JOIN USAlso set up at the gallery as part of the event was a sound installation that consisted of different textured pathways made up of sand, stone and gravel.
Visitors were required to walk on the surfaces and allow their footsteps to trigger off different sounds through the audio equipment. Unfortunately, the installation was turned off, so people could not really experience it. “We will have it operational again by Monday,” said one of the team members as people settled down to watch the video being screened. Also present was the film maker Kabir Mohanty who introduced his crew to the gathering.
“The people behind the art that we produce like the technicians and equipment men are like the monsoons of our country. If they fail it, is only because another resource has been severely depleted. I give a lot of credit to their hard work,” he said.
The video camera captured images of what appeared to be the artist’s neighbourhood. It panned across vaguely familiar streets and bylanes of Mumbai. It gradually moved across the expressive faces of traders like cobblers, petty shop merchants and small time workers. Then a voice in the background (ostensibly Mohanty’s) announced the arrival of Diwali. The camera then begins to focus on a few lights flashing off the buildings. Tiny and barely discernible a dot of light moved across the screen almost intermittently.
Frame after frame of grainy, hazy images run into one another in seemingly never ending succession. Images of people going about their daily lives — again hazy and barely focused. It was left to the viewer to make what he wanted out of the experience. “If only the sound installation was working, the whole experience might have been more rounded and satisfying,” said Franc, one of the visitors. “I was looking to find the connect or disconnect between image and sound but it didn’t happen,” he said.