18 years of my adolescent age since the time I was born till the time I first encroached the territories of adulthood (signified by the most significant decision of my life - a career in discipline of architecture and not age) and hardly any direct encounter with the world of digital. The video games -passion of my brother, the arena of pc games like Packman -my favorite pass time in the computer lab were the only two things that I recall from the memoirs of such a large time frame, which came any bit closer to making an entry into my digital memory.
The very first year of my architectural training, and the first learning experiences which I have are of isometric drawings and freehand perspectives. The isometric drawings attempted to open our vision by displaying all the three dimensions of a particular object yet restricting our sight to a singular position. To achieve the flexibility of viewing the multidimensional qualities of an object from various directions one had to go through the tedious task of producing a number of drawings. And the question that had been arising time and again since childhood was when would life become simpler, would there ever be a stage when we don’t have to endure a backward complex, when would technology advance enough so that we don’t question ourselves - what age are we living in?
Moving on to the exterior territories, for the first time I come in direct contact with the concept of space…the architectural study tours compelled us to analyze the buildings and their sites for future visual analysis. One of the challenges faced in this context was to capture the building with their surroundings, the phenomena of site specificity came to the foreground and also my camera. It was a period of major transition for my artistic career as I entered into the realm of photography for the first time. The camera which captured a number of details of the building at a much transparent level proved to be much more advantageous than the free hand sketching which negated the concept of less is more. The less captured in this context with a lot of more time was always not much preferred.
Moreover the context of the site was very important to locate and associate a particularbuilding to a specific place which could be captured within a second with the photographic lens. The more exasperating moment came when I viewed on television - the travel and tourism programmes, a documentary on the same buildings which I had visited recently , presenting details other than the ones I captured. Such superior times when I fantasize about doing a much better job are the ones when I actually feel inferior, technologically handicapped , are the ones when I am forced to doubt my own skills and question myself again what age am I living in?
Although my dialogue with the television media in most cases than one has not been very pleasant, the media movie has fascinated me in more ways than one. The digital Dolby sound which was a recent discovery …made all the difference to my conception of movies., films like the matrix would have not left such a profound impact on my memory if digital sonography didn’t come in action
The most constructive technological advancement of my architectural career was the authorization to use the AutoCAD. Not only did it resolve the problem of high precision which was not very achievable with hand drawing, it also saved on time. The duplication of housing blocks, plans, details, all became much faster. The 3d drawings in some way had an edge over the photographic medium too as they resolved the problem of multidirectional viewpoints in a singular attempt.
Another of my architectural trips to the Taj Mahal of Agra, one of the most desired places which I wished to capture within my visual lens. Presence of family compelled me to explore a yet new digital medium, the movie. The shortage of quality time did not interfere with the quantity of information I managed to amass in a limited timeframe with the aid of my digital camcorder.
I begin my professional career as an architect. The DMRC (Delhi Metro Rail Cooperation) was one of the first and most daunting tasks of my career, as there was not only a scope of zero error , it required the production of construction drawings which were totally alien to me. The
two attributes of the digital which came to my rescue were the AutoCAD software and the technology of interconnectivity - LAN . Projects of such large scale would be a nightmare without such technologies and as one is contemplating on the merits of sharing programs from other computers connected to the same network one wonders what age are we living in?
The presence of the digital age then came to the foreground as I realized the significance of digital penetration not only in the rofessional work sphere but also the personal domestic and recreational arena. The internet technology made it possible for me to chat with best of friends round the globe or attain information from across the world . Till date it stands as the most productive technology as at present it connects the alien (me) to my nation. This was also the age when I started discerning the existence of the digital times at places of recreation. Be it the display signs of the ongoing movies at a theatre or the scoreboards at a bowling alley, the digital appeared at forefront not only contributing to the glamour of the entertainment world but also in true way making recreation a leisure task devoid of any tribulation. And again the thought that if digital age has made life less strenuous in comparison to 10 years down the past what age would we be living in 10 years up the future??
My entry into the territory of architectural writing, the editorial department of an architectural journal. Besides storing all the essential information in a digital diary and gaining better proficiency over Microsoft office, I am introduced to a new software - the Quark express. The knowledge of Photoshop failed in comparison to this application as it not only produced the desired photo effects but facilitated the duplication of page layouts at much larger scales.
But the biggest contribution which completely shuddered my perception of digital use was the concept of digital art. An entry published in the journal carried the work of artist Swarup Gupta who found the computer to be the perfect medium to juxtapose his love for nature and travel with the earlier concepts he experimented with architecture. With the aid of recent developments in computer technology, he used virtual environment to produce unique and startling effects.
Art, of all the fields had been considered relatively untouched by the latest technological advancement has also surrendered to the power of digital. With this thought in mind I am prepared to exploit the terrain of the digital which has encroached every possible domain of the age we are living in….
