Experimental Live Performances Exploring Sounds, Visuals, Motion
India International Centre, Main Auditorium
January 13 (Sunday), 2019
2:30-5:00pm || 6:30-8:30pm
~~~
India International Centre, Main Auditorium
January 13 (Sunday), 2019
2:30-5:00pm || 6:30-8:30pm
~~~
Post-Incident Report
(Scroll down for bio-blurbs of the performers)
It all began in October-November 2018,.. if one discounts that it actually all began many, many years before that. What happened was that Lalsawmliani “Teteii” Tochhawng of the program office in India International Centre called me on the phone to invite me to participate in an upcoming program of theirs, and, in the course of our conversation about that, I asked her whether we should consider collaborating to once again do something interesting together in IIC January 2019,.. sort of in continuum to the “Exploring the Edge” incident we’d done with them a year earlier, which, in turn, was sort of in continuum to the Carnivals of e- Creativity (CeC) that we’d launched and run together 2006-2009, before it was shifted out when IIC needed to have a 2-year break from some programming so as to do some demolition and reconstruction within their campus.
And, Teteii in her inimitable manner responded with a “Why not?”, along with a request for me to send in a proper proposal for consideration as soon as possible; which I managed to do within a few days, after consulting a couple of experimental creative practitioners in Delhi who have always supported my work along such lines, and, whom I therefore knew from experience we could build a magical creative incident upon in almost any situation. However, as opposed to the 2018 program we’d done together with IIC, which had been a sort of talking shop in Conference Room #1, I proposed to Teteii that we address the main auditorium this time with an attempted outreach to a broader general public with Explorations of Experimental Sounds, Visuals, and Motion, in Live performance. And,.. Teteii magically made it happen, with the date set for Sunday, January 13, 2019!
We divided the day into 3 parts, with Morning for setup, Afternoon for a first session of live performances, and, Evening for a second session of live performances. News of the proposed mischief, meanwhile, began to be put out by us from three weeks before the incident.
As always when I have the luck of his always-transformative involvement in such matters, good ole Chintan Kalra took charge of technical affairs on behalf of the performers, while the very wonderful Suresh Pal headed up the IIC technical team. We also had the good luck that my son Bacchus Barua was with us on his annual winter vacation.
January 13 dawned beautifully, looking to be a reasonably clear day, and almost everybody on the inside track was in by 9:30am, whereafter the IIC team took just over an hour to set up the auditorium’s stage, sound system, and main projector, to suit us. When Chintan came in a bit later though, on account of unforeseen traffic congestion on his way, we unexpectedly ran into a snag, in that the Sony video camera we were planning to use to focus on what the performers were actually doing with their kits in performance, via a supplementary projector and screen, - well, wouldn’t you know it , - the damned camera presented us with a proprietary output socket of a sort that none of us had ever seen before, leave alone have.
In the end though, the matter was resolved by Chintan, - as usual, - who twigged that Bacchus's laptop was to hand as a spare, into which he quickly downloaded a software that allowed us to set up its camera instead of the idiotic Sony camera,.. and we were soon ready to roll, with four separate performance kits laid out for the afternoon session on two separate tables, placed stage left and right respectively, as well as ample time for everybody to grab lunch before the performances were to begin.
In keeping with IIC’s reputation for tight programming, we owed it to them - as co-presenters of the program - to launch proceedings on time, and, we sure did it on the dot.
As always with almost all of my programming, I’d plonked myself into the first slot, to take up the slack of latecomer audience, as well as to generally manifest that I never asked anybody to do anything I wouldn’t do myself in such matters.
Also as always with this little quirk of mine, 2:30pm saw me take the stage full of tensions and trepidations in regard to my own performance in this case, as well as the whole bag of every aspect of the whole program that was just beginning. And, again as always, that meant my little introductory babble was just that; babble.
In any case:
Afternoon Session ~ First performance
[Shankar Barua, with Chintan Kalra and Bacchus Barua]
My performance this time was to be essentially about improvisation with an everyday device, broadly of the sort that almost every adult in the gathering personally owned, carried at all times, and was pretty intuitive with; i.e. a smartphone. However, on account of the fact that I am not an adept regular musician, or performer, I allowed myself the concession of adding an iPad to my iPhone, since my plan was to use a total of 5 different apps to progress from a rather abstract beginning through to playing extempore within a musical scale on the GeoShred app, embellished with the SwarPlug and two other apps I automated into the background.
I should add here that the developers of the two apps I specifically mention above had very kindly helped me prepare fo the performance, for which I am deeply grateful.
What wasn’t really prepared though, was my playing itself, as I’d managed to get in just about a dozen very short familiarisation sessions through a few weeks with these things that were all quite new to me, and then, to complicate that further, I actually checked my apps and also changed the scale I was to work with at almost the very last moment. Finally, to crown the experimentation, I invited Chintan and Bacchus to join me in the performance shortly before we actually began it, without offering them any real clue as to what I was going to do,.. other than that I’d stick around the root note “C”.
In the event, it all went off rather swimmingly as far as I’m concerned, mainly because I managed to not make a complete ass of myself or either of my two unwitting collaborators. There were, of course, a couple of instances when my game left hand injected some inadvertent touches of my playing surface to yield bum notes or phrases, and there was something somewhere that brought in a peculiar rhythmic disturbance into the sound stream from about two-thirds of the way in, but, with Chintan and Bacchus quickly catching on to the general gist of what i was doing, with their various instruments, I obviously couldn’t go too far wrong. And, let it be said that there were some good folks in the audience who caught us up later with kind suggestions that we should perform more often along such lines into the future!
Afternoon Session ~ Second performance
[Rahul Dutta]
To be honest, I’d scheduled Rahul Dutta right after me, as the second performance of the entire program, substantially because I suspected he wouldn’t actually deliver a performance in the same sense as the others probably would. And, I was right.
What Rahul did come through with though, was a lively ‘presentation’ of his thoughts, tools, and works, across some of the streams of his various creative preoccupations with 2D & 3D art & design , virtual and augmented realities, 360 degree scene generation and immersion, multidimensional futurism, and so on. And, needless to say, he peppered it all with brilliant visual artworks of his own, ranged from old pencil drawings on paper through to an incredibly detailed 3D humanoid he’d sculpted in virtual space just a few days earlier.
Afternoon Session ~ Third performance
[Akash Sharma]
With Akash Sharma, in turn, I suspected that he’d border on extreme aural abstraction through an actual performance, which is why he’s been put on third. And, with him too I was right.
Akash’s performance was largely about live coding, with lines of code seeming to be sequentially duplicated or replicated in realtime through subtle variations and movements. What emerged from it all was essentially a slowly meandering journey through a series of different drones, which quite a few people unfortunately could not quite understand. On the other hand, however, the supplementary projection of his hands at his kit did help a lot of other people indeed understand that what was going on was a wilful and carefully guided exploration through a sort of sonic no- mans-land pitted with consonances and dissonances that one might otherwise never encounter.
Afternoon Session ~ Fourth performance
[Vinny Bhagat and Ayesha Hassanwalia]
Vinny Bhagat’s performance too was substantially about live coding, but we’d positioned him into the last slot of the afternoon because, quite unlike Akash, he’s a full tilt professional live musician and video artist. And of course, he was working this time together with Ayesha Hassanwalia, who - as a dancer/choreographer - was to essay our primary explorations in the entire program of live movement in performance.
This then was where things began to get across to much more of the audience. Vinny’s drones and other aural explorations delve more broadly and much deeper than most into the possibilities of aural abstraction as ‘music’. And, the sorts of video he normally codes to accompany his soundscapes are intimately engaged with, and connected to, almost every aspect of everything one hears.
Ayesha, meanwhile, moved into - and with - the live audio-video mix almost as though born to it; sometimes responding with isolated movements of pure dance, and, at other times actually engaging and interacting directly with the shifting sounds and visuals almost like automata, with Vinny, in turn, constantly modulating and adjusting everything into a creative two-way street.
Not surprisingly perhaps, that altogether went on to become the longest performance of the entire program, because, as good luck would have it, our setting up in the morning had been so efficient that we’d gained extra time from very quick changeovers between performances.
But of course, we did eventually break for tea, which we’d allowed an hour and a half (5pm to 6:30pm) so that the general audience could disperse properly for refreshments, and return well in time to catch the evening session from the beginning.
Evening Session ~ First performance
[Chintan Kalra]
One the many things we were all collectively sort of hoping to do this time was to somehow make a better connection through this particular program with a wider general public for the purely experimental performances that we got together to essay on such occasions. That’s why we’d scheduled the evening session to be quite different from the afternoon, not least by beginning with a performance from Chintan Kalra, who - in a manner of speaking - can be spoken of as somewhat of a co-curator of the entire incident alongside myself, and also alongside the very many other things he be.
And, Chintan never, never disappoints. We were now in the realms of performative experience and professional showmanship across multiple media. There was identifiable ‘music’ in the mix; identifiable chaos and abstraction; video streams manipulated live; identifiable and unidentifiable instrumentation; tactile as well as gestural control. There were movements, transitions, highs and lows, surprises as well as continuums.
With this, the general audience probably began to properly understand more about the purely aesthetic and artistic possibilities that arise from creative experimentation than they probably might have from almost anything that had earlier gone by in the afternoon session. And, that’s just as well, for, with Chintan having served well to draw the audience back in, things were going to go back to being a lot more “weird” for a lot more people once again, right after this.
Evening Session ~ Second performance
[Ashhar Farooqui and Neha Dixit]
Ashhar Farooqui may very well be that one creative professional who best understands what these peculiar incidents I periodically put together should mean for the creative practitioners who’ve respectively been involved in them. This comes through to me in the fact that he always
manages to catch me by surprise with whatever he presents each time. And that, in turn, has to do with the fact that he takes every such opportunity to venture outside and beyond his various mainstream creative works, in studiedly experimental new directions always.
To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time that Neha was to actually ‘perform’ live together with Ashhar, even though they continuously do a lot of creative work together on an ongoing basis, in their studios. What she brought forth this time was a seemingly guileless sequence of video documents structured broadly into a narrative,.. but, with Ashhar sampling, mangling, and glitching the audio live into amazing, and amazingly appropriate, ejaculations, exclamations, emphases, peaks, troughs, crescendoes, and what have you, that somehow all fell exactly into telling moments of the video stream.
No easy act to follow, that. But then, we were prepared for that, even though we’d earlier had absolutely no idea as to what exactly that ‘that’ would be.
Evening Session ~ Third performance
[Lionel Dentan]
I think we stumbled upon a double stroke of pure good luck with the positioning of Lionel Dentan’s performance as the last on this occasion, in that, (i) everything that went before him had cumulatively prepared everybody to expect virtuosity as well as the unexpected in every performance, and, (ii) any earlier slot might have rendered him more difficult to comprehend for many, thereby possibly driving away some of the audience for the others.
This was the only performance of the day that did not directly or indirectly ride the back of some sort of digital computing device. Lionel’s instruments of choice have lately come down to either one of his two suitcase Euroracks stuffed with a customized selection of analog modules that he variously patches in and out of each other according to each occasion, plus an audio mixer through which to stitch together several different channels of audio output. What he’d added to that on this occasion was two tiny spool-tape recorders. And, what he delivered via the rat’s nest of cabling that pulled it all together was probably the best live performance I’ve seen from him ever.
This was studied sound synthesis and processing meticulously guided through a range of emotive movements, with exquisite detailing and subtleties. It might have been the projection of his hands at his kit that really pushed through to the audience that this was not a randomized “noise act”, thereby allowing many to understand something of the ‘cinematic’ scope of his aural art.
Whatever it was, it held the audience almost spellbound till he was done.
And then, with just a wee bit of babble from me to close proceedings, we too were all done.
And so, all that remains for me to do now is to gratefully thank Teteii and all of the program office at India International Centre for believing in and so supportively collaborating with and hosting us once again in this work we do in the service of mutual and general benefit on all sides.
Not to forget, also the fantastic Experimental Creative Practitioners who so generously performed for us all.
And finally, my lovely wife Poonam, and my always-supportive son Bacchus, without either of whom I could probably never do these sometimes strange things that I sometimes do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shankar Barua
Curator
(Sattal, February 14, 2019)
(Scroll down for bio-blurbs of the performers)
It all began in October-November 2018,.. if one discounts that it actually all began many, many years before that. What happened was that Lalsawmliani “Teteii” Tochhawng of the program office in India International Centre called me on the phone to invite me to participate in an upcoming program of theirs, and, in the course of our conversation about that, I asked her whether we should consider collaborating to once again do something interesting together in IIC January 2019,.. sort of in continuum to the “Exploring the Edge” incident we’d done with them a year earlier, which, in turn, was sort of in continuum to the Carnivals of e- Creativity (CeC) that we’d launched and run together 2006-2009, before it was shifted out when IIC needed to have a 2-year break from some programming so as to do some demolition and reconstruction within their campus.
And, Teteii in her inimitable manner responded with a “Why not?”, along with a request for me to send in a proper proposal for consideration as soon as possible; which I managed to do within a few days, after consulting a couple of experimental creative practitioners in Delhi who have always supported my work along such lines, and, whom I therefore knew from experience we could build a magical creative incident upon in almost any situation. However, as opposed to the 2018 program we’d done together with IIC, which had been a sort of talking shop in Conference Room #1, I proposed to Teteii that we address the main auditorium this time with an attempted outreach to a broader general public with Explorations of Experimental Sounds, Visuals, and Motion, in Live performance. And,.. Teteii magically made it happen, with the date set for Sunday, January 13, 2019!
We divided the day into 3 parts, with Morning for setup, Afternoon for a first session of live performances, and, Evening for a second session of live performances. News of the proposed mischief, meanwhile, began to be put out by us from three weeks before the incident.
As always when I have the luck of his always-transformative involvement in such matters, good ole Chintan Kalra took charge of technical affairs on behalf of the performers, while the very wonderful Suresh Pal headed up the IIC technical team. We also had the good luck that my son Bacchus Barua was with us on his annual winter vacation.
January 13 dawned beautifully, looking to be a reasonably clear day, and almost everybody on the inside track was in by 9:30am, whereafter the IIC team took just over an hour to set up the auditorium’s stage, sound system, and main projector, to suit us. When Chintan came in a bit later though, on account of unforeseen traffic congestion on his way, we unexpectedly ran into a snag, in that the Sony video camera we were planning to use to focus on what the performers were actually doing with their kits in performance, via a supplementary projector and screen, - well, wouldn’t you know it , - the damned camera presented us with a proprietary output socket of a sort that none of us had ever seen before, leave alone have.
In the end though, the matter was resolved by Chintan, - as usual, - who twigged that Bacchus's laptop was to hand as a spare, into which he quickly downloaded a software that allowed us to set up its camera instead of the idiotic Sony camera,.. and we were soon ready to roll, with four separate performance kits laid out for the afternoon session on two separate tables, placed stage left and right respectively, as well as ample time for everybody to grab lunch before the performances were to begin.
In keeping with IIC’s reputation for tight programming, we owed it to them - as co-presenters of the program - to launch proceedings on time, and, we sure did it on the dot.
As always with almost all of my programming, I’d plonked myself into the first slot, to take up the slack of latecomer audience, as well as to generally manifest that I never asked anybody to do anything I wouldn’t do myself in such matters.
Also as always with this little quirk of mine, 2:30pm saw me take the stage full of tensions and trepidations in regard to my own performance in this case, as well as the whole bag of every aspect of the whole program that was just beginning. And, again as always, that meant my little introductory babble was just that; babble.
In any case:
Afternoon Session ~ First performance
[Shankar Barua, with Chintan Kalra and Bacchus Barua]
My performance this time was to be essentially about improvisation with an everyday device, broadly of the sort that almost every adult in the gathering personally owned, carried at all times, and was pretty intuitive with; i.e. a smartphone. However, on account of the fact that I am not an adept regular musician, or performer, I allowed myself the concession of adding an iPad to my iPhone, since my plan was to use a total of 5 different apps to progress from a rather abstract beginning through to playing extempore within a musical scale on the GeoShred app, embellished with the SwarPlug and two other apps I automated into the background.
I should add here that the developers of the two apps I specifically mention above had very kindly helped me prepare fo the performance, for which I am deeply grateful.
What wasn’t really prepared though, was my playing itself, as I’d managed to get in just about a dozen very short familiarisation sessions through a few weeks with these things that were all quite new to me, and then, to complicate that further, I actually checked my apps and also changed the scale I was to work with at almost the very last moment. Finally, to crown the experimentation, I invited Chintan and Bacchus to join me in the performance shortly before we actually began it, without offering them any real clue as to what I was going to do,.. other than that I’d stick around the root note “C”.
In the event, it all went off rather swimmingly as far as I’m concerned, mainly because I managed to not make a complete ass of myself or either of my two unwitting collaborators. There were, of course, a couple of instances when my game left hand injected some inadvertent touches of my playing surface to yield bum notes or phrases, and there was something somewhere that brought in a peculiar rhythmic disturbance into the sound stream from about two-thirds of the way in, but, with Chintan and Bacchus quickly catching on to the general gist of what i was doing, with their various instruments, I obviously couldn’t go too far wrong. And, let it be said that there were some good folks in the audience who caught us up later with kind suggestions that we should perform more often along such lines into the future!
Afternoon Session ~ Second performance
[Rahul Dutta]
To be honest, I’d scheduled Rahul Dutta right after me, as the second performance of the entire program, substantially because I suspected he wouldn’t actually deliver a performance in the same sense as the others probably would. And, I was right.
What Rahul did come through with though, was a lively ‘presentation’ of his thoughts, tools, and works, across some of the streams of his various creative preoccupations with 2D & 3D art & design , virtual and augmented realities, 360 degree scene generation and immersion, multidimensional futurism, and so on. And, needless to say, he peppered it all with brilliant visual artworks of his own, ranged from old pencil drawings on paper through to an incredibly detailed 3D humanoid he’d sculpted in virtual space just a few days earlier.
Afternoon Session ~ Third performance
[Akash Sharma]
With Akash Sharma, in turn, I suspected that he’d border on extreme aural abstraction through an actual performance, which is why he’s been put on third. And, with him too I was right.
Akash’s performance was largely about live coding, with lines of code seeming to be sequentially duplicated or replicated in realtime through subtle variations and movements. What emerged from it all was essentially a slowly meandering journey through a series of different drones, which quite a few people unfortunately could not quite understand. On the other hand, however, the supplementary projection of his hands at his kit did help a lot of other people indeed understand that what was going on was a wilful and carefully guided exploration through a sort of sonic no- mans-land pitted with consonances and dissonances that one might otherwise never encounter.
Afternoon Session ~ Fourth performance
[Vinny Bhagat and Ayesha Hassanwalia]
Vinny Bhagat’s performance too was substantially about live coding, but we’d positioned him into the last slot of the afternoon because, quite unlike Akash, he’s a full tilt professional live musician and video artist. And of course, he was working this time together with Ayesha Hassanwalia, who - as a dancer/choreographer - was to essay our primary explorations in the entire program of live movement in performance.
This then was where things began to get across to much more of the audience. Vinny’s drones and other aural explorations delve more broadly and much deeper than most into the possibilities of aural abstraction as ‘music’. And, the sorts of video he normally codes to accompany his soundscapes are intimately engaged with, and connected to, almost every aspect of everything one hears.
Ayesha, meanwhile, moved into - and with - the live audio-video mix almost as though born to it; sometimes responding with isolated movements of pure dance, and, at other times actually engaging and interacting directly with the shifting sounds and visuals almost like automata, with Vinny, in turn, constantly modulating and adjusting everything into a creative two-way street.
Not surprisingly perhaps, that altogether went on to become the longest performance of the entire program, because, as good luck would have it, our setting up in the morning had been so efficient that we’d gained extra time from very quick changeovers between performances.
But of course, we did eventually break for tea, which we’d allowed an hour and a half (5pm to 6:30pm) so that the general audience could disperse properly for refreshments, and return well in time to catch the evening session from the beginning.
Evening Session ~ First performance
[Chintan Kalra]
One the many things we were all collectively sort of hoping to do this time was to somehow make a better connection through this particular program with a wider general public for the purely experimental performances that we got together to essay on such occasions. That’s why we’d scheduled the evening session to be quite different from the afternoon, not least by beginning with a performance from Chintan Kalra, who - in a manner of speaking - can be spoken of as somewhat of a co-curator of the entire incident alongside myself, and also alongside the very many other things he be.
And, Chintan never, never disappoints. We were now in the realms of performative experience and professional showmanship across multiple media. There was identifiable ‘music’ in the mix; identifiable chaos and abstraction; video streams manipulated live; identifiable and unidentifiable instrumentation; tactile as well as gestural control. There were movements, transitions, highs and lows, surprises as well as continuums.
With this, the general audience probably began to properly understand more about the purely aesthetic and artistic possibilities that arise from creative experimentation than they probably might have from almost anything that had earlier gone by in the afternoon session. And, that’s just as well, for, with Chintan having served well to draw the audience back in, things were going to go back to being a lot more “weird” for a lot more people once again, right after this.
Evening Session ~ Second performance
[Ashhar Farooqui and Neha Dixit]
Ashhar Farooqui may very well be that one creative professional who best understands what these peculiar incidents I periodically put together should mean for the creative practitioners who’ve respectively been involved in them. This comes through to me in the fact that he always
manages to catch me by surprise with whatever he presents each time. And that, in turn, has to do with the fact that he takes every such opportunity to venture outside and beyond his various mainstream creative works, in studiedly experimental new directions always.
To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time that Neha was to actually ‘perform’ live together with Ashhar, even though they continuously do a lot of creative work together on an ongoing basis, in their studios. What she brought forth this time was a seemingly guileless sequence of video documents structured broadly into a narrative,.. but, with Ashhar sampling, mangling, and glitching the audio live into amazing, and amazingly appropriate, ejaculations, exclamations, emphases, peaks, troughs, crescendoes, and what have you, that somehow all fell exactly into telling moments of the video stream.
No easy act to follow, that. But then, we were prepared for that, even though we’d earlier had absolutely no idea as to what exactly that ‘that’ would be.
Evening Session ~ Third performance
[Lionel Dentan]
I think we stumbled upon a double stroke of pure good luck with the positioning of Lionel Dentan’s performance as the last on this occasion, in that, (i) everything that went before him had cumulatively prepared everybody to expect virtuosity as well as the unexpected in every performance, and, (ii) any earlier slot might have rendered him more difficult to comprehend for many, thereby possibly driving away some of the audience for the others.
This was the only performance of the day that did not directly or indirectly ride the back of some sort of digital computing device. Lionel’s instruments of choice have lately come down to either one of his two suitcase Euroracks stuffed with a customized selection of analog modules that he variously patches in and out of each other according to each occasion, plus an audio mixer through which to stitch together several different channels of audio output. What he’d added to that on this occasion was two tiny spool-tape recorders. And, what he delivered via the rat’s nest of cabling that pulled it all together was probably the best live performance I’ve seen from him ever.
This was studied sound synthesis and processing meticulously guided through a range of emotive movements, with exquisite detailing and subtleties. It might have been the projection of his hands at his kit that really pushed through to the audience that this was not a randomized “noise act”, thereby allowing many to understand something of the ‘cinematic’ scope of his aural art.
Whatever it was, it held the audience almost spellbound till he was done.
And then, with just a wee bit of babble from me to close proceedings, we too were all done.
And so, all that remains for me to do now is to gratefully thank Teteii and all of the program office at India International Centre for believing in and so supportively collaborating with and hosting us once again in this work we do in the service of mutual and general benefit on all sides.
Not to forget, also the fantastic Experimental Creative Practitioners who so generously performed for us all.
And finally, my lovely wife Poonam, and my always-supportive son Bacchus, without either of whom I could probably never do these sometimes strange things that I sometimes do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shankar Barua
Curator
(Sattal, February 14, 2019)
About the Performers:
(random list sequence)
~.~
1. Chintan Kalra ~ Producer, Composer, Musician
Internationally acclaimed musician and a co-founder of indie band Parikrama, among many other successful music and visual arts projects over the last three decades. Has performed live in venues across India and the world.
Offstage, Chintan is a multiple-media design & technology expert who manages and motivates his media lab with a motley mix of professional projects, production design, and ongoing experimentation with various technologies.
Current projects ~ Think Floyd, Kuru Circus & Orchestra, IMFL, Contra Band, and Shabdkoshish, among others.
www.chintankalra.in
2. Vinny Bhagat ~ Audio/Video Technologist & Webcaster
Founder-member of the breakthrough band “Envision” during the early 2000s in Delhi, Vinny went on to formally study Music Technology, Art, and Science, including Sound Art, Performance art, and Future Intelligent Machines, in Australia, before returning to India to set up an independent consultative and performative practice covering both audio and video, while at the same time also launching and operating one of the first Indian live-casting studios on the internet, as an extension of his Shivnakaun Sonic Research Lab.
www.facebook.com/vinnybhagat
3. Ayesha Hassanwalia ~ Choreographer, Dancer, Teacher
Dance and sociology major, trained for several years in Jazz and Contemporary at The Broadway Dance Center, New York, and The Danceworx Academy of Performing Arts. Having been trained by some of the most renowned teachers, both in New York and India, she returned back to Delhi with extensive experience as a teacher, performer and choreographer.
Since then, she has created new works with multiple residencies and independently, and has trained in Pilates and physical health & alignment. She is currently building a dance curriculum for The British School, New Delhi, while also choreographing and teaching in various institutes across the city. She is a communicator and educator, looking to help create a new generation of socially aware and responsible artists.
www.dancewithaye.weebly.com
4. Lionel Dentan ~ Composer, Musician, Producer
Formally trained on guitar, saaz, and sitar, Lionel has been one of the most influential pioneers of the fusion, electronic, and experimental music scenes in Delhi for many years, having variously mentored and empowered some of the most interesting experimental musicians of the city. He has personally also delivered innumerable live performances, both solo as well as with a multitude of collaborators, across situations ranged from Indian classical music and dance through his latest experiments with analog modules and ‘music concrete’. In his “DA Saz” avatar, he works on an ongoing basis with musicians around the world, produces albums, mentors synthesis workshops, and does soundtracks for film.
https://huhuhu.bandcamp.com/album/enoia
https://randomcruztempo.bandcamp.com/releases
5. Rahul Dutta ~ Design Professional & Consultant
Graduate in Product Design from the National Institute of Design, Rahul has been a practicing industrial and graphic designer since 2002. His art heavily emphasises technology and fantasy, and includes pioneering work with Virtual Reality art forms.
He is recognised as one of India’s foremost entrepreneurs in the future of the internet ~ at the top of his field in creating three-dimensional virtual worlds and augmented reality experiences. He is also an accomplished illustrator, designer and freehand/digital artist. His interests and skills have evolved across a range of design disciplines including industrial, graphic, automotive and web design, animation, Metaverse development. and augmented reality.
http://hyperreality.in
http://trimensions.org
6. Ashhar Farooqui ~ Composer, Musician, Producer
Counted amongst the edgiest and most respected experimental vocalists, composers and musicians of India, Ashhar’s first foray into professional music was as a founder-member of the breakthrough cult band “Envision” during the early 2000s in Delhi. He has since stayed steadily on the music path, continually composing scores and soundtracks for films and television, when not on the road performing solo (generally under the name “ToyMob”) or in various different collaborations with several other musicians. He is also an experimental mud architect, living and working most of the time in a complex of mud house and studios that he made together with his partner in the Himalaya, as an eco-friendly experiment and statement.
https://toymob.bandcamp.com/
7. Neha Dixit ~ Filmmaker, Travel Journalist, Television Anchor.
After several years served as a full time television anchorperson, producer and documentarist, primarily in the Responsible Tourism and Adventure space with one of the leading english language news channels of India, Neha broke out into independently making films of her own choosing largely along the lines of Environment activism, documentation of cultures, music videos, and also pure creative experimentation and expression. While at the same time still often handling video production and/or post-production as well as reportage and photography purely for clients in the cities, she chooses to live and work most of the time in the complex of mud houses and studios that she made together with her partner in the Himalaya, as an eco-friendly experiment and statement.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2p3eOpM8vRezTtMBrdgXZMVluJJFdTjs
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2p3eOpM8vRdr3uIRQMc3yMFqlj-VEowC
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2p3eOpM8vRdaHTPUgOulvtfnWtDiwucZ
8. Akash Sharma ~ Sound Coder/Mapper & Musician
After pioneering the field of sound-mapping acoustic signatures of special places across India, a practice he still pursues, Akash has more recently begun to reproduce these signatures as packaged and programmable acoustic effects for the use of musicians, composers, and other sound professionals. He also produces experimental audio software, hardware, and sound installations, and sometimes performs live, in addition to having run innumerable sound appreciation & design workshops.
https://sound.codes
9. Shankar Barua ~ Writer, Artist, Curator
As curator of this incident, Shankar will exercise his privilege - as is usual with this work of his - to deliver the first experimental presentation/performance of the program, partly as a ‘responsibility’, and, partly also to make some point specifically relevant to the occasion.
In keeping with this practice, his very few live performances over the past few years have variously included a Hindustani classical vocalist, a B-boy dancer, homemade electronics and instruments, including a robotic drummer, as well as several instances of self-written software for audio-video synthesis, processing, and signal control. He is known to have lost control of one of his software patches in a live performance on at least one occasion, and also once upon a time actually had a hardware project sort of blow up on stage.
www.ShankarBaba.com
9a. Bacchus Barua ~ Economist & Musician
Bacchus performed together with his father Shankar Barua, and Chintan Kalra, on a purely experimental and extemporaneous basis. He is otherwise based in Vancouver, where he performs occasionally with a power pop and grunge band called The Belief Experiment, in between his day job as an economist with the Fraser Institute.
http://www.TheBeliefExperiment.com/
(random list sequence)
~.~
1. Chintan Kalra ~ Producer, Composer, Musician
Internationally acclaimed musician and a co-founder of indie band Parikrama, among many other successful music and visual arts projects over the last three decades. Has performed live in venues across India and the world.
Offstage, Chintan is a multiple-media design & technology expert who manages and motivates his media lab with a motley mix of professional projects, production design, and ongoing experimentation with various technologies.
Current projects ~ Think Floyd, Kuru Circus & Orchestra, IMFL, Contra Band, and Shabdkoshish, among others.
www.chintankalra.in
2. Vinny Bhagat ~ Audio/Video Technologist & Webcaster
Founder-member of the breakthrough band “Envision” during the early 2000s in Delhi, Vinny went on to formally study Music Technology, Art, and Science, including Sound Art, Performance art, and Future Intelligent Machines, in Australia, before returning to India to set up an independent consultative and performative practice covering both audio and video, while at the same time also launching and operating one of the first Indian live-casting studios on the internet, as an extension of his Shivnakaun Sonic Research Lab.
www.facebook.com/vinnybhagat
3. Ayesha Hassanwalia ~ Choreographer, Dancer, Teacher
Dance and sociology major, trained for several years in Jazz and Contemporary at The Broadway Dance Center, New York, and The Danceworx Academy of Performing Arts. Having been trained by some of the most renowned teachers, both in New York and India, she returned back to Delhi with extensive experience as a teacher, performer and choreographer.
Since then, she has created new works with multiple residencies and independently, and has trained in Pilates and physical health & alignment. She is currently building a dance curriculum for The British School, New Delhi, while also choreographing and teaching in various institutes across the city. She is a communicator and educator, looking to help create a new generation of socially aware and responsible artists.
www.dancewithaye.weebly.com
4. Lionel Dentan ~ Composer, Musician, Producer
Formally trained on guitar, saaz, and sitar, Lionel has been one of the most influential pioneers of the fusion, electronic, and experimental music scenes in Delhi for many years, having variously mentored and empowered some of the most interesting experimental musicians of the city. He has personally also delivered innumerable live performances, both solo as well as with a multitude of collaborators, across situations ranged from Indian classical music and dance through his latest experiments with analog modules and ‘music concrete’. In his “DA Saz” avatar, he works on an ongoing basis with musicians around the world, produces albums, mentors synthesis workshops, and does soundtracks for film.
https://huhuhu.bandcamp.com/album/enoia
https://randomcruztempo.bandcamp.com/releases
5. Rahul Dutta ~ Design Professional & Consultant
Graduate in Product Design from the National Institute of Design, Rahul has been a practicing industrial and graphic designer since 2002. His art heavily emphasises technology and fantasy, and includes pioneering work with Virtual Reality art forms.
He is recognised as one of India’s foremost entrepreneurs in the future of the internet ~ at the top of his field in creating three-dimensional virtual worlds and augmented reality experiences. He is also an accomplished illustrator, designer and freehand/digital artist. His interests and skills have evolved across a range of design disciplines including industrial, graphic, automotive and web design, animation, Metaverse development. and augmented reality.
http://hyperreality.in
http://trimensions.org
6. Ashhar Farooqui ~ Composer, Musician, Producer
Counted amongst the edgiest and most respected experimental vocalists, composers and musicians of India, Ashhar’s first foray into professional music was as a founder-member of the breakthrough cult band “Envision” during the early 2000s in Delhi. He has since stayed steadily on the music path, continually composing scores and soundtracks for films and television, when not on the road performing solo (generally under the name “ToyMob”) or in various different collaborations with several other musicians. He is also an experimental mud architect, living and working most of the time in a complex of mud house and studios that he made together with his partner in the Himalaya, as an eco-friendly experiment and statement.
https://toymob.bandcamp.com/
7. Neha Dixit ~ Filmmaker, Travel Journalist, Television Anchor.
After several years served as a full time television anchorperson, producer and documentarist, primarily in the Responsible Tourism and Adventure space with one of the leading english language news channels of India, Neha broke out into independently making films of her own choosing largely along the lines of Environment activism, documentation of cultures, music videos, and also pure creative experimentation and expression. While at the same time still often handling video production and/or post-production as well as reportage and photography purely for clients in the cities, she chooses to live and work most of the time in the complex of mud houses and studios that she made together with her partner in the Himalaya, as an eco-friendly experiment and statement.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2p3eOpM8vRezTtMBrdgXZMVluJJFdTjs
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2p3eOpM8vRdr3uIRQMc3yMFqlj-VEowC
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2p3eOpM8vRdaHTPUgOulvtfnWtDiwucZ
8. Akash Sharma ~ Sound Coder/Mapper & Musician
After pioneering the field of sound-mapping acoustic signatures of special places across India, a practice he still pursues, Akash has more recently begun to reproduce these signatures as packaged and programmable acoustic effects for the use of musicians, composers, and other sound professionals. He also produces experimental audio software, hardware, and sound installations, and sometimes performs live, in addition to having run innumerable sound appreciation & design workshops.
https://sound.codes
9. Shankar Barua ~ Writer, Artist, Curator
As curator of this incident, Shankar will exercise his privilege - as is usual with this work of his - to deliver the first experimental presentation/performance of the program, partly as a ‘responsibility’, and, partly also to make some point specifically relevant to the occasion.
In keeping with this practice, his very few live performances over the past few years have variously included a Hindustani classical vocalist, a B-boy dancer, homemade electronics and instruments, including a robotic drummer, as well as several instances of self-written software for audio-video synthesis, processing, and signal control. He is known to have lost control of one of his software patches in a live performance on at least one occasion, and also once upon a time actually had a hardware project sort of blow up on stage.
www.ShankarBaba.com
9a. Bacchus Barua ~ Economist & Musician
Bacchus performed together with his father Shankar Barua, and Chintan Kalra, on a purely experimental and extemporaneous basis. He is otherwise based in Vancouver, where he performs occasionally with a power pop and grunge band called The Belief Experiment, in between his day job as an economist with the Fraser Institute.
http://www.TheBeliefExperiment.com/
Organizers
~.~
The Academy of Electronic Arts is a Private Entity that serves as a learning, sharing, mentoring, networking, benchmarking, empowering and broadly inclusive, but non-educational, institution.
Incident-Director: Shankar Barua
India International Centre (since 1962) is a forum for the exposition of the cultural patterns prevailing in different parts of the world, by men and women competent to speak on the subjects. The emphasis is neither on the study of particular cultures, nor on the promotion of particular ideologies. The Centre is entirely non-official in character, non-aligned in its motivation and approach, and uncommitted to any particular form of governmental, political, economic or religious affiliation.
Incident Co-Director: Lalsawmliani "Teteii" Tochhawng
---------------------------
~.~
The Academy of Electronic Arts is a Private Entity that serves as a learning, sharing, mentoring, networking, benchmarking, empowering and broadly inclusive, but non-educational, institution.
Incident-Director: Shankar Barua
India International Centre (since 1962) is a forum for the exposition of the cultural patterns prevailing in different parts of the world, by men and women competent to speak on the subjects. The emphasis is neither on the study of particular cultures, nor on the promotion of particular ideologies. The Centre is entirely non-official in character, non-aligned in its motivation and approach, and uncommitted to any particular form of governmental, political, economic or religious affiliation.
Incident Co-Director: Lalsawmliani "Teteii" Tochhawng
---------------------------