The Media Lab: News & Events

This workshop was conducted by 3 legal experts and media artists, Namita Malhotra (Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore), Lawrence Liang (Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore) and Shaina Anand (Independent Media Artist, Mumbai). The workshop coordinator was Dr. Subhajit Chatterjee, Lecturer, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University.

The inaugural speech was given by Dr. Moinak Biswas, Head, Dept. of Film Studies and Coordinator, The Media Lab. He began by introducing the aims, methods and practices that constitute the Media Lab as a unique space facilitating research and initiation into the growing practical interface between academics, digital media and art practices.

The series of lectures, screenings and demonstrations that introduced the field and emerging debates to the participants were conducted by Namita Malhotra. Her discussion opened up a series of pertinent issues informing contemporary debates around Law and the Image , broadly around three basic paradigms : Laws regarding images, creation of the “Law” through the image and legal readings of Images. The following two sessions on September 17 and 18 were oriented around a set of readings that addressed the significant issue of digital reproduction and copy culture. The discussion was set forth by a couple of short screenings such as Copy Shop (Virgil Widrich, 2001) which demonstrated how media artistes and filmmakers themselves were beginning to confront the issues of duplication and its various cultural ramifications thereby driving media scholars to engage with such debates. The ongoing lectures were followed on September 19 by the screening of a recent film by popular artiste Michel Gondry (Be Kind, Rewind, 2008), which in a humorous vein dealt with some of the significant debates raised in the earlier workshop interactions. Sessions on September 21^st consisted of a set of screenings and presentations curated by Namita in order to introduce the range of critical debates around the issue of media surveillance in its numerous forms. The screenings included short experimental films which utilized modern survelliance technologies to chart personal narratives. At the other end of the spectrum were recent documentary projects from India like The Great Indian School Show (Avinash Deshpande, 2006), which presented a lurid yet sensitive account of various political appropriations of surveillance technologies at regional levels. Sessions held at the Vivekanda Hall on September 22 and 23 were open sessions conducted respectively by Shaina Anand and Lawrence Liang. Anand’s interactive talk and audio-visual presentation titled ‘Surveillance and Tactical Media’ centred around the problematic issues raised by the rising network of surveillance technologies that are gradually penetrating various aspects of the global citizen’s public and private lives.

Lawrence Liang’s presentation in the next session titled ‘Legal Imaginations: Interfaces of Law and Cinema in India’ focused on the dynamic and often astounding relationships between world of legal theory and film theory. His presentation consisted of two parts–Firstly it sought to examine the social life of law in images to explore how the presence of questions of law and justice creates an idea of a cinematic jurisprudence which is unique and different from the jurisprudence of legal theory. The second part of the presentation looked at how the law makes sense of cinema as a legal object, and covered issues of censorship, spatial regulation and protection of film as property. He argued for an approach that could enable us to take law and culture more seriously as a critical area bridging the divide between legal theory and film studies.

The sessions on the following two days were conducted by Namita and focused on the practical projects by various artists in the field. Namitha introduced the participants to recent projects conducted by the Altenative Law Forum in the form of remixes, collages or digital interfaces (Kaun Mille Dekho Kissko, 2003; Now Showing, The Cinematograph Act, 1952) which were designed as critical interventions into the dominant representational modes in popular entertainment and academic enquiry. The next day was utilized in garhering and designing the materials and props as well as planting the installation object at relevant sites including a classroom door and a corridor in the vicinity of the Department. The prop consisted of a placard board and a poster announcing surveillance of the surrounding area designed to mimic the texture and colour scheme utilized by local University authtorities. The concluding day of the workshop began with an acknowledgment of the signboards as a part of installation project and the session in which all the participants along with the  resource persons shared their individual experiences on the workshop and its outputs. The workshop concluded with handing out of certificates to participants by Rimi B. Chatterjee, novelist and teacher of English at Jadavpur University.

This workshop was conducted by Abhijit Gupta, Artist, Abhik Mukhopadhyay, Cinematographer and Filmmaker, and Sanjeet Chowdhury, Filmmaker, Media Artist. The coordinator of the workshop was Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee, Joint Coordinator of the Lab. Supratim Roy and Bhagirath Halder, members of the Media Lab team, were technical assistants for the workshop.

The introduction of the artists was followed by the self-introduction of the participants- among them were  university teachers, writers and ‘graphic’ story-tellers, research students, lyricists, video artists, painters, and students from various institutions.

During the introduction, Sanjeet Chowdhury suggested that defining video art/digital art is difficult as it shifts with space and time. As a matter of fact, ‘change’ is the pulse of digital art, as it keeps reinventing itself. Madhuja Mukerjee discussed the day-to-day plan of the workshop and each participant was encouraged to produce their own digital work. Thereafter, the participants and the artists were taken to the screenings of the ‘40 years Retrospective of Video art/Digital art from Germany’ at Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta.

‘Understanding digital art’ was the primary topic of discussion on the second day of workshop. One of the suggestions was: ‘digital art’ is a juxtaposition of images on different planes and of different shapes or sizes to generate a visual experience, rather than necessarily a meaning-generating process. Spontaneity and abstraction of images are central to digital art, as when the mode of ‘projection’ itself becomes part of an art work. Besides projection, framing and materiality are facets which digital art share with cinema’. The question that came up  was ‘why art on digital media’? It was speculated that, ‘digital art de-familiarizes the everyday, and re-familiarizes the unseen’. Digital art, in a manner of speaking, is experiential rather than attempting to be communicative.

Next, screenings of digital films/art works by the Eclectic Crew (a group to which the experts belonged) was held to familiarize the participants the works of local artists: Abhijit Gupta’s Encounter, Daydream, Sanjeet Chowdhury’s Painter’s Equilibrium, One Day in the Life of Mr. Sil and Odyssey by Abhik Mukhopadyay. The experts spoke in detail how they had planned, scripted and executed their works.

Eminent artist, Chhatrapati Dutta, was special guest next day, and his digital art projects, Iconoclash, and Bone Mill Tales were among other works that were screened and discussed. This was also the day when the participants presented their ideas, which were subsequently analyzed by the experts.

The remaining 2 days of the week were utilized on developing ideas, scripting, formation of groups and charting shooting and editing schedules. The participants discussed their ideas individually with the experts. 

On the subsequent days the workshop moved beyond the Media Lab, and the participants were busy shooting/collecting images for their digital films/art work. While some of the participants used their own cameras (including handycams as well as HDV cameras), most of them worked with the Media Lab equipment, in presence of the senior artists, who at times helped the inexperienced participants with shot-taking etc. The editing was planned meticulously to finish all projects within working hours.

Through the mad rush hours, last minute corrections, and individual disagreements, eventually the final presentations emerged. Among the works that were created by the participants and screened on the final day were the ‘digital soundscape of the city’ put together by Subham Roy Choudhury, digital documentation of migrant labour at construction sites put together by Subhodeep Roy Choudhuri and Sheersha Mukherjee, ‘Infusion’ by Taniya and Arindam, digital work that juxtaposed work in progress on clay idols with advertisement slogans by Dipanwita, collage of filmic and commercial images in ‘All Fall Down’ by Raja Alam and Sambit Basu, ‘Retake’ showing the image of a woman intercepting well-known cinematic images of Calcutta by Madhuja Mukherjee and Epsita Haldar, a critical take on office space, the endless process of scanning texts and images by Spandana.

The final discussions dealt with the appraisals of the participants’ projects. An idea that came around was whether a ‘soundtrack’ can be defined as a ‘visual track’. The works were also analyzed on the basis of the impact of the ‘dead’ frames which could mar the flow of the films. The question of humour was another point of discussion as the experts gave their opinions on the digital works.

The Media Lab, in collaboration with the School of Media, Communication and Culture (SMCC), Jadavpur University, and Institute for Open Technology and Applications (IOTA), West Bengal, organized a day-long workshop on ‘Uses of Free and Open Source Software’ on Saturday, 9th of August, 2008, at Anita Banerjee Memorial Hall, Jadavpur University. IOTA provided the necessary funding and expertise for the workshop.

The programme was exclusively designed for the teachers and scholars of the Arts faculty of Jadavpur University. Forty Three participants attended the workshop. Prof. Sankar Kumar Sen, President of IOTA and formerly Vice-Chancellor of Jadavpur University, inaugurated the workshop after the welcome address by Prof. Nilanjana Gupta, Director of the School. Prof. Sen emphasized the efficacy of Free and Open source Software (FOSS) in the Indian context in his inaugural speech.

In the technical session, teachers from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Jadavpur University made presentations on various issues. Prof. Pradip Kr. Das made an insightful presentation on the idea of FOSS with particular reference to its social role. Dr. Sarbani Roy introduced the various aspects of the LINUX operating system and Chandreyee Chowdhury discussed aspects of OpenOffice. Web applications and Multimedia applications were demonstrated by Mridul Sankar Barik. Mat3 Impex, an organization for promotion of FOSS in Calcutta, made a presentation on Bangla Linux. Participants took an active part in the workshop with their queries and observations. The workshop ended with vote of thanks by Abhijit Roy, coordinator of the workshop and Joint Coordinator of The Media Lab.