Background: Some 90,000 farmers have killed themselves in parts of India. Many reasons have been ascribed to this. And the government has gone from denial to acknowledgment to offering limited solutions. The media has of course been following this extensively. Some deeply, some not. More can be read about here, here and here.

This project explores how highly complex issues like this could be experienced in some interactive sonic/musical way.

Description of project: This is a musical instrument which sonically interprets the farmer suicide cases reported in the English media. There are two two layers of sound, one a chant and the other a groan. The buttons at the corners of the red triangle can be pressed to add sounds to the soundscape.

The comment here is on the way grassroot situations are dealt with at macro/governmental levels it becomes a play, a game. The visitors to the installation were invited to similarly play with the situation. The way they want. The repetitiveness of the keywords which are picked up from news reports hints on the limited vocabulary the media works with to interpret this situation.

Technical description: RSS feeds of news reports of the farmer suicide cases are pulled in (thanks newsrack) keywords are extracted and built into a chant (using the text-to-speach for Processing: RiTa). The groan is built by chanting the same words very slowly (words/minute). The buttons manipulate Sine waves of different frequencies.

Documentation:

the program starts. the green circles represent the character-lengths of extracted words.

 
more and more circles… (a lot of words)

photographs of farmers and their families are pulled in from flickr

when the red buttons on the triangles are pressed they become gray. you can add sounds to the soundscape by pressing the buttons.

this is how it was installed. the canvas was projected on a wall and it could be controlled using a mouse on a “wobbly” surface

This is the recorded sound of one of the sessions: vid1.mp3

The project works best when run as a desktop application:

linux
mac os x
windows

The four pockets can be used to sprout moong, gram, beans etc., in quantity enough for a good snack.

back view

you can walk around with it. no problem. food growing on your back!

my moong sprouts were ready to eat in two days!

eat away!

Some pictures:

Rashmi Sirkar, a second year design student at Srishti has been working on a small (20-page) illustrated handbook on urban farming for CitySpinning. A draft is now ready and is available for download using the link below.

The handbook gives an overview, establishes the context and illustrates some mechanisms for easily growing vegetables in varied urban conditions (public or private spaces).

Download the draft (4.8 MB)

Redesigning the pot: It is a pot which is lined with a 3″ mote around it so that one grows the plant in the centre which is in turn surrounded by this mote which permanently keeps the clay around it wet. Once the water gets over, there is hole made where one can re-fill the mote using a pipe or a bottle or a jug.
This design for the pot fulfills the requirements of growing a plant, storing water and self watering, and an essential function of excretion from the plant.

We are done making it but it needs at least two weeks to dry after which it will be baked and tested. Hopefully this should work! Over and out.

Poster of the teaser poster for the tree-mounted self-watering unit which Tanushree and Shifali  have organized  at the Srishti old campus.

Before this:

fusing the mouth of tube by melting it

pouring molten wax to make waterproof hole which did not work

applying Mseal on both sides

cycle spare parts for pulley

selecting the tree

carrying the stuff to the tree

climbing the ladder

putting up the pulley

finally