The Botanical Imagination

Published on September 25, 2020

It is a truth now universally acknowledged, not least in recent articles in The Guardian and the BBC that the extinction of plants spells “bad news for all species,” and is being rapidly exacerbated by human destruction of the natural world. According to Dr Rob Salguero-Gómez from the University of Oxford, plants provide us with […]

Artificial Intelligence (AI): The pathway to immortality or extinction?

Published on July 5, 2020

A still from Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1927)Often the biggest challenge for any filmmaker trying to tell a story with an AI character as its central focus is to endow that character with basic human traits, whether good or evil. This is important to essentially make the character relatable to a human audience. Just think […]

Art and Technology | Impact on artist practices at the turn of the 21st century in India

Published on November 23, 2019

In the ‘90s India witnessed a tectonic shift when erstwhile finance minister Manmohan Singh’s liberalization policies transitioned India into a free market economy, with increased foreign direct investment. The percolation of technology seeped through the country’s (primarily urban) landscape, with internet being made publicly available in 1995 (Mint 2015) and 4G in 2010 (Ghosh and Mishra […]

An Archaeology of Silence: The Aniconic worlds of Mrinalini Mukherjee

Published on October 22, 2019

Installation view of Phenomenal Nature, Mrinalini Mukherjee at The Met Breuer, 2019. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Our job is to make the Anthropocene as short/thin as possible and to cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that can replenish refuge”. — Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”, […]

Archive Fever: From Celluloid to Digital Body

Published on September 2, 2019

The silver screen—from the liquidated remains of the celluloid of cinema’s past—beckons us to consider the archival form through a slew of concerns that inform related fields of art and conservation. Celluloid film was the original vessel for photography and cinema; a living, breathing medium—one that deteriorates with every viewing. Celluloid is almost organic through […]

REQUIEM FOR THE FUTURE

Published on August 2, 2019

In May 1942, Japan dropped the first bomb on Imphal, the capital of the then Princely state of Manipur. The second bomb followed within the week. The Allied British campaign against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was bolstered by the military, industrial and financial facilitation provided by colonized India.1 The subcontinent served as a base […]

The Mythos of Artificial Intelligence

Published on July 19, 2019

From the early emergence of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries the romantic notions of artificial intelligence and robotics have left an impression upon the fanciful imaginations of the human mind, left to be expressed through our creativity. Whether it was H.G. Well’s canonical Time Machine and War of the Worlds or […]

WRITE | ART | CONNECT

Published on May 28, 2019

Ex Natura July – October 2019 In 2010, Rohini Devasher stood atop Mount Saraswati to peer into an infinite cosmos at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Ladakh. Devasher’s journey to significant astronomical sites was part of her artistic investigation into the world above the stratosphere, and the communities on ground—amateur and expert—that study it. Using […]