Sandeep Ashwath (India)
1 – Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology
Sandeep Ashwath
Dr. Sandeep Ashwath is the Head of Program for Digital Media Arts at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India. He has a B.Sc. in Environmental Science and Post Graduate Diploma in Animation from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. He then completed an M.A. in animation from the Royal College of Art – London and a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Surrey – UK. Sandeep’s work as an animator ranges from traditional hand-drawn, paper-cutout techniques to minimally drawn characters expressing poetry. His research interests are in animation reception, mythology and construction of sacredness and animation education.
Abstract
Animation in India occupies a place of suspension. It was pitched as the most lucrative industry two decades ago, yet the growth has been mixed and hardly managed to meet this expectation. The diverse state of Indian animation is hard to grasp and the scholarship on it too, is at a nascent stage. Clearly, it is a microcosm of the global shifts in animation as an industry and a knowledge area. It is multi-sited by nature as Paul Ward has noted, and rapidly evolving. This poses a challenge, especially for education. What should the framework for education be, that can provide skills for a shifting industry? What is the contemporary place of ‘animation’ in India? How can students be equipped to create an imaginative future for Indian animation? These are the concerns of the animation program at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, in Bangalore, India. Srishti has developed a tripartite system of designing courses and structuring assessment. Amartya Sen’s capability approach, Louis Hetland’s studio habits of the mind, and Geetanjali Sachdev’s dimensions of practice, support a design for an infinitely evolving curriculum. I will discuss the advantages of this system for animation pedagogy, and my attempt to retain the multi-sitedness of animation in the education model at Srishti. A playful and spatial understanding of this design, with cubes, knowledge fields and magic carpets, helps to locate learning in an ever-changing cosmos of animation as a discursive field.
Palavras-chave: animation skills, curriculum design, Indian animation
