Space Form and Structure

This is a course in the 2nd Semester at the National Institute of Design. It is a very interesting course, albeit challenging. It's not very easy to get in the 'feel' or in the 'zone', but once you do, you start to see the world in a whole new way.

For the first assignment we were told to study shadows. Now shadows aren't exactly high up in your list of things to observe, so when you do sit down and start studying them, its shocking how we have managed to miss out on a parallel world that is right at our feet.

Here are a couple of shadows I found around the campus,









Before studying Colour and Composition in the first semester, I thought I was blind. But now I'm seeing now more and more of the world. It is as if someone has just switched on the lights. It's beggars belief as to how much we don't perceive, even though we can physically see it. There are whole new world out there, lying undiscovered. It's all very well sending men to the Moon, and fulfilling our ambition to send a probe to the outer edges of our local Solar System, and yes, it is exciting to see new worlds out there in the universe, but if we all just looked closely at our surroundings, there are universes just waiting to be discovered.

Next we studied where and how camouflage takes place. So we did plenty of research, and lo and behold. Suddenly the animal kingdom starts to seem very high tech. Our stealth fighters and anti-radar systems have nothing close to the camouflage firepower of the creatures who live in the rainforests, or on the ocean floor. The opposite of camouflage, contrast, also makes for a good read.


Mimic Octopus

Cuttlefish


For the final assignment of the week, we were to go out to an area and study the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures of that area. Easy enough? Then we were told to represent our feelings onto a 10cm x 10cm thumbnail with colours.

Now, read the bit above again. Feelings. It's close to impossible to represent feelings physically. I mean how do you express your feelings, on paper? I genuinely thought the faculty had gone bonkers. Still, I stuck at it, spending time at my area, and experiencing all what it had to offer to my five(+1) senses. Initially, I came up blank. It was all black, no matter what I ate, to what I heard and to what I smelt. But slowly I started to get a hang for it. When you eat something, a dash of, well, a feeling pops up. But when you try to touch it, or try to see it clearly, it disappears. You become conscious of the fact that you are reaching into your inner feelings, and just like a chemical reaction, the colour disappears when you disturb the solution.



But slowly and steadily you start to catch a glimpse and then fully experience those feelings. It might sound far fetched if I called the feeling other-worldly, but its a new sensation, and a very pleasant
sensation at that.

Here are a few sounds I heard at the area I was studying at,




As the for the (+1) sense, or the Sixth Sense, is what we feel when all the senses combine to give us information. We use our Sixth Sense all the time, and we don't realize it. Only in dangerous situations can we feel that strong urge or push from our brain. For example, if you stand on the edge of a tall cliff or building, you brain physically forces you to step off. It would've realized this on taking in the perspective view from our eyes, the altitude from our sinuses and other various bits of information from the other senses. The sixth sense can also be called an instinctive reaction.
(Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink is a great read for more information our sixth sense, and also tells us the magnitude of power the sixth sense posses.)



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