I wanted to find out more about this artform and technique, so I googled (without much luck, due to googling the wrong things) and asked the Sarai reader list and received lots of helpful information from many people. after reading about it, it reminds me a bit of the multi-media of a few hundred years ago. multiple paintings / panels on scrolls are read and music played whilst they're read, so there's a mixture of images, music, text, written / spoken word. the artists travel to different villages - equivalent to the communication methods / networks of today transmitting the multimedia messages & works. originally the works were made on cloth using vegetable based paints but these days modern paints are used and most works are done on paper. I hope the traditional methods are not lost completely! the style of painting comes from Orissa and West Bengal. modern artists use both traditional, classical topics as well as current topics & stories - they are trying out new variations of the art too, to keep the method alive and to learn new techniques & skills.
the idea is to post one video each day in November. it doesn't have to be fancy - just as long as it moves.
sometimes it's hard to post every day, but you can always catch up later. it's good to capture what was happening during November each year. I've found it interesting to look at the previous year's videos / blog entries - I was traveling then too but in different countries so it seems many of my videos are along similar themes.
Dhobi Ghat is a public outdoor laundry where clothes of the local people and hospital & school laundry is done. it's cool to watch - hard work. I asked if the women do this too and he mentioned they wash on other days but that it's heavy duty work so is mostly done by men. it's one of the icons of Mumbai. it's next to a train station where you can see the old trains with people hanging out the doors on weekdays - another iconic image of Mumbai.
VloMo08 : day15 - Dhobi Ghat Mumbai - public laundry
the only place I've seen clear skies whilst in India this trip has been whilst flying above the clouds. often when you're above the clouds you can still see glimpses of the ground whislt there's still light - but the Delhi - Mumbai flight I took 14/11/2008 had a constant thick blanket of smog.
another thing to be lucky for - back home the skies are so clear and blue. this is going into winter in India so there's usually less blue skies, but the smog seems heavier than I remember from 2006 - perhaps I've been away too long.
Mumbai airport is really nice - I thought I'd taken a video but can't find the clip. the hotel I'm staying at is not far from the airport and has an amazing, grandiose foyer - each room opens to the foyer. it's the Intercontinental "The Grand" Hotel. owned by a wealthy, prominent Indian family / company - when you turn on the tv you see a documentary about the owner's life & the story of how he built hotels, and manufactured cars + more.
tap water in Delhi - it looks the same as home but I get sick if I drink any of this. they have free bottles of water to drink & brush your teeth with at the hotels. the hotels have extra filtration systems, but I'd rather not risk it.
in Delhi water trucks drive around the streets and people take plastic bottles & buckets to fill up once a day. in some villages / hutments (slums) the communal tap only works for an hour or so twice a day - early in the morning or later at night. whilst India gets a lot of water in monsoon season - some cities flood - there's problems with the quality of water. in people's homes there's usually a water filter for a special drinking tap separate to the main water feed. so whilst at home we take it for granted that the water from the tap is safe to drink, in some places it's a luxury.
(trying out the zoom like in the other water tap videos - I don't seem to have a macro setting, or if I do I haven't found it yet)
actually I liked the sounds of the different streams of water as it went down the drain
VloMo08 : day12 - Palms Town & Country Club Gurgaon, near Delhi, India
a quick video of room 105 at The Palms Town & Country Club in Gurgaon, where I'm staying this week. off to Mumbai / Bombay next week for a couple of weeks.
I went to dinner tonight with Ricky from work - he took me to the Korean / Chinese restaurant K2 in Gurgaon. & he explained the dishes we had. I had battery problems so some of what he said wasn't saved. the food was very tasty! there's also a karoke room but we didn't do this! others had booked the room
driving home in Gurgaon - it's a 35km road leading up to a toll way and it takes about an hour to reach the toll in the evenings. even the motorbikes have problems getting through. maybe a 4wd would have better luck
VloMo08 - day 10
10/11/2008
Gurgaon, India
(I'm a couple of days late - was in transit and had missing luggage problems & conversions on pc haven't been going to plan)
- this one's shot using the sony hdr-cx12e (pal)
- converted to avi on windows xp using voltaic hd (win) -> the windows version converts to either avi or wmv but it fails wmv on my pc as something's missing
- then avi converted to mp4 in SUPER (erightsoft.com/SUPER.html)
- then selected 720 size in QT pro (windows) to scale screen display
I think the HD camera did well shooting at night through the car windscreen - this is using lights from the cars.
VloMo08 : day9 - off to the bookstore @ South Extension I & home again
went for a drive to South Extension I to find Midland Books to buy the Sarai Reader 07 (sarai.net). I ended up buying a few other books too. and some sights out the car window. it's amazing - I recognised many of the streets of Delhi, some things don't change
Delhi's much more smoggy than I remember from 2006 when I was last here. it's the start of winter so there's fog as well at times. but visibility is low.
this time I'm staying in Gurgaon - it's in the next state to Delhi called Haryana. it's where some of the high tech companies have setup offices, and home to many of the Delhi call centres. they're building the Delhi Metro - a modern, air conditioned electric train line that travels throughout the city. many buildings are being constructed. so the dusty streets have more dust than usual.
Gurgaon is a newer satellite city in the state of Haryana, seperated from Delhi by a toll booth where cars pay 21Rs. previously this was a rural area with lots of farming land and villages. this causes traffic jams as people try to find 1Rs or wait for change. trucks wait by the side of the road much of their time as they're not allowed to drive in delhi at certain times. there's an anecdote in the book "Globality" that I read on the plane on the way here (I'll find the quote tonight) (& I asked one of the guys here) that a trip that should take 8hours in a truck to deliver goods from one city to another can take up to 36 hours - much of the time the driver is parked by the side of the road. road conditions are also a factor too.
the city is less than 10years old - the architecture here is much more western and many of the buildings are modern highrises. there's new apartments too for IT workers though they are expensive to buy at 50lakh + (1lakh=100000 rupees). it's a 'cybercity'. there's not a lot of infrastructure for the people though eg you need a car to get to one of the new malls. there's less street stalls where most people in india buy their food & household items. the metro is planning to be ready to Gurgaon before Commonwealth Games in 2010, though it doesn't reach all areas in Gurgaon. the people like the metro as a 30km journey can take ~20mins as opposed to 1-2hours in a car/motorbike (depending on time of day/traffic/road conditions)
sarai members/fellows have done studies on (amongst a wide variety of other things!) the malls and people in india and relocation issues. their publications are available online free to read, though I like to buy a printed copy whenever I come to delhi.
(I'm on hotel internet which is very slow so have only uploaded these to vimeo so far. I'll try upload to blip -> mefeedia soon)
this is part2 of a quick video showing some of my favourite magazines from the early-mid 90s and now. I tried to save the first part (Mondo 2000, Boing Boing, Arthur) but it's taking over an hour to save and then crashes the conversion program - still ironing out best methods for my new HD camera. I'll try do it tomorrow but I've got to fly to Delhi so not sure if I'll have time (esp. if it keeps failing)
this is a video from a couple of clips taken in May 2008 when I was in Jerusalem. there's usually a break circle most Thursday nights and other nights in warmer months. usually there's quite a crowd. it's hard to get a good shot!
- extracted video .mts file (20.8Mb) from Sony HDR-CX12E camera using VoltaicHD (this made a 300Mb .mov file)
- opened in QT Pro - I changed the res to 800x640 here (so I could see it, for future reference I should change it to 1280x720 here as I think this is why it's not showing the HD logo) original file from camera is 1888x1062
- exported using Vimeo HD FAQ settings - h.264, 30fps, 3kbps (15Mb file!!! finally - great compression & it kept the quality)
- opened in QT Pro and changed resolution to 1280x720
(my camera does 1080i - PAL / Australian std - vimeo seems to want 720p)