Janu, S

McAndrew, CL

Sermon, P

English

UCL Discovery

Visual Arts Gallery  India Habitat Centre New Delhi     1. Name of the Artist(s), if group show provide names of the participating artists:  Prof. Paul Sermon, Dr Claire McAndrew, Swati Janu  2. Name of the Sponsoring Gallery/Foundation:  The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of a broader collaboration between UnBox, British Council and UK Science & Innovation Network, supported by the India Habitat Centre in Delhi and Southbank Centre in London  3. Gallery: Visual Arts Gallery  4. Dates of the Exhibition:  15-25th May & 28-31st May 2015  5. About the Exhibition (600 words):  3×4: exploring metaspace platforms for inclusive future cities   In megacities such as Delhi and Mumbai - and within one of the fastest growing cities within the world, Ahmedabad - more than 50% of the population live in informal urban settlements. 3 × 4 metres is the plot size often provided in resettlement colonies, a government initiative which relocates people within informal inner-city settlements to vacant land on the periphery. In a collaboration between Professor Paul Sermon at the University of Brighton, Dr Claire McAndrew at the UCL Institute for Digital Innovation in the Built Environment and Swati Janu, a Delhi-based Community Architect, the project 3×4 exploring metaspace platforms for inclusive future cities looked at informal settlements differently where informality is not viewed as a problem, but a promising new model of urbanism for the global south.    3×4 was an interactive telepresent public video installation designed for site-specific user interaction between audiences in Delhi and London. It used an immersive telematic networked environment to provide a playful, sensorial exploration of new hybrids of digital space. Merging two 3×4 metre room installations in Delhi and London through mixed-reality, this transnational dialogue intended to set an aspiration for developing metaspace platforms in megacities of the global south. The project built upon practice-based research conducted as UnBox LABS 2014 Fellows in Ahmedabad, India; which used an immersive installation to explore the qualities and values built through self-organised communities that are lost in the resettlement process.   3×4 contributed to our social imaginary by providing a platform to see informal settlements differently, disrupting common perceptions through artistic performance. By connecting public audiences in Delhi and London, it opened opportunities for citizens to participate in their city and practice new ways of seeing. Internet users in London, Delhi and around the world were invited to upload images of 3×4 metre living spaces, whatever they interpreted and imagined that to be. Participants were also encouraged to download the contributions of others, modifying and re-uploading them to co-create images of future cities. Crossing reality with fiction, these images became the background scenes in which audiences are located. This co-creation of built and imagined landscapes offered opportunity to redefine collective futures, a critical visual commentary on living spaces, racial segregation, informality, underground culture and contemplative fantasies. Not just imaginings, 3×4 also morphed into a playground of spontaneous and undirected play. Virtual games of cricket emerged amongst adults in Delhi and London. Using their bodies as an interface, participants even shared a digital chair – emblematic perhaps of their shared digital future. Young girls playfully hid behind green umbrellas and boys projected a green paper airplane across the shared space.   Artistic performance can bring built and imagined spaces closer together, creating new typologies that shape thinking about how we occupy space in cities. 3×4 comes at a time where cities are reaching breaking point of swelling populations, where lack of affordability limits opportunities to participate in cities and where our ingrained view is to see the global north as the bearer of ‘solutions’ to the ‘challenges’ of the global south. It is from this search for alternative social imaginaries that value the self-made and temporary nature of informality, alongside the unfolding hybrid of physical place and digital space, that cities of the future will arise.  3×4 was exhibited at the India Habitat Centre’s Visual Arts Gallery, linked to the Southbank Centre’s Alchemy Festival from 15 to 25 May 2015 and Web We Want Festival from 28 to 31 May 2015. It has previously been shown at UnBox Festival 2014 in collaboration with Khōj International Artist’s Association at Khirki Extension in Delhi.  6. Images:                 

3×4 Exploring metaspace platforms for inclusive future cities

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10040336/1/Sermon%2C%20McAndrew%20and%20Janu%20%282017%29%203x4%20exploring%20metaspace%20platforms%20for%20inclusive%20future%20cities.pdf

3×4 Exploring metaspace platforms for inclusive future cities

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