Design Village students perform ‘Spatial and Performative aesthetics’, a narrative

The Design Village (TDV) organised "Spatial and Performative Aesthetics'', an academic course in the form of a staged event with the theme - “Elements of Design''. The guiding principle for the performance was the concept of movements binding all the elements together.

This was achieved via multiple media like sound design, lighting design, film and theatre performances. Everything from making a stage to composing background music, constructing props and costumes was done by the first-year students under the guidance of an academic facilitator, Pritesh Maru.

Embodying the elements and principles and of design the students were encouraged to adopt characters ranging from nothingness in space, to small dots, to lines, to shapes and three-dimensional forms like prism, cone, cuboid, etc. They also visualised and represented various textures like that of crumpled paper, rock, cotton and spikes. Using all the above elements and their learnings from the entire semester, the students showcased light performances to express various emotions and movements.

Pritesh Maru, mentor and facilitator of The Design Village, said, “The performance required intensive learning of the elements and principles of design by the students. Using Bahausian techniques of visualisation and representation, the students underwent iterations of working on paper using only black and white media. Having graduated from this idea of representing movement on a piece of paper, the students then were challenged to display their understanding in physical space through a comprehensive performance using all sense and time.”

In the course of this endeavour, students explored their learning of the basics of design principles, but were also able to leverage their learning for fun and engaging experiences. Each element, enacted tangibly, was itself a design and visual communication.