I recently visited the Indian Institute of Technology. It is located on the shore, east of Powai Lake, adjacent a nature reserve to the north. It is misleading because it is quiet; absent of the congestion of Mumbai traffic. Amidst the institute's engineering facilities lies a small department for designers. It is there, among industrial-sized fabrication devices and a MAC lab which resembles a control room for a factory assembly line, that Sachin Datt tells me about the PhD research he has been working on for the last five years.
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"Datt Guy"
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It is just a small task; reconceptualizing the educational methodology for secondary school children. He envisions a holistic approach in which educational material is logically organized into a narrative, a story. Part fiction, part reality. This is not really a stretch of his imagination. Sachin is someone who has produced illustrations and stories by means of comics for years. He began this research because, at heart, he believes it is possible to teach children "innovation in thinking". It is not really a stretch for the human imagination as well. With all the inefficiencies built into the human genetic code, the one thing we are really good at is telling a story. We have been doing it for thousands of years, for thousands of lines of poetry and prose through the medium of oral traditions. We attribute the Iliad and the Odessey, but scholars are unable to trace historical evidence to a single author. (wiki) But, it only makes perfect sense; how else can you explain the survival of a story, one which reflects the contemporary moral, ethical, and heroic proportion, if not through the morphic, oral medium. It is constantly re-writing itself, much like the evolution of our newly found virtual environment which desperately seeks the same organic process.
It is certainly refreshing to hear someone who is turning their art into something which will, hopefully, have and enduring positive effect on others for years to come. I think this approach, of art-made-innovation, art-made-practical-application, [for lack of better term] is something that is needed. That is, if, as humans, we really wish to better the place in which we live. It is apparent that no one is going to take the helm of the earth ship and steer us clear into the future. It is task left to the ordinary; "dat girl" or "dat guy".
