Title:
Exploring
digital media
Intro:
One of India’s important artists, B V Suresh
has been
exploring the digital media as a medium of artistic expression.
His workshop
in Goa,
which focuses on such exploration,
will culminate on a talk on the subject today
Patricia
Ann Alvares
As an
artist, B V Suresh is rather elusive,
always seriously engaged in art making. Like a poet, he creates
intense metaphors out of ordinary objects. His paintings,
installations and videos are adventurous in scale and intent. With
their strong imagery and technical mastery, they make unambiguous
statements about contemporary life, society and politics. These
experiments have today placed him on
the list
of India’s
important artists, whose works have travelled around the world.
As a
teacher – Assistant Professor of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts,
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, he has been pushing his
students to explore new media to express their ideas/thoughts.
“Today’s generation is so familiar with digital technology
that they use
it in their day-to-day
life. I am just helping to make them aware of
how they can
use new technology to express an idea and to restructure those ideas
in a new dimension,” he explains of the same precepts he applied at
his three-day workshop, which culminates with
a talk on the
same subject on the concluding day today.
“People are
familiar with their cell phones and videos, what they are unaware of
is how it can
be used for artistic expression.
Basically,
our main aim is to give them exposure.”
The
workshop,
which was an exploration of digital media like video and sound to
intermediate with other tangible materials,
helped push this precept.
The intention
was to also provide another dimension to regular practise
through playful mediation between static
and motion.
With
the aid of technology, he has been demonstrating how they can tackle
their ideas in a novel way. “Sometimes they have a vision but do
not know how to present it. Intermedia through video, digital
interphase (a programme which allows an artist to interact with their
expressions) is a good tool of expression.
Unlike
stationary art on the wall, every
time can be a
different experience; it’s
interactive and live interventions can also come into it,” he
elaborates, citing the example of video. “A video
has expression
and sound.
It has a
definite beginning
and end.
The span of
time is clearly demarcated and many people find it easier to work
within this frame.”
“Basically,
it’s
about intervention of various technology, like videomapping,” he
points out citing how with these interventions one can see multiple
things at the same time. “It’s
intervention, connotations and putting things together,” he
reiterates.
Unlike
conventional art, he points out
how it is much
more versatile and expressive to artists to communicate their ideas.
“Art on the wall is more mute or abstract, but intermedia art
communicates with different people at different levels.
People are
able to interact with it and given the reach of technology,
communication is much more wider,” he avers.
(New
media
‘Art
Talk’ by B V Suresh is being held at Sanskruti
Bhavan on February 18, 2016 at 4:30pm)
