All the Adivasi’s of Chota Udepur wear silver jewellery. Their jewellery is very heavy. A married woman wears jewellery that amounts to more than 1 kg on her body. Her necklace alone accounts to around 500-750 grams. Then is the kada(hand bangle), the anklet and her earrings. Earrings are relatively smaller than all the other pieces of jewellery. The necklace is the heaviest, followed by the kada and the then the anklet.

Pranav Mistry: Sixth Sense Technology

Pranav Mistry and his Sixth Sense Technology

Pranav Mistry is a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT's Media Lab. Before his studies at MIT, he worked with Microsoft as a UX researcher; he's a graduate of IIT. Mistry is passionate about integrating the digital informational experience with our real-world interactions.

Some previous projects from Mistry's work at MIT includes intelligent sticky notes, Quickies, that can be searched and can send reminders; a pen that draws in 3D; and TaPuMa, a tangible public map that can act as Google of physical world. His research interests also include Gestural and Tangible Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, AI, Machine Vision, Collective Intelligence and Robotics.

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop." In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

Link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

26.11.09

The Lost Pygmies

Graphic design for a Bag inspired by the Pygmie Tribe from the Ituri forests of Africa. These pygmies are victims of cannibalism. They use blow pipes and spears to hunt and thier average height is 4 feet 11 inches The album Deep Forest has captured the music of the pygmies and mixed it with thier own beats adding a new touch to world music genre.
To read more about the pygmies http://www.pygmies.info/

Installation art: 9 days of Recreation

2d forms together creating a 3d form

Material used: snow white board, spray paints used to make the Skirt, POP on iron frame for the figurine
Occassion: Navratri

Place: Central Foyer of NIFT, Gandhinagar

Executed by Tanisha Arora and Parthipan K

22.11.09

graphic design - Photomontage

PHOTOMONTAGE
Photomontage is the process (and result) of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print.Author Oliver Graut in his book Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion notes that the creation of artificial immersive virtual reality, arising as a result of technical exploitation of new inventions, is a long-standing human practice throughout the ages. Such environments as dioramas were made of composited images.
The first and most famous mid-Victorian photomontage (then called combination printing) was "The Two Ways of Life" (1857) by Oscar Rejlander, followed shortly by the pictures of photographer Henry Peach Robinson such as "Fading Away" (1858). These works actively set out to challenge the then-dominant painting and theatrical tableau vivants .
Many of the early examples of fine-art photomontage consist of photographed elements superimposed on watercolours, a combination returned to by (e.g.) George Grosz in about 1915. He was part of the Dada movement in Berlin which was instrumental in making montage into a modern art-form. They first coined the term "photomontage" at the end of the war, around 1918 or 1919. The other major exponents were John Heartfield , Hannah Höch , Kurt Schwitters , Raoul Hausmann and Johannes Baader .
The Dadaist movement began in the early 20th century. Its followers had anti-establishment ideals and were interested in breakout out against the status quo. The history of the time, mainly the aftermath of WWI, provided for much of the Dadaists subject matter. Popular artists of the Dadaist movement are John Heartfield who produced anti-Nazi art, Hannah Hoch who focused on women roles and politics, Kurt Schwitters who worked in a less political way that the others, and Raul Hausmann who was said to have coined the word photomontage. With that being said Photomontage was founded during the time of Dadaism.Â It consists of photography, type, and line and should not be confused with a collage. While a photomontage can be collaged together, there is a deeper meaning to the connection from one element to the next in a photomontage. Most of them make some sort of social, political or cultural message as well, while a collage can sometimes act as merely an aesthetic piece.