Medialab Prado

Round table with Anab Jain, Yashas Shetty, and Sunil Sudhakaran. This activity is part of the ARCO'09 India program.

"We all know that the internet is a wonderful information resource... which we are using more and more and using its features every day. Tools like email, Wikipedia, Youtube, Skype and many more have become tools which we use on a daily basis for free. Information presented on Youtube is a very easy mode of communicating complex concepts.

more and more people are using this service to upload movies to explain their ideas and concepts. Overnight we have access to innovative concepts in any field uploaded by individuals and corporations. Youtube has made uploading viewing and dowloading a very simple user experience.

I have been spending some of my time looking at innovation by individuals which are quite path breaking.
I am exploring the possibility of studying these concepts that interest me and working on them with my background in product development and taking these concepts one step forward.... and publishing them once again in youtube so that anyone else can work on these concepts from anywhere in the world and move the innovation forward.... as interested individuals.

This I feel will be a low cost innovation process in open source. I am interested in the following areas and have been working on them: green technologies (power generation), green technologies (composting), educational toys, hand craft."

By Sunil Sudhakaran

"I will present a speculative design approach through examples from my recent projects ranging from networked dogs as local information carriers to devices in the home made of sugar and powered by microbes.

In my work, I attempt to create speculative futures around new and emerging technologies at the point where they intersect with the sociological, and thus with our everyday life today. I am not interested in predictions, but rather to use the medium of design to explore the influence some of these predictions may have on our present models. This ability to 'let go' and ask 'What if' is important because it is helping me in thinking more responsibly now.

From an academic point of view I am keen to explore how methods of design such as narrative prototyping can play a role in visualising near futures, in a manner that is not science fiction. In doing so I would like to understand the relationships design forms with science and social science, and how they are materialised by manifestations of physical objects and services.

However, more importantly, as a practitioner, I am keen to demonstrate the aspect of returning to people and creating tangible prototypes as an opportunity to engage in dialogues, which inform further design. This people participation creates a space for understanding the value of future scenarios, and leads to definite design opportunities, which could possibly have a greater social and economic impact."

By Anab Jain

What does it mean for a cultural/ artistic 'practitioner' in a developing country to engage with a body of knowledge-Science?
 
With modes and streams of thoughts as diverse as its religious and linguistic heritage and nearly every direction of thought tolerated and accepted as legitimate, what does it mean to engage with art/technology and science in an Indian context?

I will argue for us to re-look at the Science in 'Garage Science'-
Would that Science be that of the institutions/universities with millions of dollars of funding and the obtuse language of their journals? Or would it be the fairly legitimate body of indigenous knowledge, of its traditional people, the ones that have always observed, constructed hypothesis and experiments. The ones that hack cellular networks, build everything from sensors to satellite receivers, run pirate shows (promptly shut down), have a sophisticated repository of botanical knowledge (promptly patented).
 
There are distinct advantages of engaging in this rich body of knowledge which is more open and generous than the perilous corridors of scientific institutions. Should an artist in India engage with these modes of knowledge or ignore them and embrace an artistic legacy of engaging and wrestling with scientific biotechnological, pharmaceutical companies, institutions and universities?
 
We will look at the  people's science movement in India and I will also look at some of the work produced at Srishti and the Center for Experimental Media arts in Bangalore, where I work.

By Yashas Shetty