The Artiste and the Wishing Tree

The proposition of uniting technology and art on stage has been on my mind and in my writing in the past few months. Today, I take you into the world of research. With Kabali mania holding Bangalore's traffic to ransom on Friday, I trekked a good 2 and half hours, hopping from cab to bus to metro rail to auto, to a rather interesting talk. Dr. Partha Pratim Das and Tanvi mallick are strangers to the world of Bharatanatyam by their own admission. But their work in the field of automated analysis of dance at IIT Kharagpur is something that could become integral to the world of dance in future. Here is my brief understanding of their work. Dr. Das and Tanvi are creating an automated analysis device that can recognise adavu patterns and associated sollu. All movements and audio associated with adavu movements have been recorded into the device database. A video recording of a dancer dancing a particular adavu can be captured,analysed and recognised by the device with about 90% ...

What do Art and Technology have in common? They have both arisen from the minds of creative geniuses. Neither is predictable, and they both evolve with every passing moment. How are they different? The bane of technology in our lives is often discussed as the evil that has overtaken human relationship, while art has and will continue to remain as the medium of nurturing and reflecting on human relationship. Irrespective of whether Technology and Art are distinct or similar, the influences they have on each other are manifold, as is evidenced all around us. So when one pauses to think of the bridge between technology and art, we are bound to find ourselves on a see-saw between what we have gained and what we have lost in our pursuit of marrying the two. Since the discussion on their interplay has several tangents to it, let us focus here on the evolution of technological influence on classical dance and the sea of change that has occurred in the way technology has come to support ...