Assignment 5: Customize your own project taking one of the several digital tools available in the free tool space. Ex. GIS mapping tools, timeline, game tools etc.
‘Man often values precious things only twice, until he receives them and another after he looses them.’
Sunshine, fresh air and clean water are key elements of nature which form the basis of human survival. With a motive to augment awareness of their value in human minds, this project carves out a timeline, which takes its course along the bank of river Mahanadi. Time stream is a metaphorical reference to time as a stream, a flowing body of water. In this project, the profile of Mahanadi river has been used to the portray changing importance of these three key elements in human minds, by making use of various visuals. It also includes interactive conversations with people in IIT Gandhinagar campus, the point of origin of the project. The quote in the beginning, correctly points out that it is impeccable that we understand the value of things while we still posses them. Sustainable Growth implies a growth model which involves using resources in a way such that our needs are met while we taking care of needs of our future generations. And this project is an effort to promote the same.
Digital culture and new media (DCNM) course offer versatile topics to its folks. One of the most interesting topics, Virtual Reality, had also been a part of this course. This project uses the free space tool named SceneVR to transport its audience to a virtual world. The world of India’s unique monuments!
The objective of this project is to show the evolution of communication. From newspaper to radio to TV to computers, the growth of communication has now brought us to virtual reality.
“Virtual Reality is the next step in consuming media. Virtual reality allows media consumers to submerge the senses, drowning out the rest of the world, eliminating distractions and magnifying the experience.” Andy Etemadi, EYEMAGINE.
This project is inspired by the thought that virtual reality is already modelling specific industries like gaming, real estate, learning, tourism and many more. Virtual reality offers experiences that some would never have to do in real life. This project tries to give an experience of touring India’s uniqueness in terms of its monuments on the screen of the audience.
Making a Meal Out of Protest: the most creative and non-violent way of protesting against injustice is through food. And that is the food for thought for the readers of this research. Who could have thought sweet and innocent delicacies like marshmallows and chocolates could be used as a tool for fighting against the unjust norms.
Online Social Networks provide an excellent platform for collaboration and communication. The users have endless liberty to contribute content freely. However, these platforms are increasingly being used by spammers all around the world for propagating spam among the members of this virtual community. The extensive rise of social media and increase in global connections further elevate the extent of spread of unsolicited messages. This presents the requirement of a framework which distinguishes spam messages from the legitimate ones (ham messages). In this project, a basic framework is developed for classification of messages into HAM or SPAM, by training a model using freely available datasets. Naive Bayes classification algorithm has been used for classification of messages. R has been used as the statistical computing environment to carry out the necessary analysis. Further, categorization of spam messages and fake news have also been looked upon as the extensions of this basic framework.
The aim of the project was to extrapolate a piece of poetry written by me in a video format. The short film project is deeply inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Zerkalo(1975), a movie which is also personal memoir of the director. Tarkovsky projects his personal experiences in the form of visual poetry in this film. The film received a severe backlash from its audience during the time of its release, albeit its visionary filmic technique of creating poetic harmony with an array atmospheric imagery. This style of the auteur was so influential that visual poetry became synonymous with Tarkovskian imagery. With this short film project, I aim to address a personal nostalgia with the help of cinematic medium. The poetry recited in the video, was written on day when childhood seemed distant and memories of it, feeble. The poem goes like this,
Splashes pecked lovely soul
Maturity stemmed from
The seed of childhood
Soul clinged to what was left
In a desperate attempt
To hold on to
The eyes of a child
World, Wonderful!
Pain, stayed in the courtyard
Of open wounds
And was a stranger
To one’s heart
Is wisdom a curse?
Is time a bane?
Then again,
A hand held still
To what was left
Another retained a bag of
Time and wisdom
Eyes searched hard for fair trade
A bag brimming with wisdom in exchange
For a moment in childhood’s shade
Pathani Samanta: An Astronomer from Odisha
Back then, during the British rule, when there was little scope for scientific studies in India, there lived a man by the name Chandrasekhara Singha Harichandana Mahapatra Samanta in Odisha who studied astrology with basic instrument like bamboo pipe. He is called Pathani Samanta or Samanta Chandrasekhar. In this short video, his biography is shown. Without using a telescope or modern scientific equipments he accurately calculated the distance of celestial bodies.
In this era of continuous technological developments, it is crucial to discuss digital and media literacy. Easy access and overload of information, thus, requires conscious analysis, critical engagement and informed decisions regarding our choices. Moreover, to fulfill one’s promises of digital citizenship, I believe the course HS631 was essential. To develop these competencies even further, I have looked backward at the trajectory of our semester and explored the seminal work in the field of Digital Humanities and New Media. Simultaneously, I have tried elaborating on the broader theories used in digital studies which bring together society and technology. In the process, I have argued that lively and productive changes brought by the digital world are no doubt large but need to be explored carefully in the broader socio-cultural context.
The Project titled ‘Bollywood Tourism’: Destinations Made Famous through Movies’ is a study to understand the popularity of Historical and eco-tourism destinations in India through Bollywood. The destinations are mentioned by making use of the StoryMap JS tool. It highlights in what ways Bollywood plays a significant role in disseminating the unknown tourist destinations to a wider public. As Benedict Anderson uses the term ‘Imagined Communities’ in relation to invoking the ideas of togetherness within communities, I understand that this community also converges together to understand the historical significance of destinations through movies and songs and thus invokes the idea of tourism. During the project, it was also realised that destinations in North-East India are yet to be explored as not many projects are being carried out in the region. Recently Shillong had come at the forefront due to the filming of the movie ‘Rock On 2’.
The bright side of this is that it brings the unknown destination to the public, which in turn leads to the increase in tourism and thus the Government and Archaeological Survey of India start to work around restoring and conserving the depleted sites, one such example would be the Martand Sun temple in Kashmir which came to light after the movie Haider. The other side of the story is the destruction it brings to the site and ecological imbalance in case of eco-tourism destinations. A report by Buzzfeed ‘How 3 Idiots Destroyed Ladakh’ explains due to the increase in the means to travel, the new Indian middle class is thirsting to hit the road. As they flock to their favourite big screen backdrops, Ladakh’s fragile ecosystem bears the brunt of Bollywood tourism. After ‘3 Idiots’ released, the lake Pangong rose to unprecedented popularity. Tourists don’t understand the significance of the ecosystem and this has led to immense pressure at sites like these. The project has mapped locations which came to signify the region and destinations, and ways in which Bollywood own ‘research and development’ shows us the heritage and ecological versatility of India.
Bridal Jewelry of Indian States: India is an ancient land. People of the different region having different cultures symbolizes plurality of this land. Bridal jewelry is one part of it. In Hegelian notion, we are an organic whole and remains intact.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger is a form of database intended to raise awareness about language endangerment and the need to safeguard the world’ linguistic diversity. The database suggests an estimation of 3000 endangered languages across the globe. The Atlas provides the name of the languages and the degree of its endangerment and the country or countries where it is spoken. There are five degrees of endangerment:
- Vulnerable
- Definitely Endangered
- Severely Endangered
- Critically Endangered
- Extinct
It is estimated that in every two weeks or so a language dies somewhere in the world. There are several reasons behind the death of a language, the most general one being the death of the last speaker. However, languages also die when the native speakers are no more fluent or frequent in their usage of their language. The People’s Linguistic Survey of India is a volunteer driven initiative started under Dr. Ganesh Devy. The Survey estimates that India will lose almost 400 languages in the next 50 years or so. There are close to 780 languages in India, out of which about 600 are potentially endangered. Modernisation and commerce are the powerful forces driving many native languages in India to their brink of survival. What motivated Devy to start this project was his interaction with Boa, an 85 year old women whom he met in 2010. She was the last native speaker of the language Bo until her death in 2010. Boa had nobody but the birds to communicate in her native language. Her children and grandchildren embraced Hindi and Andamanese instead as their language. This is also the case with several other tribal and native languages across India. The reasons for disappearance of these languages vary from displacement due to national projects, migration in search of better opportunities, and overemphasising on Hindi, English or any other dominant language in school curriculums. India has been a linguistic hotspot for centuries. However, in recent times many of the ‘living’ languages are either threatened, endangered , or on the verge of extinction.
When we lose a language, we also lose native wisdom. Language has often been associated with culture, and when we lose a language we also lose a huge part of our culture. Languages store information, wisdom, culture, traditions, knowledge, and emotions. Every time a language dies, we have lesser evidence for understanding and making a sense of patterns and structures.The Constitution of India recognises only handful of languages i.e. a language with at least 10,000 native speakers. By virtue of this, a huge chunk of local languages remain unrecognised, unknown, and unaccounted for. The PLSI aims to bridge this gap by mapping almost all the languages in India including those already extinct.
The survey also found that the vocabulary of many native speakers has become very limited. For instance, the Sidi community in Gujarat can no longer recall the colour names in their own language. In most cases, the loss of a language also presents us the huge power imbalance that exists in our society. It is the disempowered who lose their native language at the hands of the dominant languages. Dominant languages are perceived as a way to achieve higher social and economic status. This institutionalised way of language erosion starts taking its toll by pushing native languages to the brink of extinction. The onslaught of technology also cannot be undermined. Devy argues that silent communication has become the most comfortable means to communicate. People prefer sending messages over communicating with each other.
In this context, the project presents a brief map of potentially endangered, threatened and some already extinct languages of India. The aim is to raise awareness and to highlight the importance of India’s rich linguistics diversity. Languages also serve as a medium for culture’s traditions and lore. McLuhan (1964) highlights the importance of medium over the information i.e he argues that the way we send or receive information is more important than the information itself. By losing languages, we are losing the most basic and authentic mediums of all. Language is the most powerful tool. Speaking up or voicing oneself is seen as the epitome of agency and freedom. However, several people are now struggling to revive their language. Without their language, they fail to have the tool to voice themselves. This is also a form of violation and gross injustice that we now need to address. The efforts made by the government in protecting these endangered languages is minimal. Therefore, there is a need to digitally document these endangered languages in order to preserve them. By giving examples of various digital forms of conservation such as artificial intelligence, robots, 3D interactive video games and digital archiving, this projects also highlights the ways in which languages are being protected across world digitally. In conclusion, although technological development might have affected the survival of some of these languages, it is also a part of the solution to this existential problem.
Student Activism in India: Indian students have more than 150 years of history. This timeline attempts to trace student activism until recent times. Students play a significant role in shaping politics not only of their institutes or universities but also the country. Mobilisation and protest of students have also been a vital factor in the Indian freedom struggle. Further, post-independence, there has been a transformation of student politics in India. Several organisations have emerged and several protests have taken place. Role of a student has never been only limited to the classroom. Certainly, students in higher educational institution have become an important socio-political group in Indian society. This timeline takes you back in time to the unclear origin of student mobilisation and further directs you to the contemporary situation. Below is the link to the timeline.
This project is an attempt to capture the street food sense of Vadodara, Gujarat. Since Vadodara city is cosmopolitan and is being developed as a smart city, the continued existence of street food and its growth in the city indicates the epicurean gourmet of the Barodians. This story map tries to geographically locate the famous food joints of Vadodara founded since the 1950s that continue to retain the taste and quality over the period of time and have achieved international recognition as well.
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