MV:
Now you are taking this back to India. You set up a foundation
there. How did you make that decision and what are you working
on in India?
RM: The Sacred World Foundation,
as the name implies, is about realising a sacred world. We
are documenting the world's sacred traditions through digital
media. But there is a larger theme behind this: 20% of the
world controls 80%. The 20% defines and produces the technology
and the design of the technology for the whole world. The
other 80% is situated in a social discourse, in traditional
interaction design, but have no control on the forms of expression
of the technology. Can you build bridges between the two worlds?
Another way to put this would be through the digital divide
argument. Can you design for the remaining four billion and
can innovation arise from those people? The Sacred World Foundation
is trying to develop bridges of understanding because we believe
that both sides need each other. It's for the mutual benefit
of both to build technology that is integrated with art and
culture, and have culture reinforce technology. In the context
of developing nations, it's about culturally-reflective, culturally
appropriate computing. In the context of modern man, it's
about the need for bringing ornament and sensuality back in
a world, which would otherwise homogenise its users through
black and beige boxes.
MV: How do you do that?
RM: The foundation's projects
would generally focus on a very highly expressive domain,
such as for example Chinese art, the goddess Guanyin or the
sacred city of Banaras. These are all domains that are highly
rich and force designers to respond to that rich content,
provoking better and richer designs. Second, since I am in
India, I have the option to include the world's traditional
designers in the process itself: craftsmen, artists, painters,
musicians, dancers. So you get to get a much richer result.
I really believe that these craftsmen are designers. But instead
of disenfranchising them, can we just include them in the
loop? Our project team's aim is not to creating a mass-produced
technology, but rather to make sure that there is sufficient
variation, so that the resulting technology is not homogenised
and mass-produced.
MV: Can you give us an example of a project
that you have developed with this approach?
RM: My recent work, the
Crossing, is looking at new forms of hardware and mobile devices
that unlock the symbols, spaces and interpretations of Banaras.
This would be an example of a project in which there was multiple
layers of design: from crafts, to metal work, to wood crafts,
to paintings, to all the stuff that we do with embedded programming
such as in situ embedded audio and graphics, to video, to
graphic design, to multimedia design-all of this integrated
to create very rich experiences.
MV: Can you describe the experience? If
people walked in, saw the Crossing, what did they see? What
did they experience?
RM: The Crossing project
exhibition ran during the era prior to tangible computing
and Ubicom [Ubiquitous Computing]. It explored mobility, gesture
and what the notion of connection means for a traditional
society. Traditional societies gather around pilgrimage spots.
Banaras is such a pilgrimage spot where large gatherings of
people cross over into the world of transformation. Whereas
a cell phone or digital technology are modern forms of connection,
Banaras stands for the traditional connection. How do you
intersect the two forms of connection to create a new form
of art? When you enter the Crossing exhibit, you would see
these two themes. You have innovative interfaces using gesture,
hand-friendly, culture-friendly forms but with a content focusing
on traditional connection: pilgrimage, symbols, interaction
with the elements, how one integrates with nature. Banaras
as you know is a place that many Indians consider the ultimate
destination, where you cross over from the rounds of rebirth
so that you never come back. It has a transcendental quality.
The exhibit is divided into themes relating to the sacred
city, from the good life on the streets, the joy of living
and happiness, to issues of transcendence. These themes are
expressed through traditional cultural forms embedded with
technology, designed with craftsmen. The designs will unlock
the content.
MV: So people saw interactive displays
shaped within a traditional ritualistic form?
RM: That's right. Our forms
were derived from time-tested forms and ancient visions. When
we later analysed them, we realised that they were actually
highly contemporary. The form of the egg for instance, is
an Indian symbol of the cosmic primal state of the cosmos,
but is also derived from the form of the concavity created
by clasped hands. The pot is a symbol of the goddess Ganges,
and represents fertility, fecundity. It is also a cosmic primal
form, but if you hold it, it communicates: certain things
will happen to you, you feel compassionate. There is an iconography
in this connection to the forms. We are trying to make sure
that modern man has a connection to these primal forms, so
that you remember eco-consciousness, as the goddess is a personification
of nature, for example. Holding the pot is a way to remember
both the fertility of nature but also a contemporary element.
This happens at both the content level as well as the form
level.
MV: Was the exhibition targeted towards
the more urban Indian who was perhaps disconnected from these
ritualistic traditions or towards the people who participate
in these traditions but are not very well in touch with technological
possibilities that could be relevant for them?
RM: Actually, it is both.
Our exhibitions were in urban cities. And urban cities by
default had the advantage of allowing us to disseminate the
value of tradition to people with modern sensibilities. We
also had workshops with village children and underprivileged
children, children from the slums. There we realised that
these interfaces without keyboards, mice, multiple overlapping
windows, and cut, copy and paste commands, are actually quite
natural for people to relate to. People found it much easier
to interact with traditional cultural forms with embedded
computation, tactility and tangibility, than with keyboard
and mouse. In hindsight, we reached out to both audiences,
although we set out to educate the urban audience about mythology.
We realised that these are forms, which can bypass any form
of contemporary computing access. Our work did, in that sense,
achieve a culturally reflective quality and this may be the
way for people who are illiterate with respect to English
and to understanding files and folders on the screen, to easily
access the magic of computing.
MV: In a workshop currently going on at
the Institute, second-year students have been asked to develop
a personal communication device for somebody they know. The
design is therefore highly personal, yet based on the underlying
thinking that if you develop something for a very specific
person-a friend, a family member-some of the lessons learnt
can be transferable to a large group of people. And in fact,
that is indeed the case. All the projects have relevance for
a larger context. It strikes me that your approach is somewhat
similar. You develop culturally relevant technological devices
for a highly specific cultural context, but you also aim to
say something larger and to transfer something back, which
you call the reversing of the digital divide. Can you tell
us something more about this approach? Can you give us some
examples of how this approach could be relevant for an audience
or a group of people outside of that specific cultural tradition?
RM: I think there are two
questions here. The first question is what we call in situ
research: do we do research in the abstract or do we do research
based on a concrete situation? Because of my personality and
my past track record, doing an in situ research-that means
having a focused theme with real goals, real applications
and real aesthetics-allowed us to study a larger cross-section
of the problem. Rather than going at it abstract and trying
to solve all the cases and then trying to figure out the instance,
I'd rather work with the instance and going to the class.
MV: Bottom-up.
RM: Yes, bottom-up. One
can argue both ways. But in situ research has worked very
well for me. But there is also a larger question. This exhibition
and the workshop, made us realise how important it is that
we do not accidentally dump Silicon Valley concepts onto developing
nations. That is the digital divide question. If you can create
a methodology, by which cultures can create their own forms
and their own operating systems, then that will be very important
towards healing the digital divide. I think you reinforce
the digital divide by forcing people to think about Silicon
Valley concepts and black and beige boxes. If the net goal
is communication, usability, pleasantness, then you got to
make sure that users get a say in the design of the technology
that's being thrust upon them.
MV: So one approach you take is concrete:
working on alternatives to the Graphical User Interface that
are more intuitive for non-experienced users like there are
all over the world-not only in India by the way. The other
one is more strategic: developing a methodology for how you
can design culturally relevant technologies.
RM: In the Crossing project,
we communicated the multiple layers of Banaras through tangible
computing. I am sure that there is a critical mass in the
work that is happening in Ivrea and in MediaLab. There are
a lot of people working on tangible computing. Whether it's
called pervasive computing or ubicom, it's all tangible work.
Now given that there is such a critical mass, why could we
not develop a framework to create authoring tools so that
more and more people can create applications-a framework to
author compositions using such tangible devices. If you were
to reflect on the practical experience here in Ivrea and take
the results of the very diverse applications of tangible interfaces
a bit further, well, maybe there is a revolution waiting to
happen here. Like the way personal computing came. Suppose
you could figure out a way that you can take the abstraction
and hand it to a lot of people, so that everyone can create
their tangible application. There is a lot of potential there.
MV: You are now in Ivrea. I think it is
the third time that you are here now. You have seen the evolution
in the Institute from, I think, a construction site to the
second-year students now developing their theses. What is
your impression of the developments going on here and what
are you specifically involved with during these few days that
you are here?
RM: I am actually really pleased to see the
Institute's vision materialising and coming through, and this
includes hardware - that is the building I guess -software
- which is money, but also talent, faculty and research. You
mailed me all these beautiful postcards of the research and
I was really happy to see such a diverse body of work emerging
so quickly. What is more important is that design is driving
innovation here in Ivrea. This may be one of the very few
institutes where design with a substrate of technology is
driving innovation, and this as opposed to the classic situation
where computer science driving innovation and where the there
the designer gets called in when there is a problem, for packaging
or the last mile of design. Here designers get to do the first
mile. Given the right combination of implementers and designers,
something great could happen here.
MV: You are also getting involved with
students' work and sharpening their thesis concepts?
RM: Yes, I am having a lot
of fun, talking to the students and looking at some neat ideas,
which are emerging. For example in the mid-eighties and nineties
we were talking about learning through peripheral participation-some
of the work that's been happening at IRL. And it is really
touching to see a student build on this to use devices to
deliver in situ learning, for example. Or the whole question
about creating clouds of information, as mobile devices become
GPS friendly. It's really nice to see such ideas come out.
Each of these, for example, and there are many more to come,
are powerful approaches that have applications beyond just
the thesis.
MV: We have 24 nationalities here at the
Institute. And there is a large contingent of Indian students
here. We have six Indians, the third largest national body
of people here after Italians and Americans. You know several
of these students, some that you met before, one you actually
worked with. Do you see or feel a specific Indian sensitivity
coming through in their thinking or work, or is that not so
relevant here in Ivrea?
RM: There are a lot of things
that India could teach you, because it is a nature based traditional
society where interaction with the elements is of great importance.
Some of these ancient concepts are now being validated by
contemporary ecological thinking. That is a default, regardless
of whether there are Indian students here or not: we ought
to be thinking about the environment, we ought to be thinking
about gender issues, we ought to be addressing all these great
design needs. This has nothing to do with India. But India
certainly can offer, because it's had 2800 years of real tradition
dealing with thinking about nature. One example is India's
goddess traditions, which is in fact ecology personified so
that man's relationship with nature can be celebrated. That
is a global issue even though it may have originated in India.
Now more specifically about the Indian students: if they were
to go back to India, it would be really fantastic if they
were to work on developing computing appropriate for India,
help traditional communities appropriate concepts of tangible
computing and help reverse the digital divide. That way Interaction-Ivrea
will have empowered these students to become tangible computing
designers, to go back to their communities, and to spin off
other designers. And while the Indian students are in Italy,
I am sure they carry with them a rich worldview that can contribute
to all kinds of design fields.
MV: What will you talk about tomorrow
night?
RM: Tomorrow
night, I think I titled my lecture 'culturally reflective
computing' which is looking at developing culturally reflective
interfaces for the rest of us, which is those four billion
lying across the divide in emerging nations and emerging economies.
As computation migrates from developed nations to developing
nations, it's very important that we develop culturally appropriate
forms so that computing can increase its accessibility and
usability. This would be demonstrated primarily through the
Crossing project, which is looking at cultural interfaces
based on the traditions of Banaras, as well as a secular example
showing street art on taxis in Bombay. And if time permits,
I will talk about an authoring tool I am developing in a village,
precisely dealing with this issue of bringing in tangible
computing and the latest IT methodologies and inserting them
in a village context so that these communities can appropriate
these technologies at an early stage in the cycle of development
and leapfrog into innovation.
MV: People who read this interview on
the website and don't belong to this 20%, may feel rather
intimidated by the challenge of having to compete with the
strong and well-funded technology companies in the developed
world. What do you say to them?
RM: The 20-80 is just for
the sake of argument. Really we are all one world. If tools
and services and products need to be deployed in these emerging
areas, and probably they will, then these has to be designed
right. Then let's look at all those classical question: let's
not forget our heritage, let's remember nature, earth as a
mother, let's respect the woman, let's think about minorities,
ecology, recycling, not polluting. Let's learn from Mahatma
Gandhi: do we need more, or do we need less to do more? These
are my design values, my principles, and they are relevant
whether you are in the 20 or in the 80. For modern man especially,
given that you are interacting with displays more than you
are interacting with people. People spend more time in front
of a machine display or a keyboard than they spend with a
real person. Don't you need texture, ornamentation, mythologies,
or culture? These are the classical issues of our times. They
don't belong to India, Peru or Mexico. They belong to the
whole world. And they are very critical issues as well. We
are all in this world together. If you don't pay attention
to them right now, they will definitely surface at some point.
It is a zero-sum game. If you delay, it doesn't mean that
the issue will go away. These issues are rightful issues and
they are critical to the future of design.
MV: Thank you very much.
People I draw inspiration from
1. Louis Kahn, architect
2. Ali Akbar Khan, musician
3. Ludwig van Beethoven, musician
4. Adi Sankara, philosopher
5. Sri Ramakrishna, mystic saint
Favourite books
1. I don't read books
Favourite websites
1. Victoria and Albert Museum
2. Doors of Perception
3. MIT Media
Lab
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