Untitled
The Hills are known for its scenic beauty, which attracts tourists from all over the world, with tourism being one of the main commercially lucrative ventures. In an attempt to fulfill this greed, the very Hills itself have been landscaped, devoid of their natural beauty and now an epitome of advanced construction techniques and technologies. But nature is a force to be reckoned with, where every new imprint on the landscape gives way to structural ruptures, awaiting disaster. As J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan of the Supreme Court Bench of Justices said “If things proceed the way they are as on date, then the day is not far when the entire State of Himachal Pradesh may vanish in thin air from the map of the country”.
Through this project, I try to put forward a set of images that are representative of this reality. With these speculative images, I am trying to represent this ruptured landscape, a closer examination of which reveals these micro failures, the reality of these modernized construction techniques, where every new building is the embodiment of a game of russian roulette, but looking at the “bigger picture”, one is brought to terms with the grim reality I find myself in.
Proposal
INTRODUCTION
In this post photography era the image is threatened by saturation, impacting its visibility, archival potential and survival. Joan Fontcuberta’s contribution is crucial in this context. Conceptualising the idea of post photography as a marriage between image, technology and the Internet and highlights how technical systems and networked circulation shape the image long before we encounter it.
The shift from traditional photography to digital imaging, where images are represented as binary code and viewed on screens, challenges the traditional understanding of images. The photograph, once prized for its indexical link to reality, is now a mutable piece of data defined by its binary code. Images no longer live as physical entities but are constantly encoded and decoded whenever accessed. This process is governed by the invisible rules of each technology.
My method is to break these rules on purpose. Post photography doesn’t require cameras to generate images, relying on pre-existing information and data, unlike analog or digital photography. Through this project i want to use already existing images such as those circulating on public platforms, archives and networks
and build on them through acts of manipulation and translation to question authorship and originality. Where the original information is owned by the uploader and my intervention changes the form of these files which then become a base for me to work on.
APPROACH
My approach is founded on the principle of misuse. The information is transferred via the internet in different file formats. To transfer these files through a network these file formats act as protocols for the device to compress, encode and decode the information efficiently. I am treating protocols not as neutral tools but as systems of control that shape perception and dictate what can be seen and shared. By intentionally misapplying these systems, it is about seeing through a system in a way it was never meant to be used.
With my concerns mostly revolving around unsustainable development, built environments,climate change and complicity. I will be using already available videos, audios and photos in thepublic domain relating to these concerns and use it as a starting base for this project.
METHODOLOGY
● Data Bending & Glitch: Corrupting file structures to reveal the hidden architecture of
digital formats.
● Converting images into sound and sound into new images. Information from one medium
is mapped to another in an attempt to blur the lines between them.
● ASCII Art- translating images into text characters. This method reduces the complex
visual information of a photograph to a limited palette of symbols, creating a new image
from the raw material of language.
REFERENCES
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HITO STEYERL- is a German filmmaker, moving image artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary. Her principal topics of interest are media, technology, and the global circulation of images.
IN DEFENCE OF THE POOR IMAGE: an influential essay that redefines the value of an image Instead of judging images based on high resolution or quality, Steyerl argues that their significance lies in their circulation and speed across global digital networks.
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KURT CAVIEZEL- Kurt Caviezel transforms publicly accessible surveillance feeds into an expansive photographic archive, treating the internet itself as a camera. Through
and unseen narratives from global surveillance streams.algorithms and AI, he categorizes millions of images daily, revealing patterns, themes,
ERROR SERIES : Caviezel transforms unintentional error messages like "NO VIDEO," "offline," or "connection lost" into intentional art. This turns the failure of surveillance technology into the subject of the artwork itself.
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MISHKA HENNER- This Belgium-born, UK based artist creates research driven works across photography, film, sculpture, and publishing that interrogate technology, geopolitics, and human impact on the environment. Drawing extensively from online materials, their practice reconstructs and reframes imagery to expose hidden cultural and industrial infrastructures.
DUTCH LANDSCAPES: The series highlights the absurdity of government censorship; the conspicuous, stylized polygons ironically draw more attention to the hidden sites.Henner recontextualizes these state-mandated security blocks as abstract, artistic interventions on the landscape.The project redefines landscape photography by using found geospatial intelligence from the internet as its medium.
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ROSA MENKMAN- is a Dutch artist and theorist whose work explores glitches, noise, and compression artifacts as critical tools for understanding digital media. Glitch manifesto 2010is a seminal text in glitch art theory that argues against the consumer-driven ideal of technological perfection. Instead, Menkman champions the use of "noise artifacts" , the errors, compressions, and glitches inherent in digital media as a powerful tool for artistic and critical expression. The manifesto challenges readers to find catharsis and creative potential in system breakdowns.
MYOPIA- is a 2015 glitch art installation featuring a wall-sized image. The artwork magnifies artifacts from JPEG 2000 image compression, making the hidden digital compromises visible. Through this, Menkman explores a concept she calls "technological myopia"—our collective blindness to the unseen processes, compromises, and limitations embedded within digital technologies and standardized media formats. The project functions as a physical representation of how standardized "resolutions" obscure alternative possibilities and control what we can perceive.
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RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE- is a New Delhi-based art collective founded in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. The collective explores themes of time, history, and identity through various media, including film, installations, writing, and curation.
YAKSHA PRASHNA- Coal Dialogue is a philosophical and poetic script structured as a conversation. The interlocutors are the collective (Raqs) and two mythological guardian figures, a Yaksha and a Yakshi, who
have been residing in their studio. The dialogue uses the motif of coal to explore deep questions about energy, time, ecology, and human destiny.
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EUGINE SHINKLE- Eugenie Shinkle is a Reader in Photography at the Westminster School of Media Arts and Design, part of the University of Westminster in London. She is also a writer and photographer who has contributed to books and journals covering photography, digital game
studies, and architecture.
GLEN FESHIE- This artistic project, comprising the works Meteorite and The Deluge, uses a single set of 35mm photographs taken on a wild camping expedition in Glen Feshie, Scotland (October 2023). The
images, captured at a waterfall on the first day, later became the sole material for both works, created in direct response to a torrential rain event that caused severe flooding during the trip.