Maria Watts interviewing Sonali Sridhar
AIM IM with sonali.
Sonali, what and when did you begin thinking about art and design as a career that you would pursue ? What did you do to when you figured out what you wanted to do?It started when I was in the 6th or 7th grade. I was interested in Architecture and Furniture Design. Very aesthetic in my approach to what I wanted to do with my life. By the time I was in the 12th Grade I moved away from Architecture as I thought it had too many boundaries and all conceptual work in architecture stayed unmade. At this point I applied to design schools as I was still interested and had a mind for problem and solution approach to life. Design unlike fine art for me addresses exactly that.
I studied for two years at Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in Bangalore India and then moved to the Atlanta College of Art.
Here I did Graphic / Communication Design as well as Printmaking
As a student who were some of your influences and what were some projects that inspired you to continue in that field ?Influences by category:
Design:
Tomato Project
Saul Bass
all the classics...
hmm i am blanking a bit
art:
Saul Lewit
Bill Viola
adbusters
Vito Acconci
Nan Golden
loads of people!
MC Escher
I had a lot more art influences vs Design.
Well, you seem to have a variety of artist from various mediums, how does someone from video or photography influence your work?Very heavily. Design is a nice mix of typography, photography and message
the photo and the type form the backbone of good design
http://www.acconci.com/
The acconci site is still under construction.
So if you dont know how to direct a photographer or a video artist so that you are able to extract a perfect image its a lot of problem. So as designers
we need to be educated in multi medias and also need to have a fine eye for style.
Because every problem needs a unique and different solution
I understand, so where do we see some of those influences in your work? And what kind of work are you primarily making these days?I have recently moved mediums. I have moved into electronics as a medium.
12:15 PM
I was saying I moved from Print design to Web and Interactive design this seems almost a natural transition as I was interested in people and problem solving - I moved mediums as people moved mediums it made no sense for me to design Billboards when all the conversation was occurring on the web.
As a designer, what was important to you - other than sending a message, problem solving, and style?This is when Marshall Mcluhans Medium is the Message was a highly influential book and as a designer one has a lot of subliminal consumer power. One needs to understand this when choosing to implement something. the ethics and responsibility as a designer is huge.
What are your basic responsibilities? Your personal responsibilities?I think they are deeply embedded in social politics.
When I was younger the two major values I had were:
1. corporate responsibility
2. environmental responsibility
These were the two areas that penetrated all my work from 1998 - 2003
From 2004 - now I am more involved with:
3. Data Transparency
4. Government and Social Responsibility - grassroots activism and movements
When you say government... explain?A lot of the work i currently do has to do with design work for applications that help bring citizens and government together, for instance:
http://topp.openplans.org/
http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/
Tell me in your words how this works...12:35 PM
There is a dire need for citizen involvement in a country like America here people are comfortable they are numbed by abundance of commodity people are not
used to rebellion or movements like people from poorer countries or people fro controlled countries this has led to the worst 8 years in America and we see the consequences now. It was still very hard to get people up and moving for this election but it happened only by the combined effort of grassroots mobilization groups and technology social networks for organizations, not to just socialize, but by mobilize platform/ framework. So for me design has moved into this.
The content is a significant shift.
It stops being about the way things look anymore Your goal is to educate or give the tools to educate organizations to effectively and efficiently?Yes and bring government into this mix as well.
12:40 PM
http://nyc.everyblock.com/locations/neighborhoods/williamsburg/#tallermap
So now its more about information not design...
Yes! its a mix of the two. The web has become accessible enough that designers are able to play with it and make long tables of data into visual info
this is a beautiful crossover and the data is live and current and so relevant
So the example i give you with every block, you see that basic problems that citizens have are being recorded now people have the power to go to government
so this is one example
Awesome, so these are projects that you like to be involved with.I think I have a better idea as to how you use design as your social and political activism. Earlier in the interview you said that you use electronics as your medium... Can you explain how you do that?As I came across the web as a design medium I got more and more curious about all the *content* in the *cloud*.
There were a number of things here that were key:
1. there was a lot of content
2. there were explicit instructions on how to code
3. there was a huge DIY culture building
This then made all the parts of my new work. I learned how to program and build electronic objects and contribute to the code community as well as take from it. Soon I was able to bring Narrative into every day objects Anthony Dunne was huge influence for me. I work with soft technology and wearable art,
if one could call it that.
Why were you drawn to these electronic objects? Wearable art?How did it go from internet design to wearable art?Well today if you were to empty anyone’s bag you would find keys, wallet, phone, camera, ipod, laptop and various other goodies. When you carry that much technology on you, there must be this psychic dependence on them. They can’t be left at home or work, they need to be on your body. That started to interest me a great deal, our *Second Skin *. The internet art was a short phase for me, I moved very quickly away from screen into real objects and digital influences on them. It was no big revelation, just an exploratory phase.
I work on screen for my day job and objects at night.
Curious how you got into wearable art and technology art does that have the same ethics involved with your design work?Well for starters I moved to New York for a grad school program that introduced me to some of it and once I got into it, it became a conversation of medium and message again.
If you are carrying something on you 12- 18 hours and that is carrying a reminder of something - like home or death in the Middle East what are your politics?
What is your stance? Where do you see yourself in the current political spectrum?
Right... and how does this translate through these technologies?Personally the way I have been playing with it is with embedded technology
little displays in jewelry, or embedded into sleeves and pockets. All my work is collaborative.
So with embedded technology, what do you hope to do?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmoun/tags/address/
This is a necklace with video art attached to it. Also we do bracelets with medical info inside it.
I think this is such a new and exciting mediumIt is!
Even with the ups and downs I feel we are carving a community of people and fast!
Last question… Ready? Where do you see yourself in 10 years...Oh no! 10 years! Currently I am all over the place
I am interested in Electronics as a communication medium as an art form, as a tool, as a language, as a standard of social operation, and as an energy harnesser. My interest still lies in design at the end how can these ideas develop into potential solution to problems? Problems we have with energy. Problems we have with communicating. Problems we have with socializing. Problems we have with education. Poverty, Capitalism and money grabbing!
In 10 years if I am in a place where I can make a difference in any one of the areas I would be happy to look back at today where all this story telling started.
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