In Kerala, the boundaries between rural and urban life are often blurred when it comes to visible cultural patterns and lifestyles. The rich, the poor, the villager, or the urbane—everybody seems to agree with and adapt to a range of traditional beliefs and practices. This link between the past and the present often creates a clash between the mythical and the rational. Many manifestations of such a distinct culture can be seen in the objects of day-to-day life, festival iconography, and architecture. This research and documentation project is a photographic compilation of some of those objects and icons, looking at them from inside their own cultural fabric.

Typeface design in Indian language scripts still suffers from the absence of typefaces, which are tailor-cut for specific needs. There is a complete lack of awareness of the needs of well-designed typefaces that meet both the requirements of digital technology and the functional requirements of typefaces.

Kerala State, which boasts a rich literary tradition and the most popular publications in the country, also suffers from mediocre design standards when it comes to typefaces. With a day-by-day growing publication industry and information portals from the state, the demand for typefaces that meet functional and technical aspects of typography is more than ever.

This project studies the existing typefaces in Malayalam, the script from Kerala, in the contexts of usage, visual quality, and technology in the publication industry. These studies identified the need for a display/byline typeface for standard publication needs. Thus, a typeface family named IDC Vani, consisting of five typefaces in true type and postscript formats, has been designed. A demonstration of various applications of the typeface and a stylebook featuring the guidelines for usage of the IDC Vani family also formed part of the final output.

Multimedia-enhanced children's games and storybooks are available in plenty these days. Most of them, in the process of achieving a great deal of interactive entertainment and powerful imagery, fail to understand a child's way of thinking and their creative strength in story telling. In addition, children of today are being exposed to and attracted to violent arcade games and entertainment concepts that fall short of any good virtues. This project is the result of a study of South India's traditional puppetry, its story-telling methodology, and its subsequent application in developing a multimedia story-telling/creating application that is interactive, giving the child options to create his own characters and stories. Further, it also allows for forming an active team and enacting a play with the characters and stories they make. Thus, integrating a great source of learning from traditional visual forms and developing a highly participatory and hence dynamic play environment, 'Puppettooner'—the multimedia application provides 'edutainment' rather than just entertainment.

Nigel J. T. Thomas describes mental imagery informally as 'seeing in the minds eye', ' visualization and is a quasi-perceptual experience; it significantly resembles perceptual experience but occurs in the absence of the appropriate perceptual stimuli. The focus of the research started with the goal of understanding mental imagery in the field of design. This experiment is a continuation of the studies of mental imagery in the architectural design process. The earlier experiments attempted to study the nature of mental imagery in the mind of the architect during the design process and the subsequent sharing of the same with a co-architect. In this experiment, the focus would be on the issues that arise in a team while sharing mental imagery.

JadooWorks is a Bangalore-based animation company. With a strength of about 150 people, the company does commercials for Indian television, but the focus has been on production work for the US and French markets. The production unit has two studio divisions for 2-D and 3-D animations, respectively. It also has a gaming unit. During the period of training, the production processes in animation were studied. Hands-on experience with some production techniques was attempted. Some of the training assignments developed by the company were attempted for a better and quicker understanding of concepts.

Every city has an identity. This identity is built over a period of time. It is built on the city’s culture, architecture, environment, arts, crafts, and lifestyle of the people. Heritage places are important reminders of where we have come from, and each generation has a responsibility to future generations to protect those places. Built heritage convinces us that the past really happened and gives communities links with attitudes and values that have shaped their environment.

Many times, we take for granted what we see around us and fail to appreciate its value until it is too late. With specific reference to our past and the reminders of it, i.e., our heritage, it has been seen that negligence and insensitivity have led to the erosion of many of its valuable components. A simple form of awareness for this purpose is explored in this project. Introducing heritage components in their built form to a person by taking him for a walk.

The project needed an understanding of the components involved before presenting them to the target audience. The city of Pune presented some problems in terms of its heritage buildings being scattered and not confined to one area. The issues involved identifying the building amidst its new surroundings and retaining the interest of the target audience during the walk. Information had to be presented in such a manner so as to locate the building easily, making the experience of the walk an engaging one. The project provided an opportunity to interact with the INTACH Pune chapter and understand how they had dealt with the same problem.

In India, since ancient times, there have always been explanations about the sun's activities in the fields of astronomy, philosophy, religion, cultural traditions, and rituals. A brief study of these subjects proves the depth to which people have given meaning to these phenomena occurring in their everyday lives.

Aditya, the Sun in Indian thought, is a documentation of the influences of the Sun in the daily lives of the people in India and how they have perceived, understood, and explained these influences. This fascinating subject of documenting the sun has not been attempted before on these lines and will prove to be an awakening to the role played by this Supreme Force, which has been forgotten in many aspects.

An exhibition has been visualised to present this documentation to the general public. The presentation method attempts at the ‘experience’ approach in a manner that would involve the participation of the visitors. While this would by no means make understanding concepts simpler, it would also help me explore better ways of presenting information to a larger target audience.

The Urban Opportunity Project, a research initiative of the Institute of Design at IIT Chicago, has provided the scope for adopting a collaborative approach of working between ID Chicago, IIT Bombay, and non-governmental organisations like the Society for Human and Environmental Development (S.H.E.D.) in Mumbai. This collaborative approach has enabled the acquisition of true and valuable insights on the livelihoods in city slums. Dharavi was taken as a specimen for the study.

The Society for Human and Environmental Development (SHED) was formed in October 1982 with the prime objective of improving the outlook and living conditions of those living in slums and rural areas, especially tribal areas. At present, the society is working in the major slums of Mumbai—Dharavi, Jogeshwari (East), Sagbaug, and Kalina—and also in a village and 21 tribal hamlets of Saphale Block and Palghar Taluka in Thane district.

Dreams inspire people to live and then strive towards fulfilling them. Biji is almost at the sunset of her life. As a child, then a woman, a wife, and a mother, she has had her own dreams and expectations.

Dreams inspire people to live and then strive towards fulfilling them. Biji is almost at the sunset of her life. As a child, then a woman, a wife, and a mother, she has had her own dreams and expectations.

The aim of the project was to collect information about the history of special effects in the context of Indian cinema. A need to document the history of special effects is observed. The Indian filmmaker has been content with experimenting with topics and ideas, but the efforts by these pioneers, the techniques used, and the social implications of the choice of subject have not been steadily recorded in a single place. The project was to have an output that would give an overview of the factors contributing to the advent of special effects in Indian cinema. Due to time constraints, the research has been limited to the mythological film genre, which was the first genre to grace the Indian film scene and relied heavily on special effects for storytelling. Similar research could be carried out for the entire genre that followed.

The mission of IITB Sports will be to bring students together in activities that promote healthy lifestyles, enhance a sense of community and belonging, encourage the pursuit of excellence in a spirit of productive cooperation, foster responsible behaviour, and foster growth in leadership and teamwork skills. Fulfilment of this mission will ensure the all-round development of the students - the leaders of tomorrow.

The project was to design the packaging for a set of educational kits designed by Navnirmiti, an organisation dedicated to the universalization of learning science and math. The educational kit contains six games that differ in their identity as a family and lack branding. They were also lacking in their attempt to reach the home sector and were limiting themselves to the dissemination of these kits in the school areas where students could access them for a limited period of the school day. The project aimed to build an identity for the kit through packaging design, communicate the potential of the games, and thereby increase their reach in the home sector.

The project aims at designing a visual system for a set of books on a subject, with each book exploring a different aspect of the subject. This is a set of books on Marathi poetry, compiling the works of six poets with different styles of writing poetry. The set was created with the objective of system design in mind, with an exploration of design and typography. The set overall expresses the marathiness and poetic quality of the content. Variations in the system in terms of grid, typography, and overall look allow individual books to express their own content while still being part of the set.

Ram Mohan the legend of Indian Animation has walked for fifty years in the animation industry. Being the doyen of the industry, he has witnessed the history of animation in India. He has a wide spectrum of work in the areas of 2D classical animation, 3D and CGI, cinema, and live action. He is also credited with creating a whole generation of modern animators in India. But to date, there has not been any kind of documentation or collection of his works. So the project aims to find out more about the animator, his back story, and career, collect his works, and make a chronology of them. This project will help future design students who want to study Ram Mohan as an animator, his method of working, style, and vision.

The world of motion graphics has always moved me but remained unknown; hence, I wanted to explore it. Motion graphics is time-dependent; hence, its beauty lies in the pace, force, and energy at which different things occur. Every element has its own growth cycle (in its seed), which is evident over the course of time. I wanted to explore this concept in design.

The order of growth unfolds in nature. Unfolding is a process that occurs in the growth programme of every living organism. Life unfolds every moment and in every aspect from the beginning to the end. Unfolding bears all the changes with the increasing complexity of growth. Hence, a tender young leaf of a plant looks very different from that of a mature leaf. This metaphor of unfolding happens in our lives as well; life unfolds with different seasons. Seasons unfold with days unfolding. Every day unfolds differently with changing times, events, moods, and people. A person unfolds with different happenings and stories around him. Thus lies the beauty of unfolding.

It is ultimately the past that creates the present. This project is aimed at understanding the story of Indian animation. Initially, animation in India was the result of experiments by Indian film makers who were inspired by Disney. After independence, it was mainly the government that started to encourage animation through the Films Division. A significant part of this report is dedicated to the detailed study of animation films made by the state-funded Films Division. Especially the period between 1956 and 1969 is of significant importance since some of India's best-known animators worked in the Films division during this time. The earliest attempts at animation were the outcome of experimentation by the founders of Indian cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke, who used time-lapse photography due to a shortage of films. Subsequently, other animation films inspired by Disney's animation films were being made at periodic intervals until the end of British rule in 1947.

The Films Division was established in 1948 for the production of documentaries and news reels. An animation film called The War That Never Ends was made in 1949 by British animator Myna Johnson, with J. S. Bhownagary serving as the script writer. The Cartoon Film Unit (CFU) was set up at the Films Division in 1955 and, for the first time, received an animation camera under the Indo-American Technical Aid programme, accompanied by the services of Mr. Clair Weeks, a former animator at Disney Studios.

A template is a blank page layout where the kind of information and the placement of information are pre-defined but sufficiently flexible for the end user to modify it according to his needs. A webpage template helps webmasters create and maintain professional-looking websites. The primary task of the webmaster when using a template is to upload information. This project aims at designing a template specifically for engineering colleges, taking into consideration the problems faced by them and their design needs. The deliverables of the project can be used by webmasters at Indian engineering colleges to create and maintain a professional website. Also, the template shall provide screens through which college users, like faculty and students, can manage their content on the site without the help of a webmaster.

Interactive storytelling, a story in which the audience has influence over the narrative, has existed in non-digital variations for thousands of years. In India, respected storytellers in the 'Harikatha' styles have studied the scriptures, literature, languages, classical music, and elements of drama. These storytellers adapt their stories according to the audience, either by their response or by popping questions to keep the audience involved. Theatre, film, and TV can be viewed as steps in the evolution of dramatic language. Interactive drama should be seen as the next evolutionary step. Interactivity helps to create a sense of action and movement, but it should be fundamental to the story, not something trivial and unrelated; otherwise,  the spell of immersion is broken.

The most innovative interactive stories don't try too hard to be innovative. There's simplicity in the presentation, a subtlety in the navigation; it flows smoothly from beginning to end, engaging the user occasionally, not constantly. That's good storytelling. Whenever possible, a story needs to be presented as a vital part of a cultural whole. Folk tales form the unwritten literature (stories, proverbs, riddles, and songs) of a culture. This project was aimed at exploring the possibility of telling such stories in an interactively rich format.

This study attempts to understand the patterns approach for interaction design, tracing its roots to architecture, and looks at how it has been adopted by computer programmers while highlighting the recent interests shown by people from the HCI domain. The paper also tries to establish the merits and limitations of the pattern approach and speculates on the use of patterns to aid the 'expert evaluation' in usability testing. It suggests the use of patterns as a delivery mechanism in place of specifications and the use of interaction design patterns to enrich the project life cycle. With the study of examples from IDC projects and the web, an attempt has been made to suggest how the ‘Patterns approach’ can be used to understand the fields of user interface design and IxD and its design implications.

India is a land of fascinating experiences and exhilarating destinations. A vast country with a history that goes back 5000 years. Its vast geographical diversity, heritage and culture, fairs and festivals, yogic education, varieties of cuisine, and monumental attractions are unparallel to any other country in the world. India has an unlimited variety of innumerable tourist destinations to showcase. But it's not one of the top tourist destinations. Off late, the tourist inflow is registering sturdy growth. To reach out to a larger audience group, a new aggressive integrated (web, print, and TV commercial) campaign 'incredible India' has been launched. As a result, the official tourism website is getting enormous hits but fails to satisfy the users because it fails to provide the required services and information.

In today's context, with large hard discs and network connectivity, we store an enormous number of files on local discs; as a result, maintenance and retrieval become tough. Aggravating the problem, most people have tendencies towards haphazard file management. It becomes practically impossible to locate files when file names or folder locations are forgotten. A variety of user research was done to unearth individuals' habits and tendencies pertaining to file management. A parallel study of current technological trends and research in visualisations was undertaken.

The main file management problems were attributed to the lack of differentiation between folders, not being able to guess the contents of the folder from outside, the necessity to remember accurate folder locations and file names, and the lack of supportive tools. Based on the findings, a conceptual system called ‘viewport’ was developed. It is a recognition-based file system that uses a zoomable interface paradigm for navigation. The system supports a new visualisation system that allows for quick, efficient ways to find a required file and accommodates informal ways of managing files.

Kerala is world-famous for its natural beauty and its vibrant art forms. Kerala was also world-famous many centuries ago for its spices. A time in which pepper was known as the black gold and was worth a king's ransom. The most important of Kerala's ports were in Malabar. Malabar consists of six districts, namely Kozhikode, Tellicherry, Cannanore, Kasaragode, Palghat, and Malappuram, which make up north Kerala. This was where the first European traveller, namely Vasocodi Gama, landed, a few kilometres from Kozhikode, at a place called Kappad.

Malabar is also called the land of the living gods. This is because of the vibrant art form called Theyyam. The coastline is dotted with temples and Kavus, each of which has a festival associated with it. The festivals are social events whereby all the people in proximity to the temple join together and celebrate the festival. When the festive dates are decided, flags are hoisted to inform people about the event. It’s a really colourful spectacle to see the green landscape dotted with vibrant flags, visible from ar away. This study was aimed at understanding the usage, varieties, standards, if any, and meaning of the traditional flags in north Malabar.

The computer has come a long way from its humble beginnings and is now a part of our everyday lives. The coming of the internet was another major factor that made the computer one of the most important tools in the 21st century. The most widespread application on the internet is person-to-person communication. Electronic mail has revolutionised the way humans communicate and thus brought about a new era of faster and more efficient communication. The number of emails sent per year has grown by leaps and bounds with time, as has the underlying technology. The email interface has not been able to keep pace with the advancement of technology. Electronic mail started as text-only communication, but the scenario has changed with the advent of newer technologies and faster communication speeds. Even with the advancement in GUI and faster processing power, the basic structure of any email interface still remains the same.

Communication is one of the most fundamental needs. The new century has brought about a revolution in the way we communicate. The coming of wireless devices and the wired world has changed our lives and made devices ubiquitous, but at the same time, it has brought forth new problems and issues. One of the most important developments in the area of interpersonal communication is the telephone. The telephone, which was a public device, developed into a very personal device with the advent of cell phones. The path of this development wasn’t smooth; the video phone was predicted to become the next-generation communication device, but somehow it failed miserably in its task. The development of new technology and services needs to learn from the mistakes made in the past.

Information graphics are visual representations of any information, statistical data, or reconstruction of an event. The graphical display of information is among the most obvious and important forms of visual communication. The organisation of realistic data into a field that is recognisable at a glance yet can be studied and probed over a period of time can prove to be a useful tool that offers tremendous value to both the audience and the designer. Graphics can describe information in a better way through visual mapping. Visual aids can compress huge amounts of information into smaller, more comprehensible capsules.

We are aware of the presence and importance of graphic representations throughout the history of man. Diagrams, maps, charts, and many other kinds of symbols take part in our daily lives. All visual media have explored various aspects and advantages of infographics, and television media is no exception. The dynamism of TV media offers more scope to the designer and broadens the horizons of possibilities. Graphical representations benefit from the fourth dimension of 'time', and can help create better.

In 1995, Dentsu of Japan and the US-based Young & Rubicam decided to pick up a stake in this Indian agency, and in 1998, Rediffusion-DY&R formally assumed a new name, "Rediffusion-Dentsu Young & Rubicam brand communications." Rediffusion is ranked #5 among Indian advertising agencies.

Technology affects life; it is meant to do that. But it seems absolutely illogical and unfair that it should compulsively change the way people live. It is evident that the personal computer is completely impertinent to the home environment, its needs, and its physical location and does not blend with the family lifestyle. A study of these, as well as of those devices that work well in households, suggests some strategic changes to the approach of bringing a computer into the home setting. A brief overview of Indian household needs and home environment suggests the need for reminders, family communication aids, and assistance in household tasks.

'Yojak' is an attempt to bridge the gap between PC and Indian home needs. It is a home computer with the basic form of a digital calendar. In India, family schedules revolve around the calendar, family accounts are maintained on a calendar, and most home information comes from the calendar. In effect, this is mainly what the personal computer aims to do today in a home setting, yet quite ineffectively. 'Yojak', with the metaphor of a calendar, radically changes the scene, and the computer achieves a physical, psychological, and emotional 'space' in the household.

Wherever there is a settlement (society), it is bound to be affected by change on the micro or macro level sooner or later. This is caused by a number of factors and has some impact on that society. Through this project, I have tried to analyse the effect of social change on the East Indian community, keeping one aspect as my main issue of study, i.e., ‘wedding ceremonies’ The research method I have used for this study is the ethnographic methodology, wherein I went around talking to people and used an open-ended questionnaire. Only after fully understanding the practices and observing them have I drawn my inferences about identifying the cause of change. The East Indian community offers itself as an ideal subject matter for this kind of study, as the changes are recent and ongoing at different levels.

Miniature paintings are viewed through a magnifying glass, where one sees the finer details of the painting. Taking a cue from this, the idea of 'digital miniature paintings' got evolved. These paintings are created by digital illustrations that are to be viewed on the computer screen. One can explore the painting by clicking on certain areas, which zoom out to reveal a new painting.

Alphabet learning is the means to an end that few teachers or parents question. Several techniques and methods to learn the language and script have been extensively developed. The material developed is dull and eliminates "experience." Children have to learn to read and write the language, but the process is narrow and monotonous, and the love for learning is never induced. Looking, observing, and carefully observing never seem to be an important part of learning or an aspect of developing the learning material. We know that if a learning material can overcome the problem of attention span and engage a child, then most of the problems of learning can be tackled. I am interested in exploring how a material can encompass the enjoyment and discoveries that looking and experiencing can bring.

The Urban Opportunity Project, a research initiative of the Institute of Design at IIT Chicago, has provided the scope for adopting a collaborative approach of working between ID Chicago, IIT Bombay, and non-governmental organisations like the Society for Human and Environmental Development (S.H.E.D.) in Mumbai. This collaborative approach has enabled the acquisition of true and valuable insights on the livelihoods in city slums. Dharavi was taken as a specimen for the study.

Doordarshan Kendra, Nagpur, came on the telecast Map of India on August 15, 1982. Initially, area-specific programme kendras now have the identity of local kendras in Maharashtra. It is the third-largest telecast centre after Mumbai and Pune in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. The daily telecast time is from 6-7p.m. from Monday to Friday, mainly in Marathi language. It covers an area of 120km. in diameter in and around Nagpur.

Technology is not an educational panacea, but it is an important facilitator of education. This is a strong rationale and the dominant argument for expanding the use of technology in schools. A clear understanding of the role of technology in change and the implications of technology-mediated changes for education is the key to the success of any innovation in education. We need to take a look at the traditional goals of education and formulate new definitions of learning consistent with the revolution in cognitive sciences. It is time we viewed the learning process as selective filtering of experience, coordination of information, and construction of knowledge. To be able to do that is the biggest challenge of information and communication technologies in education. If we are convinced of this, then we shall be able to fashion a climate of values that encourages the ordering and re-ordering of thoughts needed to comprehend technology and strive for education to emerge from its disciplinary narrowness.

Physical Reality has been a subject of contemplation from time immemorial, right from the times when our ancestors pondered about the mystery behind stars to the unfolding facts about black holes today. Man has classified the physical as real and non-physical things like dreams and hyper dimensions as virtual. Virtual is something which doesn’t exist. The digital technology has given rise to a new order of reality – the virtual real, which addresses all the sensory perceptions of humans and make the brain believe that something non-existent as real through the projection of a virtual world onto him.

The theme behind the film revolved initially around weapons of mass destruction and technology getting into the wrong hands. The bomb blast that took place at Zaveri Bazaar and the gateway of India on August 25, 2003, made me focus the film on the blast and portray the mindless destruction of human lives and properties. I started collecting footage related to Black Monday (blast on August 25). With some 6 hours of raw footage consisting of the footage on the day of the bomb blast, interviews with the eyewitnesses, victims, and their relatives, various forms of reactions that happened after the blast, and the few secular activities in the city, I was faced with the major task of editing them and making a short film out of them. I also saw the potential of making a full-length documentary with the collected footage on the construction of communalism in India, which would require more time and research. After repeated watching of the footage and reading about communal terrorism, I decided to focus the film on themes like religious misconceptions and extremism and the co-existence of love and hate in a cosmopolitan setting.

The core idea of the project is to design a digital sketch book that can facilitate the user's ability to capture his thoughts and expressions effectively and enable him to share them with different people in a local group, like in places where collaborative learning and sharing take place, or with a global community through the internet. A device that can help the user with brainstorming and idea generation, which can help him visualise his ideas better. The device is envisioned as a digital sketch book that has the flexibility to be updated while retaining the quality of a sketch book that the user keeps with him for a long time.

“Conversation with an ”artist’”—the project was essentially focused on understanding the approach of an artist so as to understand the uniqueness in his thinking process and his creations. This project gave an opportunity to study what we understand by the term culture and acknowledge its importance as an inspiration for any creation. My keen interest was to find out how culture is understood by different people and what makes it easier for them to express their creation in terms of culture as an inspiration and sometimes as a tool and also sometimes just unknowingly creating something that defines culture itself.

Theatre - Abhinaya, the ancient Indian system of dramaturgy. This performing art of theatre, as the dictionary defines, ”the activity or a profession of acting, producing, directing, or writing plays,” is an art form that has a beautiful pattern of planned design of actions. It's a form of extensive teamworkin which the efforts of each and every member of the production matter a lot for the success of the play, the irony of the situation being that every action of every person who is part of the production is mainly governed by the director of the play. The entire system depends on the directors play of actions. This art form includes the most important and basic elements of design, i.e., lines, planes, textures, colours, space, shapes, and forms.

Theatre - Abhinaya, the ancient Indian system of dramaturgy. As the dictionary defines the activity or a profession of acting, producing, directing, or writing plays,” it has a pattern of planned design of actions. Theatre is a medium that encloses within itself all forms of performing arts; it can evolve itself with forms like drama, action, speech, dance, poetry, etc., and also encourages experiments and exploration in one and all. It is one of the most effective forms of communication, as in a very interesting manner it holds the attention of its viewers and communicates the message across.

The project focuses on designing a game based on the elements of Indian temples. The motivation to take up this project was to study an aspect of Indian tradition and culture, a very significant part of which are the Indian temples. This project gave me a chance to understand important and different elements related to Indian culture. The initial objective was to create interest in the subject that encourages self-involvement and motivation to learn more on the subject. The structural and strategical approach of game designing was ideal to create awareness on the subject with a lot of interest, i.e., the rituals, beliefs, myths, and significances attached to them, which are being forgotten with time. Games have been an intimate part of Indian tradition and culture. Some of the most famous and interesting games were developed and played here and became a part of the tradition, e.g., Pachisi.

My internship at RGD lasted a month, starting early May 2006. During this period I had the opportunity to work on three live projects. I also researched and studied the origin and development of the lotus as an international icon. The Lotus—Of the many icons that represent Eastern civilisation, the lotus is probably amongst the most famous ones. This study traced the origin of the lotus as a symbol of divinity and spirituality all around the world. The information was gathered from books and other online resources, which was assimilated with illustrations drawn by me in a single book.

The objective of this project was to go through the process of creating an animation using a blend of 3D animation and 2D techniques. The film, approximately 5 minutes and 18 seconds long, was created using a blend of conventional 3D modelling and animation and pixilation (stop-motion animation using human actors). The theme for the animation is the city of Mumbai. The story more specifically looks at how the rain affects people in the city. The premise for the story is set in a six-floor, seemingly improbable building, where the inhabitant of each floor deals with the excessive rain.

The objective of this project was to create a film with characters whose foundations lie in some of Jung’s theories. Since my project from the previous semester looked at a broader scenario of the rains in the city and how the inhabitants of a hypothetical building deal with the deluge, this semester’s project deals with a more personal and quiet self-space. The story outlines the confusion and turmoil people go through during the transitional periods of their lives. The film is rendered using a toon shader. The end effect is that of a hand-drawn and inked illustration.

There are several clans of Adivasis (original inhabitants) occupying part of the region north of Mumbai, the most numerous being the Warlis, who call themselves kings of the jungle. The Warli Tribe, which resides in the Thane district of Maharashtra, is spread out mainly in the villages of Dahanu, Talasari, Mokhada, Vada, and Palghara. For our study we chose the village of Dahanu. The origin of the Warlis is yet unknown, and no records of their art form are found, but many scholars and folklorists believe that it can be traced to as early as the tenth century A.D., when such men learnt to build walls of the house. The economy of the Warlis is basically agrarian. The Warlis have survived for millennia in harmony with their environment and without oppressing others. Their culture incorporates the spiritual and material, living and non-living, into one integral whole.

The client is a major stock photo agency. The project involved redesigning the interface icons in their image management software. The objective was to streamline the workflow to increase the efficiency. This software has basic image editing tools and is primarily used for categorising and keywording images. My role in this project was to redesign the current set of icons and render them with a new visual look as well as create new icons with consistency and bring out a new contemporary style to the set.

This project is an attempt to address (learn the process involved in) the designer’s challenge to make information accessible and available to users within the campus. This project attempts to create an interactive information system that would make it easy to access the information the user needs from the complex set of information in IIT Bombay. The interactive system seeks to reduce the cognitive load on the user and minimise the learning time otherwise normally spent to access such a system. The system is proposed to be accessed by users within the campus. Interactive systems tend to aid the user in navigating and zooming into specific areas. The report structure comprises the requirement study, where the user needs were identified, followed by the data collection and the conclusion of the analysis. The interface design and navigation aim to provide the user with an effective interface so he/she could access information more easily. The proposed system is a simulated model and demonstrates its effectiveness. The working model can be fulfilled after all data has been fed into the system.

The scope of the project is to present a tapestry of Kerala’s history from the earliest times to AD 1850, covering aspects like history, culture, and geography in an interactive visual timeline. The interactivity of digital media makes it possible to represent such interesting information compared to that of print media. This project seeks to design an interactive information map (a visual timeline) that would highlight interesting snippets of information from Kerala’s history. The interactive visual map seeks to present to the user an interesting experience of the diverse aspects of Kerala in the historical perspective.

Being born and brought up in different places, in different contexts, interactions with other people and experiences of different circumstances consciously or subconsciously have made people what they are or what they have chosen to be. There are various factors that keep influencing people’s identities and personalities. Respective identities are reflected through various manifestations like their posture, body language, clothing, mannerisms, behaviour, gestures or their expressions or faces. There are stories about themselves that they reveal. Images of themselves that they create or those that are created on their own. However, they are revealed within the scope of the readability of the observer. The observer too has developed this sensitivity based on his own contexts, experiences and associations he has established through his own understanding of events, circumstances and other people. It is the perception of these identities or stories through faces that is intended to be studied through this project. The route to it is also through my perception of identities and how I read people through their faces.

Communication media enables the sharing of information in the form of data, images, ideas, etc. We rely heavily on media for having access to any information, as it is not in anyone’s capacity to have authority or knowledge of all the information that is available through various sources. Hence, being the source of our awareness of many things, it plays an important role in moulding our mindsets and opinions of many things. Dominant forms of media dictate aesthetic preferences and forms of social, political and economic structuring in society, as they have a collective influence on a mass audience. It plays a major role in the establishment of perceptions in the minds and imaginations of entire societies as it advocates the development of constructive or destructive ideas towards various issues at different levels in a social system, like family, violence, relationships, authorities, identities, etc.

For every object that we see around us or voice we hear on the telephone/radio, we as simple people desire to form a face or give it a facial identity. We look for faces in everything, which always consist of two symmetrical horizontally positioned dots for the eyes and a horizontal line just a little below to form the mouth. All other details are negligible; it is not vital that other details like the forehead/eyebrows/nose/philtrum and chin be present. The face is an important feature for the identification of others and conveys significant social information. The basic face would be shaped of eyes that can see us and a mouth that may speak to us. As children, we may construct faces out of plug points and headlights on cars/scooters, draw smileys on dusty car windows and make faces at the mirror. The face is the only immediate and widely recognisable feature which distinguishes one individual from another. Ironically, because of the importance of its role in social interaction, the newer communication systems like SMS and online chat completely eliminate the instance of ‘seeing’ the person you are communicating with. There are solutions, of course, to this situation; one of them is where you can post a picture of yourself, or if you do not like your face too much or simply want to ‘lie’ about your appearance, wear a mask!

Learning in schools is practised in a way where students are ‘told’ information about various topics through textbooks which they are expected to memorise and finally repeat during assessments. The chapters in textbooks are arranged in increasing order of complexity, at the end of which there are questions which the student is expected to answer by searching through the content in as many attempts as necessary. Students begin to understand that grading is on the basis of accuracy of recalling the information, and hence, learning to copy-paste answers is the type of learning that students pick up as a habit. Merely remembering words like ‘sunrise’, ‘rain’, and ‘sea’ does not mean that the student has understood the meaning of the word. He needs to experience the sunrise, see the darkness recede and the light take over, walk on the beaches to experience the water and sand, and get wet in the rain to enjoy and understand the proper meaning of the observable fact.

Learning in schools is practised in a way where students are ‘told’ information about various topics through textbooks which they are expected to memorise and finally repeat during assessments. The chapters in textbooks are arranged in increasing order of complexity, at the end of which there are questions which the student is expected to answer by searching through the content in as many attempts as necessary. Students begin to understand that grading is on the basis of accuracy of recalling the information, and hence, learning to copy-paste answers is the type of learning that students pick up as a habit. Merely remembering words like ‘sunrise’, ‘rain’, and ‘sea’ does not mean that the student has understood the meaning of the word. He needs to experience the sunrise, see the darkness recede and the light take over, walk on the beaches to experience the water and sand, and get wet in the rain to enjoy and understand the proper meaning of the observable fact.

Calligraphy since ages has been evolving from its original form. So have its functions. But the basic requirements of calligraphy have always remained there and are mutually dependent. Calligraphy is incomplete without these essentials, i.e., the tool, the medium and the surface. Calligraphy since ancient times has remained as a medium of visual communication, communicates a message(s) for the sake of wisdom, and has not widened much. But there have been a lot of experiments, reformations, and cross-cultural adaptations over the scripts of calligraphy, like writing the Devanagari script with a Japanese round brush, modifying steel tools to be ergonomic for Devanagari, installing a reservoir for ink in the tool itself, etc., which have contributed to shaping a new dimension of calligraphy. The process of evolution of letter forms has deep spiritual roots. Akshar is an experience of a very highly profound meditation process. Calligraphy can be called a process in which your mind and body are involved towards attaining a simple goal, of akshar. Akshar means the one that will remain forever.

Indra Smruti is a small attempt towards remembering the most respected god from the Rigveda, who is no longer worshipped as a god, nor does there exist a temple of him. The title speaks all about the project – remembering Indra once again in today's era. The idea originated as an opportunity for visualising the dynasty of Indra. But as time travelled, more and more mysteries about the Vedic and the Hindu Sanskriti were revealed. The thought of Indra was no longer an idea. It took a shape of its own. It started evolving and revealing itself. Of course, the method which I followed made it possible. This evolving and revealing process is never ending. As we can see numerous icons of Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesha, and Ram, and just by looking at them, we can state the icon. We tend to understand the character and recognise them. But Indra's character/icon is not so visible through Hindu iconography. This project is about exploring Indra the way I have perceived and absorbed her. I did not want my expressions to be very stereotyped comic style. The initial explorations were very much like the conventional comics style, but later on I tried exploring in my personal style, though the style was not an issue. The later explorations were more expressive. I tried to draw a line between comics' style and the miniature paintings.

Indra Smruti is a small attempt towards remembering the most respected god from the Rigveda, who is no longer worshipped as a god, nor does there exist a temple of him. The title speaks all about the project – remembering Indra once again in today's era. The idea originated as an opportunity for visualising the dynasty of Indra. But as time travelled, more and more mysteries about the Vedic and the Hindu Sanskriti were revealed. The thought of Indra was no longer an idea. It took a shape of its own. It started evolving and revealing itself. Of course, the method which I followed made it possible. This evolving and revealing process is never ending. As we can see numerous icons of Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesha, and Ram, and just by looking at them, we can state the icon. We tend to understand the character and recognise them. But Indra's character/icon is not so visible through Hindu iconography. This project is about exploring Indra the way I have perceived and absorbed her. I did not want my expressions to be very stereotyped comic style. The initial explorations were very much like the conventional comics style, but later on I tried exploring in my personal style, though the style was not an issue. The later explorations were more expressive. I tried to draw a line between comics' style and the miniature paintings.

A strong attachment with the city is one reason that I thought of documenting the stories and events that have transformed the city. It is a common feeling that usually a class of people have for their city they have grown up in. Being a Puneite, I had not known a lot of interesting things about Pune, like how the city got its name. There were similar scenarios around me, due to which I thought of understanding the evolution of the place. The story which I want to tell could be about some simple events, treaties, wars, floods, rivers, mansions, roads, kings, ministers, architecture, etc. My idea was to talk about the unknown facts, myths and stories of the city, but after questioning the idea of unknowingly, one gets an answer that whatever one hears or reads, the next moment it becomes known. So the goal became making a video on relatively unknown facts of Pune.

‘Graphic novel’ is a term generally applied to refer to comic books which are aimed at a mature audience and are centred around mature and complex themes. Graphic novels are supposed to have better artwork and printing and binding. They can be published as original single-volume novels or compilations of previously published multiple-volume serialised stories. A collection of short stories (in comics) is also referred to as a graphic novel. Although a widely used term now, ‘graphic novel’ is more of a publisher’s and marketing term. As comics are generally associated with juvenile themes and adolescent readers, the term graphic novel indicates a departure from monthly disposable magazines to a permanent bookshelf collection. However, many of the foremost authors, like Alan Moore, say that they are fine with the term ‘comics’ and do not intend to be called graphic novelists. Acclaimed comics theorist Scott McCloud also remarks that a square binding and slick printing do not guarantee a creditable work of literature and that comics as an art form and a communication medium do not need the term graphic novel to prove their worth.

Grandmother India is a Mumbai-based firm providing visual communication services to a variety of clientele spanning from music labels, fashion brands, hospitality agencies and IT giants to independent artists, photographers and filmmakers. Set up in 1999 by Kurnal Rawat and Tejas Mangeshkar, the firm believes in local designs with global aesthetics and is known for creating a unique visual milieu. During my time at Grandmother India, I got involved with various design activities differing in nature, intention, medium and complexity. Taking up tasks and responsibilities offered a great deal of learning.

This project is aimed towards addressing the issue of violence that is changing many lives voluntarily or involuntarily. It is an attempt to understand the concerns and effects of violence and communicate the same through a medium often criticised for glorifying it: comics (defined by Scott McCloud as juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”). Despite the great potential that the medium of comics offers in communicating ideas and storytelling, its application has been quite limited in popular culture. Comics have been criticised for promoting and selling violent content to kids. Still, there is a lot more to comics than popular culture. The project seeks to provide a view of the notions of violence and its existence in a society through exploring the medium of comics. Through the project I aim to build an outlook of things as they are and as they should be in a world so restless and impatient to resort to violence for all that is unfair and unjust.

This project is aimed towards addressing the issue of violence that is changing many lives voluntarily or involuntarily. It is an attempt to understand the concerns and effects of violence and communicate the same through a medium often criticised for glorifying it: comics (defined by Scott McCloud as juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”). Despite the great potential that the medium of comics offers in communicating ideas and storytelling, its application has been quite limited in popular culture. Comics have been criticised for promoting and selling violent content to kids. Still, there is a lot more to comics than popular culture. The project seeks to provide a view of the notions of violence and its existence in a society through exploring the medium of comics. Through the project I aim to build an outlook of things as they are and as they should be in a world so restless and impatient to resort to violence for all that is unfair and unjust.

White Light Moving Picture Company Private Limited was incorporated on 4th May, 1987, as a private limited company. The registered office and its head office are in Kolkata, West Bengal. Its business operations are carried out from its Mumbai branch office situated in Famous Studios in Mahalaxmi. The company’s Chairperson and Managing Director, Ms Namita Roy Ghose, and its Director, Mr Subir Chatterjee, are both based in Mumbai. They are also the co-directors of all commercials produced by White Light. The Finance Director, Mr Ujjal Ghosh, is based in the Head Office at Kolkata. The company engages around fifteen more personnel to undertake the key activities relating to film production, administration and business development.

Experimental animation is like a bottomless chasm. The possibilities are endless. The key being, anything & everything can be animated. Under the guidance of Prof. Ravi Poovaiah, the basic idea of providing a platform for exploring possibilities took shape. A variety of styles & diverse use of the medium have always been the key focus in experimental animation. Reaping the power of technology and combining it with an in-depth thought process laid the base. Artificial intelligence to help the software think & comprehend was another focus point. The challenge was being able to provide a variety of styles and to embed a sense of creative freedom for aspirants wanting to get a glimpse into the world of experimental animation. Planes or surfaces to play with were looked at so as to generate interest amongst the users. To be able to control plane parameters and thereby moderate the behaviours of the plane added to the vision. This software concept provides for smart functioning. The motive being to showcase the possibilities in plane-moderated experiments and provide for it. The interface aids in creating various animations using water, sand, a light grid or paper as the surface.

The newspapers lately are abuzz with the growing power cuts in the suburbs. My project deals with the same, but in a subtle and light manner. With a bit of humour, and through a simple story, I have attempted to spread the awareness to curb load shedding. The story has a central character, the “load shedding baby”, who in his simple, sweet way manages to slay the “load shedding monster”, which has been haunting the city of Kalyan for a long time. The focus has also been laid on the fact that frequent power cuts have seeped into the lives of the people, and they have taken it as a part of their lives. Protests are staged, and the electricity board is bad-mouthed. But these are not that which will help us get rid of this syndrome. It is only when we start thinking and start saving electricity in our homes that we can make a difference. I have tried to bring out this message through my animated short.

I wrote a script as it came to me. Once I was thinking of a dear friend of mine. We were best of friends when we were kids, but as time passed by, we went different ways. I was not in touch with her for a long time. Later when I heard of her, she was known to people as an easy woman. Someone known for swindling men around. I was very disturbed and felt really bad. I tried to justify her side unknowingly to our common friends, but I could not. I was angry with her, but I never showed it. I wanted to scold her, but I thought I could not. It took us five years to develop affection for each other again. And it took me even longer to realise that she did not do anything ‘wrong’. Neither was she right. There is nothing that is right or wrong sometimes. I think no one is in a place to judge if somebody has been ‘morally’ right or wrong. Because if one tries to see from the involved person’s point of view, it is circumstances and time which together can lead you on a path, which can neither be right nor wrong. It can only be different from your path. There are several kinds of sins which are morally put forth, but I decided to contemplate on the sin of lust. These are matters which involve intimacy. I certainly don’t advocate betrayal or cheating, but I feel the sexual parameters change depending on the person. I feel there should not be ground rules for morality which are applicable to everyone.

During a typical life span, a human spends a total of about six years dreaming, which is about 2 hours each night. It is unknown where in the brain dreams originate, if there is such a single location, or why dreams occur at all. “I had a horrible nightmare that there were sick kittens all around me, hungry and sick. One of them, a small black kitten, jumped up on my lap, and to my horror, split in half, and the top half jumped off my lap, leaving the bottom half. I screamed and woke up.” Dreams are expressed in the form of sensory metaphors. Some say that dreams are metaphorical translations of waking expectations. From the point of view of the dreaming state of mind, dreams are real events in real environments. Based on this notion, one can re-enter the landscape of a dream and flash back to the images, whether it is a memory from waking life or from dreaming. One enters a hypnagogic state; then, through the process of questioning, images are explored through the perspective of feelings and sensations manifested in the body, enabling new awareness to develop.

The intention of this project is to gain a clearer understanding of the process involved in the generation of a graphic novel, the seamless integration of the text with the imagery. It delves into the manner of representation of serious and politically tense topics through this medium. The nature of political and historical novels is studied through selected pieces of work. The process involved in the translation of a film into a graphic novel also falls within the spectrum of my study.

J. Walter Thompson is a worldwide organisation. It is one of the oldest advertising agencies in the world. They over the years have built an enormous network of companies across all continents. Now they are a company with a network of over 200 regions. The infrastructure of this company has been built over years of dedication and solidarity. Recently the company went through a major change. The change in the colours of JWT and the compression of the name of the agency from J. Walter Thompson to JWT has been one of the colossal tasks that have been taken up. For a 75-year-old company to undergo such a huge change was considered to be a big move. They have one of the largest ranges of clientele. Their client list ranges through numerous products in the market. They have some of the most prestigious sets of clients.

Imagery and representations of the poems that run alongside Khayyam’s words. Explorations in terms of mode of visual imagery, content, medium, calligraphy and typography. Calligraphy and typography that is driven by the content of his poetry. This will act as a visual compilation of Khayyam’s poetry.

My project started off with my interest in the subject of Tamil faith and superstitions. At this point I started to visit some of the temple places in Tamil Nadu. Over the course of my visits and interactions with the people, I realised that my area of interest lies in the faith and penance patterns of one of the major sects of Tamil Nadu. This major community is the Thevar and Nadar communities. These people belong to the southern districts of Tamil Nadu, Ramanathapuram, Virudhunagar and Madurai, termed as the Thevar belt. Having arrived at my area of focus, I started speaking to people from the community and started attending the religious ceremonies that took place on specific days. My initial few visits to the ceremonies were merely to orient myself and experience the environment. The ice had to be broken, and a certain level of informality had to be developed with the people. In the later stages, I went and met some of the people at their residence and spoke to them. Slowly they began to open up to me. I could sense their initial reluctance, but they were also willing to try to have a conversation with me. During the course of the project, I visited around eight Mariamman temples located in Chennai and the outskirts of the city.

Interfaces that deal with aspects other than text can be termed as non-textual interfaces. Audio, video, spoken language, performing arts, visuals, etc. are some examples of non-textual interfaces. Some of the examples identified from the non-computing environment were Warli paintings (narratives), Kathakali (gestures and audio), Dabba walas code signs (signs and symbols) and temple motifs (symbols). Because of time constraints the scope of the project was restricted to analysing only one from the above-mentioned.

As part of the M.Des. (visual communication) course, students have to undergo a month’s industry training at the end of the second semester. This one month has a lot stored in it, as there is interaction with the company and people working there, getting involved in projects, helping out, sitting in brainstorming sessions and loads of fun.

In our everyday life we came across many social problems around us. “Child labour” is one of the problems in the list. The worst thing about this problem is that the victims are the tiny juvenile humans. They are children, as delicate as flowers, but are scrambled underfoot by conditions. Conditions could be anything, but the fact is that they have lost their childhood. This is the time when a child needs a lot of love, protection, education, good food, etc., so that they will develop in all aspects. From this project I have tried to portray a simple aspiration of a particular child labourer (Bhoora) who works in hazardous conditions. And how he struggles to fulfil a small desire.

The need of the society in the government sector is to understand complex processes and eliminate the third-party involvement to reduce the corruption and also reduce the time and stress involved in completing the task. This is taken as the aim of this project to analyse the possibilities of exploration. In India many government sectors have various kinds of complex processes which need to be followed to complete the task for the people. In this project I decided to explore the possibility in R.T.O. (Regional Transport Office), where a huge number of people’s interactions happen every day. From the 18-year-old student to the 40-year-old private vehicle owner, they need to face many complex processes. Processes are not easy to understand when they are on paper. The understanding of processes very effectively and easily is taken for the exploration.

Stories are told, heard, seen, and read, but most of all… felt. A good story has the uncanny ability to enrapture from the oldest to the young. Combining subject, experience and message, each writer has taken an everyday theme and built around it a brief yet captivating drama – an essentially human requirement. But beyond the story itself, a short story can serve as a valuable and intimate account of a chosen subject, a place, an incident, or a person. Without the employment of pigment or bristle, a short story can at once paint a beautiful picture, unbound by time. And like painters, every author seeks to capture a different subject. From the value of the love of a family to the use of a dining table, the stories are based on themes as eclectic as the people in this nation. However, if there is one thread holding them together, it is the feeling of every author's own personal experience that comes through in a rather compelling manner. In 'The Fig Tree Stands Witness', the author tells of a tragically materialistic world through the hardships faced by his uncle when all his family cares about is his property and not his well-being. These messages, though known to us, come across more profoundly in these stories in ways we can more easily connect to. As compared to its older counterparts, the delivery of a message in the contemporary short story is more graphic. Although there is usually no 'moral' that sums up the story in a single line, the story itself comes across as very real and tends to put the reader smack dab in the middle of events taking place. The message is thus experienced rather than read.

Gitanjali's poems are not very long, averaging about 25 lines. The lines themselves bear just a few words. And though the language used is very good for someone of her age, the poems do not bear the rhyme or lyrical quality of most renowned poets. The emotional expression, however, is just as strong, if not stronger than the best of them. Gitanjali's 110 poems, written during the period of her illness, feature the people, things and emotions that affected her life the most. Her family, her friends, her pets, nature, sadness, joy, death and, above all, God, among others. Most of her poems are tributes and messages to each of these characters. Through the poems one also gets a picture of Gitanjali's mental state between the time she was diagnosed with cancer and her death. Some of the poems carry the natural and obvious plea for help and respite from a person who is fully aware of her impending end. She begs of God to give her a new lease on life. But most of her poems, however, carry an unimaginable fortitude. The courage she has displayed, knowing that her life is drawing to a close, is something we can all learn from. She accepted death and often had conversations with death, requesting it to come unnoticed so that the people around her would not be hurt too much. She seemed to worry more about her loved ones than herself. Self-pity is one element that has not really featured in any of Gitanjali's poems. She seemed to have made the most of whatever little time she was handed on earth.

My aim is to capture and portray people's perception of problems in one frame. Juxtaposing contrasting as well as similar events, issues and reactions. We often times live our lives in isolation and shut out the rest of the world in our time of grieving. But time does not stop. I will attempt to present... the ways in which we view and prioritise events in our lives, the ways we react to them, and the ways we handle them (or at least attempt to). No problem is so grave as to make the world stop on its axis. Nor is any problem so small as to be considered inconsequential.

“Splashing of an array of colours, internalising the colours of bands, and creation of beautiful formations toward all that is holy and pure – that is Rangoli.” Revelation of beauty, attainment of auspiciousness These are the twin motives of Rangoli. The place where it is drawn automatically reverberates with a climate surcharged with auspiciousness & goodness. Hence the importance of Rangoli in festivals & the like. A rangoli drawn in a courtyard of the house reflects the beauty, love & affection innate in any dwelling house. The 'Rangoli' becomes the epitome of group culturedness, & therefore the description of the Rangoli as a culture-rich manifestation of art becomes truly befitting. It is widely believed that the Rangoli drawn on the threshold and courtyard wards off the entry of vile powers & stops the auspicious powers from leaving the house.

GOD (Gang of Designer) is an advertising agency which designs the concept according to the clients requirements with a creative mind. Gang Of Designers! That's what the two-year-old Mumbai-based ad agency, Palasa, is now calling itself, which is more into print media. GOD plans to delink its direct marketing and media divisions, both of which were operating as units within the agency till now, and run them as separate entities, servicing work for both GOD and other agencies. The agency has clients, including Gili, Mercury, IT Brand Circle, Sprint CDs, Voltas Corporate (on a project basis) and STAR One, for which it handles 'The Great Indian Laughter Challenge'. It claims to have expanded its business to include a production house, a suiting brand and a publishing house.

The “Jatakas” are an early collection of Buddhist writing. The word “Jataka” means “birth”, so the “Jataka tales” means birth stories of Buddha. The Jataka stories are built as frame tales, which makes them one of the oldest and most important examples of frame tales in world literature. In each Jataka tale, Buddha is shown in his present life, usually speaking with his monks about problems and disputes at the monastery. Then Buddha tells a story about the past life, which is at times humorous and at times very serious. When Buddha finishes telling the story, he returns to the present and provides the interpretation of the story, explaining the incarnations and the moral of the story. The Jataka tales are, as everyone must admit, nobly conceived and lofty in meaning, and...many a helpful sermon might be preached from them as text, so the Matakabhatta Jataka stories talk about the fact that no good ever comes from taking a life while showing the various aspects of life.

The present educational system gives maximum importance to the bookish way of learning. The interaction between the bookish knowledge, the reality in the environment and the self forms the basis for a creative experience. The ability of the child to question, to find form and order, to rethink and restructure and find new relationships with knowledge at hand needs to be encouraged. Optimal reading occurs when it is fun and the individual is challenged to the limits of their abilities. This state occurs when the challenge is matched to the child's knowledge and skills.

The idea of a written document accompanying a work of cinema tends to be merely descriptive and explanatory, and more often than not, a repetition of the ideas already conveyed through other means. As I fail to understand the objective of such a repetition, this piece of writing concerns itself with my ideas about the cinema and on the subject of my project, that is, identity and the realisation of the self – and not a description of how I went about doing what I did. As Tarkovsky, in Sculpting in Time, writes, “Search as a process (and there is no other way of looking at it) has the same bearing on the complete work as wandering through the forest with a basket in search of mushrooms has to the basket of mushrooms when you have found them. Only the latter – the full basket – is a work of art: the contents are real and unconditional, whereas wandering through the forest remains a personal affair of someone who enjoys walking and fresh air.” Also, in this case, explanation amounts to nothing. If, for instance, the objective of the work is to create signs and metaphors, then they must be complete in themselves and independent of accompanying footnotes; otherwise, one has to be content with creating cryptograms.

The fiction of time is closely related to the time of fiction. Narratives that fictionalise time are representations of the fiction of temporality itself. Perhaps as an extension of this, narratives and temporality are interchangeable and exist as self-reflexive concepts, one defining the other, which in turn defines it back. In the absence of the fictionalising faculty, which is difficult to imagine, imagining the concept of time would be doubly difficult, if not impossible altogether. It is with this contention that an inquiry into the ideas of representations of time assumes the form of that particularly forceful conventionality of beginning, middle and end. It can be said that all narratives in this mode clearly present a representation of time. What differentiates that representation from the one I propose is the idea of multiplicity and indeterminacy of these concepts. That is to say that instead of a beginning, there are possibilities of several – if not innumerable – beginnings, and instead of the finality of an end, endings as potentialities. It remains to be examined what exactly the outcome of such a substitution achieves in terms of representation, but to begin with the beginnings, it is undoubtedly a more diffuse and flexible pool of possibilities (and one that perhaps lends itself to a wider margin of error on that account).