"I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories... water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Students building a prospective multimedia film-analysis tool using multisensory interfaces; Credit: Studio: Multimodal Interaction; Faculty: Dyutiman Mukhopadhyay
Vision
Art and design are critical to stimulate meaningful action around social, cultural, political and environmental issues facing the world today. From poverty and inequality, gender issues to climate change, artists and designers wield a powerful tool, in their ability to tell stories to impact life around them, to enable change and empower people.
Through powerful stories, cultures dream, grow and transform. Storytelling has the power to transform information into meaningful experiences. Information (and disinformation) is ubiquitous and omnipresent! We relentlessly use mobile phones to constantly record our life stories; posters inform, educate and make aware; illustrated books of every kind makes a narrative come alive; we use our bodies as powerful instruments to tell stories through performance, dance, theatre; we watch films that transport us to fictional or real worlds!
All of this is information…overwhelming, persuasive and constantly evolving.
The Information Arts and Information Design Practices (IAIDP) looks at the processes by which information is gathered, who this information is intended for. Emphasis is on developing, through a design or artistic process, the appropriate media for the dissemination and delivery of this information.
The aim is to nurture reflective practitioners who enquire into and interpret the world through storytelling. Using tools that record change; be it memories, cultures, personal narratives or vast amounts of data, students are encouraged to explore newer and imaginative ways to construct and craft knowledge, tell stories and responsibly create communication.
While the course helps acquire skills of media and communication design, social design is the primary focus. Work in diverse fields that range from conservation, gender, social communication, culture and heritage is encouraged. The core aim is to aspire to create work that creates social change in some way. The goal is to train oneself in diverse media, which include but not limited to - drawing, painting, photography, film, creative writing, graphic design, multimodal design, storytelling, computer graphics, interaction design and other art and design practices. Research, design process and methods, artistic process and methods and ethical ways of working closely with communities while collaborating with them are given special importance.
This course invites young people who are seeking to make a difference in the world with their work.
Students drawing Hase Chittara on Bamboo. Credits: Studio- Slow Thinking and Conservation by M S Savinaya
Analysing text and making connections. Looking at the nuances of human animal interaction using newspapers as a tool. Studio: Ethical dilemmas, engagement and decision making, Faculty: Chandrima Home
Course Structure
The curriculum comprises of different ways of learning as follows:
- Foundation introduces students to basic principles and tools of Art, Design and Technology as methods, tools and processes. Read more >>
- Disciplinary Studios are learning spaces where students develop core disciplinary capabilities, while navigating a trans-disciplinary environment
- General Studies is a common and compulsory programme of study that integrates Humanities, Sciences, Maths, business and finance. Development and Policy Studies and also offers Languages (Spanish, French and German) Read more >>
- Interim is an immersive introduction to practice in new and emerging areas of art and design and environmental exposure
- Electives are of three kinds - this program allows students to expand their skills, develop the interests as well as provide opportunities for travel exchange
- Internship/Apprenticeship is compulsory work experience done over the summer-break between the 6th and 7th semester
- Project based learning involves the application and synthesis of capabilities acquired. Two projects, pre-thesis and thesis, is culmination of the 4-year undergraduate program, which allows for demonstration of an integration of values, positions, capabilities and practice. Read more >>
Student created mixed-media zine, representative of 3 genres of literature brought together- shayari, rap and a piece from God of Small Things- Studio: ... by Shubhshree Mathur
Learning Approach
Learning at the Bachelor of Design in Information Arts and Information Design Practices
- We thrive in lively debates, dialogue, sensitive and ethical questioning on a range of issues
- We research into communities and contexts using participatory approaches
- We build multiple modes of expression for engagement in the field of literature, science, media, ecology and learning experiences.
- We employ data analysis, visualisation tools as well as artistic expression to create communication
- We create new technologies of representation by interpreting and visualizing data
- We explore hands on ways of crafting, design and development for traditional and digital platforms
Participants are using ink as a medium to explore the idea of portraiture. Credits: Workshop- Expressive Mediums by Veena Krishnakumar
Capability Sets
Upon successful completion of this course graduates will have developed the following capabilities:
- Experiment, choose context-sensitive media and create meaningful work
- Use multiple lenses to extract, interpret and engage with information
- Engage with communities using varied art and design tools and methodologies
- Emerge self-identity through ethical dilemmas, limitations and challenges
- Strategically intervene and innovate towards change communication
- Emerge practice with reflections on interdependence and symbiosis
Madhura Krishnan’s work from her “choose your own story” book where there are two parallel universes that eventually collide to form the Yelahanka that we know today. Studio: Information & Storytelling by Shubhshree Mathur
Opportunities
The above capability sets equip and prepare the student for a wide range of career opportunities with:
- Employment in Design Studios, Advertising Agencies and the Publishing Industry
- Employment in New Media and Software industry
- Employment in Media and Television Industry
- Employment in startups, small and medium enterprises, NGOs, social and educational enterprises.
- You can become a contemporary art practitioner, entrepreneur, design consultant
- You can have an active involvement in emerging domains such as digital arts and new technology, storytelling in new formats.
- Pursue your research and continue to do a PhD.
- Develop your own projects and apply for grants.
- Some jobs profiles could be
Design Strategist, Project Manager – Community Programme Services, Entrepreneur- Visual Designer. Artist. Arts Manager, Design consultant, Educator, Social justice Coordinator, Multicultural program coordinator, Cultural Design Practitioner, Creative Director, Program Manager, Creative and Cultural Researcher, Storyteller, Systems designer/ Consultant, Design Consultant, Educational designer, Eco-artist/ Eco –Designer
People
Enquiries
Disciplinary Intersections
The course is informed by the following disciplines:
Contemporary Art Practices
Digital Arts
Experimental Media Arts
Film
Game Art,
Design and Development
Language Arts
Textile Arts
Mathematics and Physical Sciences
Photography
Design Management
Human Centered Design
Systems Design
Information Technology
Visual Communication Design
Aesthetics and Critical Studies
Cultural Studies
Heritage and Conservation
Public History
Research and Collaboration
Centre for Reimagining Transitions (CRT)
Center for Public History (CPH)
Kabir Project
Blank Noise
SLabs
LeNS Lab
Centre for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA)
Impact Edge
Center for Education,
Research, Training, and Development (CERTAD)
FAQs
Information Arts and Information Design Practices is an emerging field. Today, the disciplinary boundaries across fields are porous and more people desire to experiment with creativity and communication in its multiple dimensions. Information Arts and Information Design Practices as a course allows students to grapple with diverse media and data that range from the artistic, informative to the technological; to find their own forms for communication and curating experiences. The core of this field lies in perception and interpretation of information in order to communicate. Communication can be personal, artistic and creative, it can also move into the space of a designer and expand into social communication and advocacy. Contemporary, exploratory and evocative, IAIDP offers space for crafting creativity and communication for a new era in human history.
People in this field are cross pollinators. They can seamlessly walk through media, arts and design. Driven by a desire to connect and evoke, they are willing explorers of simple and complex contexts alike. From environmental issues to human rights, from civic media to sonic art, from puppetry to web-design, their breadth and range of work are varied and experimental. They take communication to a new level in their ability to work across diverse fields through varied visualizations and technical explorations.
By opting for this course, students can evolve highly independent practice; ideate with far-reaching insights in whatever positions they choose to work in. From advertising to social communication, creative arts and design to technology based fields, graduates of this program have a wide and diverse playground to explore and find their niche.
Anyone who is willing to embrace diverse kinds of media, willing to engage with communities, analyze, evaluate and deepen their practice with relevant to contexts can become an IAIDP practitioner. If you are someone who is not completely satisfied with the idea of being an artist or a designer but feel that you want to bridge these two worlds, this could be very relevant course for you. Further if you are someone who is excited by technology and want to be at the cutting edge of contemporary approaches to art and communication, this course could help you build your practice.
At Srishti Manipal Institute, we particularly focus on issues, contexts and communities that have social and environmental relevance. If you are someone who is looking to make a difference in these areas and have a strong passion to tackle wicked problems, this would be a good fit for you.
An IAIDP practitioner would benefit from the natural curiosity to explore different media and modes of representation. These could range from drawing and painting media to performing arts, technology and softwares, writing and graphic design. An IAIDP practitioner essentially plays with diverse forms of representation to create new ways to engage people. Their strength lies in this diversity. Storytelling is an essential skill that cuts across all the diversity in this program and becomes the core essence of communication. A willingness to traverse from science to arts, philosophy to literature; esteem enduring and overarching values and principles of life; engage with complexityare attitudes that will hold the IAIDP practitioner in good stead.
Leadership, Context-sensitivity and Self-Reflexivity form the axis of the course. Communication, interpretation of information, engaging with the politics of information and pushing the boundaries of how information is gathered, interpreted and communicated using diverse media, formats and methods is the essential focus of the course. We work with art, design and technology to deal with wicked problems, contexts, issues and communities on social, educational, environmental, economic and political issues.
