The Collective
digital bangaloREsidents-Expanded@Mind Over Matter
Neel Koradia is a New Media Designer, Researcher and artist based in India. His work involves creating powerful experiences, interactions, and products through thoughtful application of technology. He enjoys conceptual thinking, cultural research, visualising data and speculating futures. He communicates his design ideas through films, codes and VR experiences. He has contributed to the field of HCI by involving various research groups, organisations, and conferences.
Shafali Jain is an artist, new media designer, technologist and computer science engineer. Her close connect to the community and critical insights on ethics of technology have led her to explore social development initiatives on ground, as well as on policy levels. Her previous projects include exploration and research in the field of surveillance, philosophy of technology, institute policy, field work in rural areas, speculative fiction, physical computing, ethnography and design of interactive experiences which approach technology in a more sensitive manner. In the present context, where changing technology is the only constant, she wants to question technology and define criteria for its use and manifestation.
Sidharthan is a photographer and visual media artist based in Kochi, India. He works primarily with photography, film, illustrations and text. After formally training to be an architect, he has been pursuing his passion for image-making academically and is currently doing his Master's in Photography Design at the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar. His initial practice revolved around the identification, observation and study of socio-political, cultural and geographic markers in and around built environments. In the last 2 years, he has situated his practice around enquiries related to the politics of everyday spatial experience and the dynamics between notions of reality and global technological progress.
Their Mind Over Matter* project provides a contemporary imagination of the eastern philosophical concepts of Maya, Atman and Brahman in the context of modern-day digital intelligence and technology. Brahman and Atman together examine duality and oneness in all existence. Maya connotes the "power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality – The Brahman-Atman”.
The project attempts to connect these three ancient eastern philosophical concepts with our post-modern understanding of consciousness/reality, through a predominantly visual interface via interventions generated by underlying code/technology. Here, the code/technological intervention itself will be representative of our understanding/interpretation of the concept of Brahman. The user/audience perceives/experiences the code or Brahman, through visual interventions – Maya, that are manifestations of the code in the sensory realm.
*Mind Over Matter, a virtual residency under the banner of Digital bangaloREsidency-Expanded, is a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, Walkin Studios Bangalore and Netzwerk Medien Kunst // C. Rockefeller Center for the Contemporary Arts, Dresden, Germany. The projects of the participating artists will be presented at the Museum Technische Sammlungen in Dresden, Germany as part of an international media art exhibition in November 2020.
