:: Post-Incident Report ::
& some reactions
CeC & CaC 2007
~
This report is formatted in 5 parts:
i. The View from Here
ii. The Incident & its Perpetrators
iii. Future View
iv. Thanks
& "Other Reactions"
~x~
& some reactions
CeC & CaC 2007
~
This report is formatted in 5 parts:
i. The View from Here
ii. The Incident & its Perpetrators
iii. Future View
iv. Thanks
& "Other Reactions"
~x~
i. THE VIEW FROM HERE
It is said that a burnt child dreads the fire, but I'd prefer to think that what makes us human is actually that a burnt child thus begins to *learn* fire.
So, what's to say of CeC & CaC 2007? That it seems to have been magic for all involved??
Sure it was that. That's as easy as a beer-binge.
But there's a lot more to it than just that.
Good folks traveled great distances from all over India and the world to create this incredible incident all together with us, and though we certainly didn't get anywhere near to filling up stadiums with raucous revelers getting together for a fleeting bit of shared fun (that beer-binge?), what did spring forth were innumerable new and rich relationships between all of the different sorts of wonderful e-Creative, and also non-e-Creative, folks who chose to be involved in so many different ways with this singular and most peculiar opportunity.
And what was particularly wonderful about it to me was that almost everyone's associated interest and work seemed to have been individually carried forward in some way or another by being bathed in the fascinating crosscurrents and interstices of the whole incident.
But of course, what stood out as "Exhibit-A" was the total absence of corporate and governmental association, involvement, or support, which is such a pity at the dawning of such an exciting age of potentially massive mass-creativity.
On the other hand, direct institutional support was of course primarily marked by India International Centre (IIC) and The Academy of Electronic Arts (The AeA) themselves, as organizing partners.
And, indirect institutional associations robustly endorsed the basic thrust of this partnership and intent, with direct support to some of the participants for them to be with us, from:
Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada
After all, this was about artists and scientists and philosophers and designers and filmmakers and students and web-professionals and social-scientists and social interventionists and even those working to empower the challenged amongst us, all coming together on a common platform of connecting, questioning and sharing, with great gathered learning and all goodwill on all sides, across the common foundation of shared, or intersecting, e-Creative tools and practices.
And, it was also about conjuring a wonderful opportunity for good folks of all description to share quality time with such people and each other across the three days of CeC & CaC 2007, through nearly all of which nearly all were right there, together, as friends!
I am grateful, and feel deeply privileged for that.
What an incredible once-in-a-lifetime experience it was for me, personally, to walk the streets of Old Delhi a few days before the event, with profound good bonhomie in the company of the incomparable Lawrence Casserley, the incredible Curtis Bahn, and marvelous Martin Gotfrit, looking for electronic-tanpuras and singing-bowls and solder and jacks and cables and other such odd things of all things, around an epic lunch in Karim's, and so much else!
And then, by an interesting series of related circumstances on the side, I flew out just two days after our own circus was done, to speak at a seminar on the sidelines of the massive "Arco Art Festival 2007" in Madrid, and believe me, the entire experience of that only made me feel just that much more strongly how right we were to do our own thing entirely our own way in New Delhi over that magic wet weekend in New Delhi, mid-February 2007.
And so is that the case as I review an email invitation received just this morning, for a massive "International Conference on Contemporary Art in Asia" that is due up in New Delhi, mid-March 2007.
To me, these are all about what has been happening all over the place in any case, whereas I do certainly hope that what we are doing is about closing some of the gaps on what is *not* happening.
The good news is that the seamless goodwill network that we tap into, and also contribute to globally, seems clearly to have grown subtly but richly wider with this incident, even though this might not be so apparent to some others.
On the Indian front ~ it is clear that we have made an independent breakthrough into some exciting categories of students and young adults here, as most handsomely manifested in Rishab Parmar, Kamal Chawla and their very special friends, who served as our volunteer co-hosts in the incident this time, along with the incomparable Tim Calonius, of Finland and Dehradun.
For me, having Ashhar Farooqui once again deliver a special performance is also in itself an ongoing breakthrough with other fascinating young adults here in Delhi. And, it is quite clear to me that the NID New Media coordinator and students would have been with us again formally, as they were last time, and as several of them informally indeed were this time, if not for an inconveniently timed internal changeover (they did send in a short video though). It is equally clear from ongoing communications that we shall have more such institutions of creative education from the cutting-edge here in India join us in such mischief going forward.
Even as I write this, I have just received the first invitation of my lifetime from a *student* body to deliver them a personal presentation on e-Creativity and our work with it, as part of their annual-festival in a pretty funky creativity college in Delhi. And it is good to know that almost all of my co-participants in CeC & CaC 2007 have also moved on into exciting new territories, at least partly as a result of having been involved with the whole incident.
Meanwhile, we have also already established an outstanding breach-head on drawing in interesting new sectors of e-Creative scientific and developmental practice.
So, it seems to me that the basic event-matrix is basically alright, presenting an ample landscape of windows open to further improvements into the future, with good friends as advisors to each other and me on it across continents, and sometimes across even greater other divides.
~x~
ii. THE INCIDENT & ITS PERPETRATORS
Day-1a. Began this time with a properly closed-door Change-agents Conclave (CaC) in the morning, starting with coffee/tea and cookies in the rooftop pergola, and then proceeding more formally in the rooftop Conference Room #2. Only participants and a few others were invited into this "Private Meeting", adding up to an intimate group of not more than 35 people at any given time, ranged carefully through from young students to greybeards, all seated around the same table as 'equals' of a sort, to amiably learn of each other and possibly seek out joint purpose(s).
The matrix of discourse was by a simple system of rotating the chair between my cocurators and myself, and then rotating nominations from these rotating chairs, and so on, so as to eventually draw everyone into the whole stew, thereby sort of intuitively uncovering and following through the course(s) of possibly shared direction(s) and/or intent(s).
In my estimation, this worked by many measures better than almost any meeting of any such kind that I might have ever attended in my life, primarily in that we eventually all walked out to share a nice Chettinad-Chicken lunch in the pergola as real new friends, real new associates, and real new co-owners on carrying through the rest of the entire incident itself, towards mutual and general public benefit. And of course, this was also an outstanding opportunity for sharing out special treats, such as the guerilla intervention of Igor Stromajer and Brane Zorman, by CD-distribution.
Day-1b. CaC was originally intended to spin out informally into a couple of parties after that lunch: one to get into the auditorium and set it up for the evening performances and also the following 2 days; and the other to go and hang out the exhibition in the Gandhi-King Plaza; with Suresh Pal and some others of the IIC crew standing by to lend a hand in both cases.
In the event however, we had unseasonal rain, so the exhibition was reduced a bit and spread indoors instead, around the lobby right outside the auditorium, which luckily also boosted viewer-numbers with a pretty high volume of unrelated visitor-traffic.
What showed in this matrix were 2 printed images each from Ravi Pasricha, John Labadie, Margie Labadie, Ashim Ghosh, Dan McCormack and myself, an interactive carromboard installation from Surajit Sarkar, and also my own framed versions of The IDEA series of CD-gazettes, and an annotated clone of the simple midi-board that I'd made as a part of my personal presentation(s) for CeC & CaC 2007. Dhananjay Gadre's MaJaTron eventually didn't come through, as a couple of glass parts had accidentally been broken when a couple of students and he had gotten together just a day or two before the incident to change a couple of LEDs in preparation for it.
Day-1c. Here began the *public* segments of the incident. And, as so carefully planned this time, we launched off the evening of performances on the back of an entirely 'traditional' opening-invocation, with Aparna Panshikar resonantly describing Ganesa in the Hamsadhvani Raaga, against the backdrop of tabla by the inimitable Ansuman Biswas.
And after that came I, with my bumbling DIY ~ homemade guitar feeding into mixertrack-1; via Chinese clip-bender on the head; through basic hardware delay for basic good sound for starters; distilled directly down into output stereo-mix for zero latency; also looped back into computer via Aux-1; wherein PD patch commands parallel pitches and delays, in different ways; alongside semi-randomized sound-synthesizer generating background audio cusps; with basic oscillator and modulator for background soundclouds and flashes; piano play-keys for a couple of interjections; a basic drum-logic controlled by homemade midi-controller, formulated as guitar-strap; all feeding back into mixer tracks-2 & 3 to be also distilled down into the output stereo-mix; with,.. a barebones video-jockeying platform to swing one final surprise at the end, which eventually did not manage to make it out through the projector to screen.
Nevertheless, I did actually manage to hold almost everyone to their seats for perhaps half an hour ~ on which, investigations are of course presently underway towards determining how much of this should be credited to just pure politeness on the part of a largely sympathetic audience towards a largely harmless little old man ~:o)
And, there is also the little matter of how many of those good folks were actually just waiting for Ashhar Farooqui to come on after me, with Choden Yolmo lending lead and backing vocals, and Ranjan Dewan embroidering everything with his stylish guitarplaying, as Ashhar himself went from reading obscure old texts, strumming guitar, singing verses and laughing to himself at nuggets along the way, through to jumpy live-mixing of all sorts of wildly beautiful aural bouquets that he had so specially prepared and gathered together for that fascinating sampler-supported live performance that he shared with us all that very special night.
Day-2a. This dawned to a dropout from the first session of public presentations, scheduled for that morning, which fortunately did not seem to matter to anyone at all. We were all in a "too-bad-for-you-if-you-miss-this" mode by now.
As usual in any case, I was scheduled to go first, partly as event-director, but partly also so as to buffer the others against the trickle-in factor of every Delhi public for every such event, or incident. And so, I got myself down to some babble about CeC & CaC itself, about The IDEA, about this and about that, dipping into my ample resource-base of all sorts of materials all along the way. Which seemed to have gone over well enough with everyone, again as usual.
Parvez Imam then took the stage, to present a premiere public-screening of his lovely little film, "Flight 208", which went over famously with everyone gathered, drawing Parvez himself to then further glaze the treat with his droll humour through the course of a quick Q&A with the approving audience.
Dhananjay Gadre was sadly still lost in looking to somehow repair or replace his broken glass parts, and therefore also didn't eventually make it in for his presentation.
But, I did manage to ensnare the otherwise so-elusive young Nitin Bal Chauhan up at the unaccompanied screenings going on in Conference Room #2, and dragged him in to present excerpts, overviews and insights upon his hauntingly beautiful first film, "Lost & Found",.. which has since had all sorts of funny folks contact me about having a copy and permission for screenings for themselves. So, I'm probably also going to have to see the whole thing through myself sometime soon~:o).
What remained behind in Conference Room #2, was the day's schedule for screenings of unaccompanied presentations, including Nitin's full film; the showreel from the Asian Festival of 1st Films; Anuradha Chandra's abstract "The Trace"; Satoshi Matsuyama's beautiful "Movement in Still Spaces"; the two views of New Media Art at NID, by the students and Tom Chambers respectively; the 1st Cologne Online Film Festival, entitled 'Genderscapes'; Tara Douglas's lovely Bastar myth; excerpts from the Epica Awards reel for 2006; all of the "transmedial.06 video selection"; and finally the installation of Sheldon Brown's interactive "The Scalable City v2.0" through the late-afternoon into evening.
And it was nice to have a few good people really hooked to all of that, through all of that, up on that octagonal rooftop room through that day and the next too.
Meanwhile, presentations moved on to see Curtis Bahn share an incredibly generous exposition of his extended sitar and the complex, but so beautiful, matrix of software abstractions and patches that he's been developing over the years, through the SBass phase and even earlier, to work with his stringed instruments, and to also now work with at least one Hindustani Classical vocalist, automatically tracking her, reacting to her, and even learning from her how better to do so along the way.
Into that flowed wonderful Lawrence Casserley, bringing in his extraordinary vision and perspective upon so dissimilar a usage of so similar a set of tools and resources. What extraordinary journeys to take even such simple sounds upon! And, as had happened to me with Lawrence last time too, my low level of comprehension of all of the logic, relevance and direction of all of these goings-on moved inexorably a wee little notch further forward, possibly in dangerously diversionary directions from actually doing works such as CeC & CaC itself, since it does also knock my need-to-know mindspace into higher gear!
Kireet Khurana then generously shared his experiences and works with all sorts of animation in India, over the past decade or so, ranged all the way up from animation workshops for children through cutting-edge advertising work.
Arun Mehta in turn let us all have a little look into his fascinating world of work with some of the challenged amongst us, and how challenging, and creative, it was in itself to even just conceive of a software that could, for example, allow one to type and thus virtually also say almost anything one might wish to, by just clicking through an interactive matrix of cues and words and shortcuts and so on, using as little as just a single button or other simple sensor for one's tool.
And Ansuman Biswas positively regaled all with his silver tongue carrying us off in all sorts of odd directions of exploration and query, for all sorts of odd reasons and rationales, even having me, and god knows how many others, laugh myself to tears along the way at his brazenly spunky and hilariously spoofy little old 'Zero-Genie' movie, of flight and also simulated flight, in a Russian Vomit Comet.
Day-2b: The second evening of performances; a veritable feast that brought deep traditions into airily experimental symbioses with various young and old technologies. Aparna again kicked this off, but this time, she began singing to the accompaniment of Curtis Bahn's special software; and then also with Curtis himself, and his experimentally expanding sitar; followed in by Lawrence too, who carried off all sorts of sounds along the way, on all sorts of amazing different journeys; with Ansuman popping in and out every now and again, twanging a sarod here, beating tablas there, blowing a bamboo fife, tinkling a toy xylophone, and eventually even bursting into a string of bubbling Bengali babble-rap and neo-vocal-percussion.
This was about experimentation at the edge, sometimes teetering over into miscues and misconnections, but just as often also conjuring beautiful glimpses of wonderful new ways forward over wonderful new horizons.
Day-3a: Still the unseasonally beautiful light showers and breezes! Still the tight profile of participants and an audience committed jointly to making the very most of the beautiful magic of having each other to themselves for another full day.
The unaccompanied screenings again crank up into life in the rooftop conference room. This time showcasing Phil Dadson's "Echo-Logo" video of performance art on the Antarctic; Maria Blondeel's light-to-sound video experiment; Jeremy Turner's avatar communiqué; The Cologne Online Film Festival #2, entitled "Images vs Music"; Kireet Khurana's "2nz" showreel; Gruppo Sinesttetico's graphic Performance-art video "Censored"; the special selection of Turkish video artworks from NOMAD Project Channel; Juliet Reynold's "A for Autism M for Mouse"; and, Eric Fillion's funky collection of some of the video artworks that he has recently performed live across the western hemisphere as VJ Nokami.
Meanwhile, young Milindo Taid bravely opened up the session of presentations in the auditorium, with deep insights and also questions upon the variable relevance of various technologies across varying circumstances. Which was well received with a genial Q&A before he was done.
Surajit Sarkar also came on along the way, to better explain his peculiar interactive carrom-board installation, exhibited out in the lobby. And to also speak of his traveling carnivals through village India, riding developmental funding and NGOs to locally shoot and review amateur video of local affairs with local communities. I'm afraid that I make, and made, no secret of being personally very ambiguous, even suspicious, about such 'interventions' by the Non-Governed Sector into hearty communities that may perhaps be just a tad technologically behind the more privileged amongst us, but that's just me, and the baggage of my personal history. Almost everyone else loved it all, almost unconditionally.
And so too it seemed to be with the silver-tongued Ansuman, who arose again by special request from somewhere to carry forward some more of his performative discourse, hemming and hawing the way most handsomely, and sometimes it seemed to me just very adroitly abstrusely. Good stuff, but I think I need to properly look this chap up and down some more, partly because I'd love to have some of his real skills for myself. In fact, he's so good that I'm not absolutely sure that I've not just hallucinated a single presentation by the man into two, right here, right now~:o)
Hardeep Singh Gill was obviously a lot more transparent, except in that some good people might have thought it to be implicit that we endorse anything and everything that we invite into anything and everything that we do. In the event however, Hardeep most excellently "represented" the burgeoning sector of e-Creative education in this country, and anyone could have taken any of many different things away from the table on that. In fact, a couple of other presenters actually did visit Hardeep's academy sometime later, to have themselves an up close look, and to also run an informal workshop with the students. And, almost everyone certainly seemed to enjoy the few public-awareness works by his students that he shared with us all.
But then, things began to run a bit deeper.
Sheldon Brown's "The Scalable City v2.0" was set up in the auditorium this time, through the lunch-break. And then, when he came on to speak of it all in time, games were no longer just games any more. Suddenly, we were looking at a rainbow of possible purposes, intents, explorations, experiments, developments and even pure intellectual enquiry, all radiating in and out of an apparently simple sort of game, with otherwise no clearly apparent direction, no clearly apparent purpose, no clearly apparent intent. And, through it all did nevertheless also run that naked exposition of how efficiently humankind can now colonize our entire little planet, like an endlessly self-multiplying and evermore voracious consumptive disease upon it.
So, a good thing that Galit Eilat followed in upon this, in her trademark guerilla-black outfit, tucked into her trademark slick black boots, the steely glint of her eyes set firmly upon empowering, showcasing and otherwise involving herself and her institution with some pretty incredible creative-activist and other eCreative projects and works, in, and from, Israel, the Middle East and the EU; some of it so straightforward, such as the balloon as experimental musical instrument; but some of it also so much more specifically located and complex, as with the border-video connects and disconnects.
And then, what better than to have the digital-still-image spoken for by John and Margie Labadie, after all of the hours of discourse over so many other seemingly so much more complex and deep matters, through all of which the actual printed still-images of the exhibition that we had all put up together hung mute right outside the auditorium? Ah! Good to remember the noble provenance of the created still-image as having so emblematically hallmarked almost all of humankind's evolution as a sentient species across millennia. Obviously not the sort of stuff to just lay down and die at the emergence of simple new medias, modifications, advancements and expanded practice along the way. Instead, as borne out by history, and even pre-history and John and Margie in this case, it just keeps getting better!
Day-3b: The final set of evening performances, Ashim Ghosh going first, with a bit of David Castelino, and a lot of India, in all sorts of images and song. Smooth as silk, as always from Ashim. A perfect fit for any of many possible situations. And yet, less than what he had planned for, and prepared for, along with a brilliant dancer, who eventually had to back out, for extraneous reasons.
And then came the last act of CeC & CaC 2007, a performance that I'd especially been looking forward to witnessing for quite awhile, partly because I knew next to nothing of what to expect.
A work-in-progress, premiering with us after three months of close work upon it, as well as several years of associated work behind it, between the partners: Martin Gotfrit doing guitars and live-audio-processing; Kenneth Newby doing violins and live-audio-processing; Aleksandra Dulic doing animations and live-video-processing. A lot of Max/Msp again, but a lot of it very subtle indeed, and finally also with young Jitter, to yield deceptively simple soundscapes and sound-phrases, so carefully structured and so meticulously delivered, along with deceptively simple animations, also so carefully structured, and so meticulously driven in sympathetic concert with the rest. No wonder they call it 'Computational Poetics'.
And again, this too was marked by that deep and open sharing that has become such a treasure for me from every CeC & CaC, and every part of every CeC & CaC.
This is what it is all about.
And what we are looking at from here is what more it can all be about, for the benefit of all of us and everyone else too into the future.
~x~
iii. FUTURE VIEW
What we seem to have to build upon going forward seems to remain little more than just the continuing trust and endorsement of a reasonably vast and continually growing circle of fascinating eCreative Practitioners of all sorts, as friends and associates on these sorts of works that we do.
And, that's profoundly firm bedrock in my book ~ even as one looks directly into the indifferent eyes of the firing-squad that the future sometimes looks to be in this regard.
What is of course critically necessary is that this has to soon begin to grow beyond being about just me at the centre. I am much too much of an odd sort, and weighed down too with too many chips on my shoulders.
So, it's a good thing that we've made that small breakthrough into interesting segments of the community of creative students and young adults here in Delhi. And its another good thing too that we are welcoming aboard a young lady-designer as a Trustee of The AeA, who will hopefully be quite active in driving the work we set out to do, as the beginnings of a sort of successor generation.
Meanwhile, The AeA will be three years old by about the time that we--hopefully--do CeC & CaC again next year. Which apparently means, to some degree, that we might be taken a bit more seriously in certain hallowed quarters, which might in turn lead to some sorts of support, or concessions, towards consolidation.
What would I shoot for?
Basically just a good space in a good place:
[a] to allow development of some modest physical infrastructure into the future, so as to be able to grow for itself a robust, healthy, multifaceted and self-sustainable role in society.
[b] to properly store our beautiful growing archives of original received CDs, DVDs and Books in some easily accessible manner, so as to be of ongoing use to others, and also so as to thereby drive further growth, by inspiring more eCreative Practitioners from around the world to also archive works with us, and thereby share them safely through us with others
[c] to set up a basic media-lab to be used internally, and also be shared occasionally with external practitioners and projects, on a case-by-case basis
[d] to set up a basic workshop (wood, metal, plastic, electronics, etc.) to be used internally, and also be shared occasionally with external practitioners and projects, on a case-by-case basis
[e] to allow for a few good folks to make simple good careers from nurturing, evolving and growing what we do, towards good general purpose into the future
And, as I'd made clear in my curator's report last time, we'd be happy to personally share in investing upon such a thing even with others, and this has been a target awhile.
So, let's see.
~x~
iv. THANKS
My Co-curators, Lawrence Casserley, Curtis Bahn, Milindo Taid and Martin Gotfrit, for
having the courage to tie their outstanding long careers to an uncertain new idea and
enterprise
Our other participants, for believing, and also the institutions and individuals that actually
supported the participation of some of them
Lalsawmliani "Teteii" Tochhawng and her colleagues in India International Centre, for
their continued faith and support
Poonam, my wife, for taking care of so much that I had to let go
Bacchus, my son, for sort of being there for me on this, especially when it counted
Tim Calonious for being rock
Suresh Pal and his associates in IIC, for always being such a firm, reliable and amiable foundation to build upon
Tina Rajan, for coming through with critical support at a critical time
Rishab Parmar, Kamal Chawla and their very special friends, for hosting the unaccompanied screenings almost entirely on their own; for their explicit enthusiasm; and for their implicit endorsement
Ram Bahadur and Deepak Thapa, for backup all along the way
And those unnamed here.
~x~
Shankar Barua
Event-Director, CeC & CaC 2007
[March 15, 2007]
It is said that a burnt child dreads the fire, but I'd prefer to think that what makes us human is actually that a burnt child thus begins to *learn* fire.
So, what's to say of CeC & CaC 2007? That it seems to have been magic for all involved??
Sure it was that. That's as easy as a beer-binge.
But there's a lot more to it than just that.
Good folks traveled great distances from all over India and the world to create this incredible incident all together with us, and though we certainly didn't get anywhere near to filling up stadiums with raucous revelers getting together for a fleeting bit of shared fun (that beer-binge?), what did spring forth were innumerable new and rich relationships between all of the different sorts of wonderful e-Creative, and also non-e-Creative, folks who chose to be involved in so many different ways with this singular and most peculiar opportunity.
And what was particularly wonderful about it to me was that almost everyone's associated interest and work seemed to have been individually carried forward in some way or another by being bathed in the fascinating crosscurrents and interstices of the whole incident.
But of course, what stood out as "Exhibit-A" was the total absence of corporate and governmental association, involvement, or support, which is such a pity at the dawning of such an exciting age of potentially massive mass-creativity.
On the other hand, direct institutional support was of course primarily marked by India International Centre (IIC) and The Academy of Electronic Arts (The AeA) themselves, as organizing partners.
And, indirect institutional associations robustly endorsed the basic thrust of this partnership and intent, with direct support to some of the participants for them to be with us, from:
Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada
- Simon Fraser University
- Bandish ~ The School of Music
- The Digital Academy at University of North Carolina Pembroke
- CRCA, Calit2 and the EGL at University of California San Diego
- Cultural Division, Embassy of Israel in India
- Maeer MIT's Institute of Design
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
After all, this was about artists and scientists and philosophers and designers and filmmakers and students and web-professionals and social-scientists and social interventionists and even those working to empower the challenged amongst us, all coming together on a common platform of connecting, questioning and sharing, with great gathered learning and all goodwill on all sides, across the common foundation of shared, or intersecting, e-Creative tools and practices.
And, it was also about conjuring a wonderful opportunity for good folks of all description to share quality time with such people and each other across the three days of CeC & CaC 2007, through nearly all of which nearly all were right there, together, as friends!
I am grateful, and feel deeply privileged for that.
What an incredible once-in-a-lifetime experience it was for me, personally, to walk the streets of Old Delhi a few days before the event, with profound good bonhomie in the company of the incomparable Lawrence Casserley, the incredible Curtis Bahn, and marvelous Martin Gotfrit, looking for electronic-tanpuras and singing-bowls and solder and jacks and cables and other such odd things of all things, around an epic lunch in Karim's, and so much else!
And then, by an interesting series of related circumstances on the side, I flew out just two days after our own circus was done, to speak at a seminar on the sidelines of the massive "Arco Art Festival 2007" in Madrid, and believe me, the entire experience of that only made me feel just that much more strongly how right we were to do our own thing entirely our own way in New Delhi over that magic wet weekend in New Delhi, mid-February 2007.
And so is that the case as I review an email invitation received just this morning, for a massive "International Conference on Contemporary Art in Asia" that is due up in New Delhi, mid-March 2007.
To me, these are all about what has been happening all over the place in any case, whereas I do certainly hope that what we are doing is about closing some of the gaps on what is *not* happening.
The good news is that the seamless goodwill network that we tap into, and also contribute to globally, seems clearly to have grown subtly but richly wider with this incident, even though this might not be so apparent to some others.
On the Indian front ~ it is clear that we have made an independent breakthrough into some exciting categories of students and young adults here, as most handsomely manifested in Rishab Parmar, Kamal Chawla and their very special friends, who served as our volunteer co-hosts in the incident this time, along with the incomparable Tim Calonius, of Finland and Dehradun.
For me, having Ashhar Farooqui once again deliver a special performance is also in itself an ongoing breakthrough with other fascinating young adults here in Delhi. And, it is quite clear to me that the NID New Media coordinator and students would have been with us again formally, as they were last time, and as several of them informally indeed were this time, if not for an inconveniently timed internal changeover (they did send in a short video though). It is equally clear from ongoing communications that we shall have more such institutions of creative education from the cutting-edge here in India join us in such mischief going forward.
Even as I write this, I have just received the first invitation of my lifetime from a *student* body to deliver them a personal presentation on e-Creativity and our work with it, as part of their annual-festival in a pretty funky creativity college in Delhi. And it is good to know that almost all of my co-participants in CeC & CaC 2007 have also moved on into exciting new territories, at least partly as a result of having been involved with the whole incident.
Meanwhile, we have also already established an outstanding breach-head on drawing in interesting new sectors of e-Creative scientific and developmental practice.
So, it seems to me that the basic event-matrix is basically alright, presenting an ample landscape of windows open to further improvements into the future, with good friends as advisors to each other and me on it across continents, and sometimes across even greater other divides.
~x~
ii. THE INCIDENT & ITS PERPETRATORS
Day-1a. Began this time with a properly closed-door Change-agents Conclave (CaC) in the morning, starting with coffee/tea and cookies in the rooftop pergola, and then proceeding more formally in the rooftop Conference Room #2. Only participants and a few others were invited into this "Private Meeting", adding up to an intimate group of not more than 35 people at any given time, ranged carefully through from young students to greybeards, all seated around the same table as 'equals' of a sort, to amiably learn of each other and possibly seek out joint purpose(s).
The matrix of discourse was by a simple system of rotating the chair between my cocurators and myself, and then rotating nominations from these rotating chairs, and so on, so as to eventually draw everyone into the whole stew, thereby sort of intuitively uncovering and following through the course(s) of possibly shared direction(s) and/or intent(s).
In my estimation, this worked by many measures better than almost any meeting of any such kind that I might have ever attended in my life, primarily in that we eventually all walked out to share a nice Chettinad-Chicken lunch in the pergola as real new friends, real new associates, and real new co-owners on carrying through the rest of the entire incident itself, towards mutual and general public benefit. And of course, this was also an outstanding opportunity for sharing out special treats, such as the guerilla intervention of Igor Stromajer and Brane Zorman, by CD-distribution.
Day-1b. CaC was originally intended to spin out informally into a couple of parties after that lunch: one to get into the auditorium and set it up for the evening performances and also the following 2 days; and the other to go and hang out the exhibition in the Gandhi-King Plaza; with Suresh Pal and some others of the IIC crew standing by to lend a hand in both cases.
In the event however, we had unseasonal rain, so the exhibition was reduced a bit and spread indoors instead, around the lobby right outside the auditorium, which luckily also boosted viewer-numbers with a pretty high volume of unrelated visitor-traffic.
What showed in this matrix were 2 printed images each from Ravi Pasricha, John Labadie, Margie Labadie, Ashim Ghosh, Dan McCormack and myself, an interactive carromboard installation from Surajit Sarkar, and also my own framed versions of The IDEA series of CD-gazettes, and an annotated clone of the simple midi-board that I'd made as a part of my personal presentation(s) for CeC & CaC 2007. Dhananjay Gadre's MaJaTron eventually didn't come through, as a couple of glass parts had accidentally been broken when a couple of students and he had gotten together just a day or two before the incident to change a couple of LEDs in preparation for it.
Day-1c. Here began the *public* segments of the incident. And, as so carefully planned this time, we launched off the evening of performances on the back of an entirely 'traditional' opening-invocation, with Aparna Panshikar resonantly describing Ganesa in the Hamsadhvani Raaga, against the backdrop of tabla by the inimitable Ansuman Biswas.
And after that came I, with my bumbling DIY ~ homemade guitar feeding into mixertrack-1; via Chinese clip-bender on the head; through basic hardware delay for basic good sound for starters; distilled directly down into output stereo-mix for zero latency; also looped back into computer via Aux-1; wherein PD patch commands parallel pitches and delays, in different ways; alongside semi-randomized sound-synthesizer generating background audio cusps; with basic oscillator and modulator for background soundclouds and flashes; piano play-keys for a couple of interjections; a basic drum-logic controlled by homemade midi-controller, formulated as guitar-strap; all feeding back into mixer tracks-2 & 3 to be also distilled down into the output stereo-mix; with,.. a barebones video-jockeying platform to swing one final surprise at the end, which eventually did not manage to make it out through the projector to screen.
Nevertheless, I did actually manage to hold almost everyone to their seats for perhaps half an hour ~ on which, investigations are of course presently underway towards determining how much of this should be credited to just pure politeness on the part of a largely sympathetic audience towards a largely harmless little old man ~:o)
And, there is also the little matter of how many of those good folks were actually just waiting for Ashhar Farooqui to come on after me, with Choden Yolmo lending lead and backing vocals, and Ranjan Dewan embroidering everything with his stylish guitarplaying, as Ashhar himself went from reading obscure old texts, strumming guitar, singing verses and laughing to himself at nuggets along the way, through to jumpy live-mixing of all sorts of wildly beautiful aural bouquets that he had so specially prepared and gathered together for that fascinating sampler-supported live performance that he shared with us all that very special night.
Day-2a. This dawned to a dropout from the first session of public presentations, scheduled for that morning, which fortunately did not seem to matter to anyone at all. We were all in a "too-bad-for-you-if-you-miss-this" mode by now.
As usual in any case, I was scheduled to go first, partly as event-director, but partly also so as to buffer the others against the trickle-in factor of every Delhi public for every such event, or incident. And so, I got myself down to some babble about CeC & CaC itself, about The IDEA, about this and about that, dipping into my ample resource-base of all sorts of materials all along the way. Which seemed to have gone over well enough with everyone, again as usual.
Parvez Imam then took the stage, to present a premiere public-screening of his lovely little film, "Flight 208", which went over famously with everyone gathered, drawing Parvez himself to then further glaze the treat with his droll humour through the course of a quick Q&A with the approving audience.
Dhananjay Gadre was sadly still lost in looking to somehow repair or replace his broken glass parts, and therefore also didn't eventually make it in for his presentation.
But, I did manage to ensnare the otherwise so-elusive young Nitin Bal Chauhan up at the unaccompanied screenings going on in Conference Room #2, and dragged him in to present excerpts, overviews and insights upon his hauntingly beautiful first film, "Lost & Found",.. which has since had all sorts of funny folks contact me about having a copy and permission for screenings for themselves. So, I'm probably also going to have to see the whole thing through myself sometime soon~:o).
What remained behind in Conference Room #2, was the day's schedule for screenings of unaccompanied presentations, including Nitin's full film; the showreel from the Asian Festival of 1st Films; Anuradha Chandra's abstract "The Trace"; Satoshi Matsuyama's beautiful "Movement in Still Spaces"; the two views of New Media Art at NID, by the students and Tom Chambers respectively; the 1st Cologne Online Film Festival, entitled 'Genderscapes'; Tara Douglas's lovely Bastar myth; excerpts from the Epica Awards reel for 2006; all of the "transmedial.06 video selection"; and finally the installation of Sheldon Brown's interactive "The Scalable City v2.0" through the late-afternoon into evening.
And it was nice to have a few good people really hooked to all of that, through all of that, up on that octagonal rooftop room through that day and the next too.
Meanwhile, presentations moved on to see Curtis Bahn share an incredibly generous exposition of his extended sitar and the complex, but so beautiful, matrix of software abstractions and patches that he's been developing over the years, through the SBass phase and even earlier, to work with his stringed instruments, and to also now work with at least one Hindustani Classical vocalist, automatically tracking her, reacting to her, and even learning from her how better to do so along the way.
Into that flowed wonderful Lawrence Casserley, bringing in his extraordinary vision and perspective upon so dissimilar a usage of so similar a set of tools and resources. What extraordinary journeys to take even such simple sounds upon! And, as had happened to me with Lawrence last time too, my low level of comprehension of all of the logic, relevance and direction of all of these goings-on moved inexorably a wee little notch further forward, possibly in dangerously diversionary directions from actually doing works such as CeC & CaC itself, since it does also knock my need-to-know mindspace into higher gear!
Kireet Khurana then generously shared his experiences and works with all sorts of animation in India, over the past decade or so, ranged all the way up from animation workshops for children through cutting-edge advertising work.
Arun Mehta in turn let us all have a little look into his fascinating world of work with some of the challenged amongst us, and how challenging, and creative, it was in itself to even just conceive of a software that could, for example, allow one to type and thus virtually also say almost anything one might wish to, by just clicking through an interactive matrix of cues and words and shortcuts and so on, using as little as just a single button or other simple sensor for one's tool.
And Ansuman Biswas positively regaled all with his silver tongue carrying us off in all sorts of odd directions of exploration and query, for all sorts of odd reasons and rationales, even having me, and god knows how many others, laugh myself to tears along the way at his brazenly spunky and hilariously spoofy little old 'Zero-Genie' movie, of flight and also simulated flight, in a Russian Vomit Comet.
Day-2b: The second evening of performances; a veritable feast that brought deep traditions into airily experimental symbioses with various young and old technologies. Aparna again kicked this off, but this time, she began singing to the accompaniment of Curtis Bahn's special software; and then also with Curtis himself, and his experimentally expanding sitar; followed in by Lawrence too, who carried off all sorts of sounds along the way, on all sorts of amazing different journeys; with Ansuman popping in and out every now and again, twanging a sarod here, beating tablas there, blowing a bamboo fife, tinkling a toy xylophone, and eventually even bursting into a string of bubbling Bengali babble-rap and neo-vocal-percussion.
This was about experimentation at the edge, sometimes teetering over into miscues and misconnections, but just as often also conjuring beautiful glimpses of wonderful new ways forward over wonderful new horizons.
Day-3a: Still the unseasonally beautiful light showers and breezes! Still the tight profile of participants and an audience committed jointly to making the very most of the beautiful magic of having each other to themselves for another full day.
The unaccompanied screenings again crank up into life in the rooftop conference room. This time showcasing Phil Dadson's "Echo-Logo" video of performance art on the Antarctic; Maria Blondeel's light-to-sound video experiment; Jeremy Turner's avatar communiqué; The Cologne Online Film Festival #2, entitled "Images vs Music"; Kireet Khurana's "2nz" showreel; Gruppo Sinesttetico's graphic Performance-art video "Censored"; the special selection of Turkish video artworks from NOMAD Project Channel; Juliet Reynold's "A for Autism M for Mouse"; and, Eric Fillion's funky collection of some of the video artworks that he has recently performed live across the western hemisphere as VJ Nokami.
Meanwhile, young Milindo Taid bravely opened up the session of presentations in the auditorium, with deep insights and also questions upon the variable relevance of various technologies across varying circumstances. Which was well received with a genial Q&A before he was done.
Surajit Sarkar also came on along the way, to better explain his peculiar interactive carrom-board installation, exhibited out in the lobby. And to also speak of his traveling carnivals through village India, riding developmental funding and NGOs to locally shoot and review amateur video of local affairs with local communities. I'm afraid that I make, and made, no secret of being personally very ambiguous, even suspicious, about such 'interventions' by the Non-Governed Sector into hearty communities that may perhaps be just a tad technologically behind the more privileged amongst us, but that's just me, and the baggage of my personal history. Almost everyone else loved it all, almost unconditionally.
And so too it seemed to be with the silver-tongued Ansuman, who arose again by special request from somewhere to carry forward some more of his performative discourse, hemming and hawing the way most handsomely, and sometimes it seemed to me just very adroitly abstrusely. Good stuff, but I think I need to properly look this chap up and down some more, partly because I'd love to have some of his real skills for myself. In fact, he's so good that I'm not absolutely sure that I've not just hallucinated a single presentation by the man into two, right here, right now~:o)
Hardeep Singh Gill was obviously a lot more transparent, except in that some good people might have thought it to be implicit that we endorse anything and everything that we invite into anything and everything that we do. In the event however, Hardeep most excellently "represented" the burgeoning sector of e-Creative education in this country, and anyone could have taken any of many different things away from the table on that. In fact, a couple of other presenters actually did visit Hardeep's academy sometime later, to have themselves an up close look, and to also run an informal workshop with the students. And, almost everyone certainly seemed to enjoy the few public-awareness works by his students that he shared with us all.
But then, things began to run a bit deeper.
Sheldon Brown's "The Scalable City v2.0" was set up in the auditorium this time, through the lunch-break. And then, when he came on to speak of it all in time, games were no longer just games any more. Suddenly, we were looking at a rainbow of possible purposes, intents, explorations, experiments, developments and even pure intellectual enquiry, all radiating in and out of an apparently simple sort of game, with otherwise no clearly apparent direction, no clearly apparent purpose, no clearly apparent intent. And, through it all did nevertheless also run that naked exposition of how efficiently humankind can now colonize our entire little planet, like an endlessly self-multiplying and evermore voracious consumptive disease upon it.
So, a good thing that Galit Eilat followed in upon this, in her trademark guerilla-black outfit, tucked into her trademark slick black boots, the steely glint of her eyes set firmly upon empowering, showcasing and otherwise involving herself and her institution with some pretty incredible creative-activist and other eCreative projects and works, in, and from, Israel, the Middle East and the EU; some of it so straightforward, such as the balloon as experimental musical instrument; but some of it also so much more specifically located and complex, as with the border-video connects and disconnects.
And then, what better than to have the digital-still-image spoken for by John and Margie Labadie, after all of the hours of discourse over so many other seemingly so much more complex and deep matters, through all of which the actual printed still-images of the exhibition that we had all put up together hung mute right outside the auditorium? Ah! Good to remember the noble provenance of the created still-image as having so emblematically hallmarked almost all of humankind's evolution as a sentient species across millennia. Obviously not the sort of stuff to just lay down and die at the emergence of simple new medias, modifications, advancements and expanded practice along the way. Instead, as borne out by history, and even pre-history and John and Margie in this case, it just keeps getting better!
Day-3b: The final set of evening performances, Ashim Ghosh going first, with a bit of David Castelino, and a lot of India, in all sorts of images and song. Smooth as silk, as always from Ashim. A perfect fit for any of many possible situations. And yet, less than what he had planned for, and prepared for, along with a brilliant dancer, who eventually had to back out, for extraneous reasons.
And then came the last act of CeC & CaC 2007, a performance that I'd especially been looking forward to witnessing for quite awhile, partly because I knew next to nothing of what to expect.
A work-in-progress, premiering with us after three months of close work upon it, as well as several years of associated work behind it, between the partners: Martin Gotfrit doing guitars and live-audio-processing; Kenneth Newby doing violins and live-audio-processing; Aleksandra Dulic doing animations and live-video-processing. A lot of Max/Msp again, but a lot of it very subtle indeed, and finally also with young Jitter, to yield deceptively simple soundscapes and sound-phrases, so carefully structured and so meticulously delivered, along with deceptively simple animations, also so carefully structured, and so meticulously driven in sympathetic concert with the rest. No wonder they call it 'Computational Poetics'.
And again, this too was marked by that deep and open sharing that has become such a treasure for me from every CeC & CaC, and every part of every CeC & CaC.
This is what it is all about.
And what we are looking at from here is what more it can all be about, for the benefit of all of us and everyone else too into the future.
~x~
iii. FUTURE VIEW
What we seem to have to build upon going forward seems to remain little more than just the continuing trust and endorsement of a reasonably vast and continually growing circle of fascinating eCreative Practitioners of all sorts, as friends and associates on these sorts of works that we do.
And, that's profoundly firm bedrock in my book ~ even as one looks directly into the indifferent eyes of the firing-squad that the future sometimes looks to be in this regard.
What is of course critically necessary is that this has to soon begin to grow beyond being about just me at the centre. I am much too much of an odd sort, and weighed down too with too many chips on my shoulders.
So, it's a good thing that we've made that small breakthrough into interesting segments of the community of creative students and young adults here in Delhi. And its another good thing too that we are welcoming aboard a young lady-designer as a Trustee of The AeA, who will hopefully be quite active in driving the work we set out to do, as the beginnings of a sort of successor generation.
Meanwhile, The AeA will be three years old by about the time that we--hopefully--do CeC & CaC again next year. Which apparently means, to some degree, that we might be taken a bit more seriously in certain hallowed quarters, which might in turn lead to some sorts of support, or concessions, towards consolidation.
What would I shoot for?
Basically just a good space in a good place:
[a] to allow development of some modest physical infrastructure into the future, so as to be able to grow for itself a robust, healthy, multifaceted and self-sustainable role in society.
[b] to properly store our beautiful growing archives of original received CDs, DVDs and Books in some easily accessible manner, so as to be of ongoing use to others, and also so as to thereby drive further growth, by inspiring more eCreative Practitioners from around the world to also archive works with us, and thereby share them safely through us with others
[c] to set up a basic media-lab to be used internally, and also be shared occasionally with external practitioners and projects, on a case-by-case basis
[d] to set up a basic workshop (wood, metal, plastic, electronics, etc.) to be used internally, and also be shared occasionally with external practitioners and projects, on a case-by-case basis
[e] to allow for a few good folks to make simple good careers from nurturing, evolving and growing what we do, towards good general purpose into the future
And, as I'd made clear in my curator's report last time, we'd be happy to personally share in investing upon such a thing even with others, and this has been a target awhile.
So, let's see.
~x~
iv. THANKS
My Co-curators, Lawrence Casserley, Curtis Bahn, Milindo Taid and Martin Gotfrit, for
having the courage to tie their outstanding long careers to an uncertain new idea and
enterprise
Our other participants, for believing, and also the institutions and individuals that actually
supported the participation of some of them
Lalsawmliani "Teteii" Tochhawng and her colleagues in India International Centre, for
their continued faith and support
Poonam, my wife, for taking care of so much that I had to let go
Bacchus, my son, for sort of being there for me on this, especially when it counted
Tim Calonious for being rock
Suresh Pal and his associates in IIC, for always being such a firm, reliable and amiable foundation to build upon
Tina Rajan, for coming through with critical support at a critical time
Rishab Parmar, Kamal Chawla and their very special friends, for hosting the unaccompanied screenings almost entirely on their own; for their explicit enthusiasm; and for their implicit endorsement
Ram Bahadur and Deepak Thapa, for backup all along the way
And those unnamed here.
~x~
Shankar Barua
Event-Director, CeC & CaC 2007
[March 15, 2007]
:: Other Reactions ::
~ >> thanks! it was a great party
>> You gathered an amazing group of people. I certainly felt a lot of inspiration and gained a lot of knowledge
>> let's start planning for next year
>> Let's get planning for next year immediately! I am already thinking of more people I'd like to invite from both ___ and ___
>> I truly hope we can return for CeC&CaC #3 and that we can assist in any way possible to create another wonderful meeting
>> Thank you very much for your generous hospitality and most stimulating conference
>> You brought amazing people together
>> Let us inflate this balloon!
>> it was a pleasure to be at the conference... and i hope some of the conversations that started will continue
>> It's nice to have such a personality at the centre of CeC & CaC
>> I wonder if we could begin to conspire to set up an exchange in this direction?
>> It was an honour to find ourselves within a community of such distinction within the Indian cultural community
>> We arrived safely back to _____ very stimulated from the wonderful gathering we were a part of
>> This is worth exploring from this end
>> We hope that the strong connections we made through CeC$CaC will fruitfully turn into new collaborations
>> I'm really glad I made it in person - partly because I'm not sure what I would have made of it if I'd only read your report...
>> On Monday evening I had a good talk with ____, who was very enthusiastic about continuing and growing the event
>> I would be interested to receive any proceedings that came out of this event
>> The pleasure was all ours
>> CeC & CaC 2007 was a remarkable event.... made so, not the least, by your own constant attention to keeping the participants awake and provoked. Thank you for that
>> The work that u r doing is really valuable and I am sure sooner or later the government will come through and upstream these innovative technologies into the system
>> I found myself reminded constantly of my own place in a world with many radically varying issues and priorities
>> I'm hoping that the idea and action of the network can continue to evolve
>> Please don't stop
>> Looking forward to deepening the community
>> I was delighted to be part of this marvellous conference
>> Thank you for your vision, and for your tenacity in realizing it
>> Thank you so very much for your warm and generous hospilaity and for hosting a most stimulating conclave/carnival/gathering
>> It was totally worth my while. A wonderful experience. And it feels like only a beginning
>> Keep well and keep dreaming...
>> I hope our working relationship and our friendship goes from strength to strength
>> the grounding in social action that so many presentations represented was truly inspirational
>> That is the reason for bringing a community together in the way that you have - so that we can be peer mentors
>> Language fails at moments like this...
>> The community of artists, thinkers, scientists and philosophers you assembled had a delicious number of synergies and I found myself, early on during the first CaC event on Friday, feeling among a community of like-minds and hearts. Not to imply a homogeneity to the cast of characters assembled!
>> I am looking at many new opportunities and collaborative relationships that I think will grow out of the environment you created
>> I look forward to lots more with you
>> It was a pleasure being at the CeC and Cac although I felt like a misfit in a brilliant and experimental group
>> The more I think of it, the more I am convinced your "circus" is an important node in the communication that nurtures the work we all pursue
>> I will try and have art and design education spaces in India in the groove for the next iteration of the CeC and CaC , whenever it unfolds
>> Anyway it was a wonderful experience all round and I'm particularly glad to have found a robust colleague and inspiring friend in your good self
>> I really enjoyed hanging out with you (.. and I with you~:o)
~x~
~ >> thanks! it was a great party
>> You gathered an amazing group of people. I certainly felt a lot of inspiration and gained a lot of knowledge
>> let's start planning for next year
>> Let's get planning for next year immediately! I am already thinking of more people I'd like to invite from both ___ and ___
>> I truly hope we can return for CeC&CaC #3 and that we can assist in any way possible to create another wonderful meeting
>> Thank you very much for your generous hospitality and most stimulating conference
>> You brought amazing people together
>> Let us inflate this balloon!
>> it was a pleasure to be at the conference... and i hope some of the conversations that started will continue
>> It's nice to have such a personality at the centre of CeC & CaC
>> I wonder if we could begin to conspire to set up an exchange in this direction?
>> It was an honour to find ourselves within a community of such distinction within the Indian cultural community
>> We arrived safely back to _____ very stimulated from the wonderful gathering we were a part of
>> This is worth exploring from this end
>> We hope that the strong connections we made through CeC$CaC will fruitfully turn into new collaborations
>> I'm really glad I made it in person - partly because I'm not sure what I would have made of it if I'd only read your report...
>> On Monday evening I had a good talk with ____, who was very enthusiastic about continuing and growing the event
>> I would be interested to receive any proceedings that came out of this event
>> The pleasure was all ours
>> CeC & CaC 2007 was a remarkable event.... made so, not the least, by your own constant attention to keeping the participants awake and provoked. Thank you for that
>> The work that u r doing is really valuable and I am sure sooner or later the government will come through and upstream these innovative technologies into the system
>> I found myself reminded constantly of my own place in a world with many radically varying issues and priorities
>> I'm hoping that the idea and action of the network can continue to evolve
>> Please don't stop
>> Looking forward to deepening the community
>> I was delighted to be part of this marvellous conference
>> Thank you for your vision, and for your tenacity in realizing it
>> Thank you so very much for your warm and generous hospilaity and for hosting a most stimulating conclave/carnival/gathering
>> It was totally worth my while. A wonderful experience. And it feels like only a beginning
>> Keep well and keep dreaming...
>> I hope our working relationship and our friendship goes from strength to strength
>> the grounding in social action that so many presentations represented was truly inspirational
>> That is the reason for bringing a community together in the way that you have - so that we can be peer mentors
>> Language fails at moments like this...
>> The community of artists, thinkers, scientists and philosophers you assembled had a delicious number of synergies and I found myself, early on during the first CaC event on Friday, feeling among a community of like-minds and hearts. Not to imply a homogeneity to the cast of characters assembled!
>> I am looking at many new opportunities and collaborative relationships that I think will grow out of the environment you created
>> I look forward to lots more with you
>> It was a pleasure being at the CeC and Cac although I felt like a misfit in a brilliant and experimental group
>> The more I think of it, the more I am convinced your "circus" is an important node in the communication that nurtures the work we all pursue
>> I will try and have art and design education spaces in India in the groove for the next iteration of the CeC and CaC , whenever it unfolds
>> Anyway it was a wonderful experience all round and I'm particularly glad to have found a robust colleague and inspiring friend in your good self
>> I really enjoyed hanging out with you (.. and I with you~:o)
~x~
Organizers
~.~
The Academy of Electronic Arts was at the time a Public Benefit Trust that serves as a learning, sharing, mentoring, networking, benchmarking, empowering and broadly inclusive, but non-educational, institution.
Event-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
Infrastructure & Technical: Suresh Pal & the IIC Crew
---------------------------
Co-Curatorial & Advisory
Lawrence Casserley
Festival Director, Eye Music Trust, London, UK. Formerly Professor-in-Charge of Studies & Advisor for Electroacoustic Music, Royal College of Music, London, UK
Curtis Bahn
Director, iEAR Studios & Assoc. Prof. of Computer Music Composition and Performance, Integrated Electronic Arts Program, iEAR Studios, Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, New York, USA
Martin Gotfrit
Director, School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Milindo Taid
Faculty of Communications Design, Maeer MIT's Institute of Design, Pune/India
~.~
The Academy of Electronic Arts was at the time a Public Benefit Trust that serves as a learning, sharing, mentoring, networking, benchmarking, empowering and broadly inclusive, but non-educational, institution.
Event-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
Infrastructure & Technical: Suresh Pal & the IIC Crew
---------------------------
Co-Curatorial & Advisory
Lawrence Casserley
Festival Director, Eye Music Trust, London, UK. Formerly Professor-in-Charge of Studies & Advisor for Electroacoustic Music, Royal College of Music, London, UK
Curtis Bahn
Director, iEAR Studios & Assoc. Prof. of Computer Music Composition and Performance, Integrated Electronic Arts Program, iEAR Studios, Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, New York, USA
Martin Gotfrit
Director, School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Milindo Taid
Faculty of Communications Design, Maeer MIT's Institute of Design, Pune/India

Supporting Partner
CeC & CaC 2008
~Public Affairs Management is an independent firm engaged in corporate and institutional diplomacy, global corporate advisory services, and building thought-leadership across a diverse range of stakeholders and individual client mandates, since 1997-- based in New Delhi.
Our business experience and accomplishments range from engaging corporate top-management and community leaders in best business practices and collective-leadership, leveraging strategic associations & partnerships for enriching global exchange of ideas and benchmarking, and knowledge generation to support innovative research --for delivering best rewards to business and society.
CeC & CaC 2008
~Public Affairs Management is an independent firm engaged in corporate and institutional diplomacy, global corporate advisory services, and building thought-leadership across a diverse range of stakeholders and individual client mandates, since 1997-- based in New Delhi.
Our business experience and accomplishments range from engaging corporate top-management and community leaders in best business practices and collective-leadership, leveraging strategic associations & partnerships for enriching global exchange of ideas and benchmarking, and knowledge generation to support innovative research --for delivering best rewards to business and society.
:: Participant Support ::
Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada
Simon Fraser University
Bandish ~ The School of Music
The Digital Academy at University of North Carolina Pembroke
CRCA, Calit2 and the EGL at University of California San Diego
Cultural Division, Embassy of Israel in India
Maeer MIT's Institute of Design
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada
Simon Fraser University
Bandish ~ The School of Music
The Digital Academy at University of North Carolina Pembroke
CRCA, Calit2 and the EGL at University of California San Diego
Cultural Division, Embassy of Israel in India
Maeer MIT's Institute of Design
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute