Listening to the City

In studying and representing the city, there is always an over-bearing emphasis on the visual aspects of the city. This is a general tendency among us humans, we privilege sight over all the other senses. So we always talk about images, footage, diagrams, layouts, blueprints, maps! All of these are visualizations. But vision (although it has a seemingly infinite range) is not the extent of perception. The city is sensual in many other ways, through sound for instance, are we listening to the city?

Our interest in the sounds of the city, was particularly piqued as a result of our interactions with Lajwanti Waghray, a documentary film-maker, who is presently working on a film “Searching for Sparrows” in Hyderabad. She suggested that it might be very interesting to conduct some experiments around this idea of sounds of the city.

The nature of these experiments is yet to be determined. But perhaps for Do Din 2014, a small initiative can be made. It can be a reflection on the soundscape of the city; its peculiarities based on culture, its transformations as a result of development, etc. Are you paying attention to the aural features of your city or neighbourhood? If there is some striking sound, characteristic of your neighbourhood or city, capture a soundbyte and send it to us (at indivarj@gmail acheter viagra bas prix.com) with a short note about it! With a good response, this can be turned into a workshop or presentation.

E.g. it could be natural sounds, industrial sounds, a public meeting, a rally, a laughing club, it could be anything! Get creative and tell us why the sound is important to the city.

Just by way of orientation check out the following videos. They represent 2 different points-of-viewhearing…

The first one is about listening to nature, thus, coming from an ecological and conservationist perspective (we just can’t do without visual metaphors).

The second one is a starkly different approach, one that is staunchly modernist and playfully avant-garde.

We think there is value in both these ways-of-listening, do check them out.

Cover art from Music on the Wall by Sayok Ray.

A never ending chase..

The Relational City and the City's Relations - A Visual Exposition

Do Din seeks to underscore the relationships that comprise urban existence..

Photo by Swarat Ghosh

The Urban is a cluster of imperative relationships, not always of our own choosing

Photo by Harsha Vadlamani

When one is sharing a physical space with hundreds of thousands of others can it be done without relating to these others?

Photo by Lipi

The autonomous modern individual, then, seems an elaborate myth, we might even say urban legend!

Photo by Rajesh Pamnani

It masks the complex inter-dependence within the urban space.

Photo by Soham Gupta

Transformations here are relational. Nothing changes in isolation. Nothing is independent.

Any relationship in the city that transforms..

Photo by Gopal MS

Transforms the whole city and the city itself is not independent of its relationship with its inhabitants,

Photo by Julie McGuire

and with other cities and their inhabitants.

Photo by Harsha Vadlamani

It is a perennial connection.

The photographs used in the post were exhibited at Do Din 2013 in a set of exhibitions curated by Madhu Reddy and Aditya Mopur. This year too we will have photo exhibitions based on different themes, which will be curated by Aditya Mopur and Harsha Vadlamani. (The images used in this post are compressed scans which has modified the original resolution and lighting)

Data Expedition - a Pre Do Din Event, 19th December 2014.

On 19th December 2014, as a Pre Do Din event, HUL will be running a day long Data Expedition in collaboration with The School of Data, Bangalore.

Data Expedition is a practice developed by the School of Data based on their two core philosophies of learning by doing and working with real data. The aim is to “explore unchartered territory”, and work in areas where quality data is hard to find, or not even produced. Contrary to general perception data analysis is not all or only about hardcore number crunching nor does it always require “data savvy” people to understand data or work with it.

For the proposed workshop HUL is looking for people who are or wish to be:

Storytellers – People who can find new perspectives for looking at problems based on insights from the field and can articulate the problems at hand, also define projects suitable to deal with these problems.

Scouts – People who can literally scout the internet and other offline resources to find new data and data-sources.

Analysts – People who can collaborate on reading the data. This can mean finding patterns in the numbers and figures, it could also mean interpreting social situations, qualitatively.

Engineers – People with a sense of the resources required to address a problem and how various resources can be combined for optimum effect.

Designers – People who can come up with innovative solutions, or innovative methods to seek solutions.

This list of roles is neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. One person can play more than one of these roles. A dynamic group can come up with several interesting analyses and solutions. Most importantly, it is an opportunity to learn from each other, learn to look at things differently and learn new skills. Data Expeditions are open-ended without pre-determined outcomes, so as to facilitate creativity and a plurality of approaches.

Read more about Data Expeditions.

Nisha Thompson, our data Guide for the workshop has worked extensively with data on water supply in India vente de viagra sur internet. Water supply data produced by the GOI is highly fragmented and does not provide a comprehensive picture of the problem. Her challenge has been to enhance the existing water data through field observations and augmenting it with schematic maps and other visuals.

Do mark your calendars if you are excited by the prospect of working with real data and learning new skills, or even getting a deeper understanding of urban realities.
Friday, 19th December from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m at Hyderabad Institute of Liberal Arts, 403, B block, Delta Seacon, Road 11, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad – 500034.

Do Din is about relationships

Sketch by Neha Vaddadi