We are coming to you from Mumbai, a city you might also know as Bombay. "We"
are 14 students
enrolled in "The Arts in Culture: The Arts of India" an undergraduate studies abroad course offered
by York University through its Fine Arts Cultural Studies Program in the Faculty of Fine Arts. Our
Professor is Dr. Denise Nuttall, a scholar of Indian arts and an accomplished tabla player. India is
her second home (some would argue her primary home) and for these three weeks, she has invited
us join her. Dr. Nuttall will be lecturing the way she would in any other course. But outside those
lectures, she’ll be taking us to meet musicians, dancers, artists, and filmmakers. We’ll be getting a
first hand look at Indian culture from its roots to Bollywood and back again.
Our daily podcast publication will be distributed through this site from 26 June 2006 to 14 July 2006. It’s the space where we’ll share our Indian adventure with anyone who has access to a PC, MP3, WMA or AAC. Dr. Renate Wickens, the Faculty of Fine Arts SoTEL Professor, came up with the idea of letting others see India through our collective eyes and ears. To that end, she functions as our conceptual media author.
Gordon B., our resident digital audio expert (sampling rates, bit depths, compression formats, and compression bitrates), is here with us now in Mumbai and will make sure our message makes it across this medium. Gordon is also a student in the course and, so, like the rest of us, will be talking to you about what he finds here.
Amy Mamtura is the designer of this website (conceptual and visual design, web structure and navigation, colors, images) and is also a student in this course. She is the creative mind that translates the vibrant nature of this course into what you see here. Amy is an undergraduate in the prestigious York/Sheridan Bachelor of Design Honors program.
So download us. Email us. While you’re listening to your iPod in Toronto, Canada or wherever you happen to be, you’ll hear the sounds of India, its culture, the people who make that culture and, with some luck, a whole lot of tabla. You’ll also hear the day to day insights this ancient and incredible land creates in the minds of one undergraduate university class.
These informal email blogs are a joint pedagogical venture between Professors Denise Nuttall and
Renate Wickens. Deliberately transparent, the email blogs offer a glimpse into the process of
engagement with diverse cultural materials, with the (f)ailing body, and with an unrelenting
physical space. Interdisciplinarity anyone?
RW