I spoke with Meghna Singh about The Founders Pillars and The Power Loom at Tribeca Immersive 2025. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling in the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my coverage of different projects at Tropic Immersive 2025, today's episode is with a piece called The Founders Pillars and The Power Loom. So we'll start with... the founders pillars. So this originally started at MIT, looking at the home of the founder of MIT, which has like these six pillars. And they wanted to illustrate the fact that the founder of MIT owned slaves, and they wanted to start to tell the story of those slaves. And so they created this augmented reality application where you could overlay these African textiles on the context of these pillars. So Tropica Immersive this year is happening just a 10 minute walk from Wall Street. And so Wall Street actually also has like six pillars outside. And so the founders pillars were taking the same type of African textiles and projecting it on top of those pillars outside of the New York Stock Exchange. And so there's a deeper context to the story and that's explored in the context of the power loom. And so the power loom is. this physical based installation, it's got these pieces of yarn to kind of mimic what a loom would be. But it's got a projection map of these different textiles and images. And there's like six different chapters. And so there's different textiles from different regions of Africa. And then from each of those regions, then there's different mythological folklore and other stories that are being depicted through these generative AI, magical realism type of depictions. And so it's They're kind of like interweaved between those and you end up watching this like 12 minute video. So that has like a really robust sound design, but also you're seeing these different textiles and stories. And so one of the three creators were on site that had a chance to talk to Minga Singh, previously covered Minga and Simon Wood's previous project called Container during the pandemic in Venice 2021. And they also collaborated with Lisiba Mabitsela, who's a fashion designer and has quite an extensive knowledge of these different African textiles. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Minga happened on Friday, June 6th, 2025. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:25.888] Meghna Singh: So my name is Meghna Singh. I am a visual artist, academic and someone more recently working at the intersection of creative technologies and art. I, eight years ago, collaborated with filmmaker Simon Wood to make a piece called Container, which some of you might have seen. installation, virtual reality experience. We decided to try something else after virtual reality. So the new piece which is showing at Tribeca is called the Founders Pillars and the Power Loom. The Founders Pillars is an augmented reality experience which initially was done at MIT. It activated the pillars of the main building of MIT with the name of the founder engraved on top, William Barton Rogers. While we were doing a fellowship and based in Boston, we discovered that the founder actually had six enslaved people in his house in Virginia. And so we were part of an AR and public space collective, and we were trying to come up with an exhibition idea to look at the layers of space within MIT. And we thought that it would be amazing to kind of play with the fact that the founder himself was complicit in some way in historical slavery. And what were the chances that where his name is engraved, there's six columns, neoclassical columns or pillars upholding his name. And so it started with thinking that what if we wrap these pillars, not physically, through augmentation, in African textiles. And moving further along the process, we decided to collaborate with Lesiba Mabitsela, who is a South African-based artist and fashion designer and an expert in African textiles. And so that was really an interesting collaboration. He also founded something called the Africa Fashion Research Institute. And then I think we kind of, in a conversation with him, discovered that it was also problematic to actually like drape pillars or the idea of draping pillars in African fabric because what a lot of colonial museums or European museums have done is acquire artifacts or fabric from the African continent and displayed it without much of a background story. we came to the idea that it has to be dynamic, it has to be very different than just fabrics. And so the collaboration Simon and I had with Leciba was he curated as a starting point six textiles from six different regions, not countries, but regions of the African continent which were most affected by historical slavery. And in curating the set of six or selecting the six fabrics, he also gave us a certain myth or a folklore or a story, anecdote, contemporary and historical related to that textile. And then we responded in creating these. moving images, we used AI to generate these 90-second textile films. We like to call them textile films because it's not just a film. It's interwoven with the patterns of the textile. And so we responded to these very beautiful folklores and myths. And I think that the decision in using AI, you know, this was the first time we used it to create video, was also like, how does one in a short period of time with no budget try to create something which reflects on the idea of magical realism and is quite beautiful? It was way more difficult than we imagined because, you know, when we talk about decolonizing tools of AI in itself, it is true it's embedded in cliches and problematic imageries. So we'd keep trying and testing and more so Simon than myself in that part of the process and then just kind of generate one second of something which was beautiful and then keep trying to like play on that to generate something further. And so what we ended up having was these six textiles which become quite dynamic and playful. 90 seconds of that as an augmented reality experience. So at MIT it first showed a part of Artfinity Festival and then through the MIT Open Doc Lab we had our own exhibition called Layers of Space where there were eight other projects and then we were nominated to apply for Tribeca and we had been looking into the history of Wall Street this area and slavery for the previous project Container because we were here at Tribeca three years ago in 2022 with Container And then when we heard that the exhibition space of the Water Street projects, we got a bit excited saying that maybe we can propose the founders' pillars. And then Simon found that actually the New York Stock Exchange has six pillars. Again, neoclassical, very similar to the pillars at MIT. We always thought that the Founders Pillars is a project that can travel easily because there's this kind of architecture everywhere. And it just so happened we were lucky that there were six pillars. So we proposed that as an augmented reality experience, but then we had been also thinking of creating something related to the AR experience, which was more of a physical installation, and especially knowing that they would have a physical exhibition space. So, we decided that why don't we try to create a loom and we'd been very interested in working with textiles and threads and yarn and looms for the last few years and kind of, you know, use something which is more earthy and rural and kind of raw and juxtapose that with the imagery which is sort of more futuristic. So we proposed the idea of a floor loom. This one, which is in the exhibition, is specifically inspired by a floor loom in rural West Africa in Nigeria. And so what they would do there is just get bits of wood, you know, and put a pole and then basically start working, start weaving. So in a similar way, the framework of the loom is bits of wood. and then the thread in the middle and there's projection mapping on it, which makes it actually seem like the fabric is being woven. And then you see those textile films which you later see wrapped around those pillars. I actually got the bits of wood. It's African eucalyptus in my bag from South Africa. I just took a chance. And I was lucky to get through customs and set it up here. And then we decided underneath we would use sand. You can find red clay soil in that part of the region of Nigeria. So I like the fact that there's this red sand, which we got via Amazon. But it's real sand. It's Australian sand. That's a bit of a cheat there. But it's quite beautiful because some of the projection light actually seeps through the threads and then it creates this pattern on the sand. So it's almost like a secondary layer of the yarn on the sand. So that's the project.
[00:09:32.970] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's a beautiful piece and looking forward to unpacking all the different dimensions of it. But before I do that, I always like to ask my interviewees a little bit more around the context around their background and their journey in the space, just because I find that there's so much of an interdisciplinary fusion of all these different design practices that are coming into the space. And Because your other collaborators, Simon and Lesiba, are not here, maybe you could also give a bit more context as to their backgrounds and what they're bringing in into this collaboration. And so yeah, just love to hear a little bit more about your background and your journey into the space.
[00:10:05.663] Meghna Singh: Yes, I come from a video installation background but I also have a PhD in visual anthropology and for my PhD I was actually making a case for immersive environments within migration studies. So I think 15 years ago I was already looking at how tools of immersion can affect people's feelings towards migrants. And I'd looked at historical migration and contemporary migration. So Simon and I, when we started working together, the project incorporated quite a bit of that research around oceanic movements and the ports and container ships and globalization and how everything that seems which flows and moves smoothly actually doesn't. They're these pockets where things are made invisible. And how do we bring what's invisible and make it visible? So my background is research, video installation, and now increasingly installation, but using immersive technologies. Simon, you know, I'm speaking on his behalf, and I'm sure he'll be fine if I say so, comes from a documentary filmmaking background. And he's a cinematographer, a brilliant cinematographer, a storyteller. And so he comes from a background of filmmaking. And then we started putting our talents together in conceptualizing, filming, and then doing these installations. Lisiba Mabitsela is someone we've collaborated for the first time. I knew of them when I was doing my PhD. He was doing his master's and we were studio neighbours. He's a brilliant fashion designer and I think what he does very successfully is really break away from the stereotypes of African fashion. I mean, he's got these beautiful pieces which seem like a Yamamoto, Issey Miyake kind of design. And I think it was a few years ago he and someone called Erica, who's a fashion curator based in Johannesburg, they started a foundation called the Africa Fashion Research Institute. So we were quite excited because I think it wasn't just him being a fashion designer or having knowledge of African textiles, but just that in the last few years they'd been going and setting up some residencies in different parts of the continent. working with weavers and and so that's his background he's also an artist who's done the lab the new dimensions lab by electric south in south africa so you know he's explored with digital media himself and i think this has been a really good team but there are many more people besides the three of us you know we had Someone we work for the first time, Andre, who did the sound design. And that was an interesting collaboration, just kind of telling him about the project, giving him ideas, all three of us, and finally having the soundtrack that we hear along with the installation piece. I actually worked with a wooden toy maker in Cape Town to make these bits of, you know, which seems like a very simple piece of wood but to source something which is so sort of rustic and authentic and not in any way polished. Margo has a toy company called Margo Makes and so she came in the picture and then friend of mine an old friend of mine Ikshan Adams who's now very famous brilliant artist with these huge tapestries like showing work around the world I think he had a show coming up at the MoMA you know he kind of advised us in the beginning when we were trying to make the loom one of his assistants came on board also to help so it's yeah takes a village to raise a child kind of a thing
[00:13:45.191] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's a really beautiful piece and there's a number of different components to it. There's the physical installation that's here at the Tribeca Gallery. And then we actually took a little bit of a field trip yesterday to go to Wall Street to see the six columns and to see the augmented reality overlay of certain aspects of the video projected content that's being projected onto this loom that's installed here. And so it sounds like that you were working on a separate project that also had six columns that you were able to replicate some of the AR implementation. But in terms of this project and the content of the six different chapters and six different textures, where did you begin with starting to piece this all together? Because you have the video projection for what it's going to eventually look like on this loom that's... it got this really interesting texture that you could see it reflected onto the strings but also like underneath and yeah it's just a kind of a unique effect of light itself but then there's also just the content that you're producing so just curious to hear a little bit more about the process for where did you begin with starting to piece together this project
[00:14:48.843] Meghna Singh: Sure, I think we sort of went backwards in terms of the process. I think the process started from the idea of wanting to use textiles because we knew that textiles with the patterns have so much like stories in them. And then knowing that, we kind of went into specific stories. So like there's six different fabrics and they're over across a period of time. So there's a fabric from Sierra Leone called Gara and the story associated with it is around a pioneer woman who was doing tie dye called Mama Kede. and how she's not been recognized so it was also about giving her a sort of you know a tribute to her paying a tribute to her but from that story like we really kind of very playfully like you know kind of said how do we then visualize okay we know it's about Mama Kedi and it's about someone who's not recognized and was one of the pioneers of tie dye in Sierra Leone And then Lesiba provided a poem, you know, about a little girl who dreams of like floating amongst cotton buds. And then you see that visualized. And also like the story around freed enslaved people who return to Africa and they find themselves under a cotton tree in Sierra Leone. So in terms of the process, I think moving from, yes, we know textiles. I think it was essentially like, how do we create a memorial? I think it was a very basic thing. We've got six pillars. How do we create a memorial? And then the idea was it has to be a celebration. It can't be, you know, in remembrance, it can't be sorrowful because the names of the six people who were enslaved and served William Barter Rogers in his house, they don't exist in the archive. like a lot of names of people don't exist in the archive so how does it become more about you know more than just the six people but you know ancestry of african-americans are going back to the continent so it was yeah create a memorial create a playful celebratory memorial and then i guess like what are the stories that will speak to not just those six people but many like much more than that and then also finding stories across a period of time there's another one a fabric from Mozambique Kapulana it's a very popular fabric but then the fact that we could find one with the motif of Josina Michelle who was a freedom fighter on her death anniversary. They celebrate Women's Day in Mozambique, but they also give out these Kapulana fabrics to women who wear them. And so the sound you hear is in the soundtrack of these women jumping, skipping rope, you know. But what you see in the visuals is how the background, the patterns of the fabric then turn into fireworks. So it's kind of a celebration of... Yeah, and then when these six stories came together and they're wrapped separately on the pillars, it looks quite beautiful, but it speaks, you know, I guess speaks to the content in a way, represented through different regions, different stories of women, of men, of children. And then so the installation that you see, the power loom, is actually what should have been done first. Because the power loom is actually the source of it, the source of the generation of the textile and the fabric. But we kind of did it the reverse. We first wrapped the fabric on the pillars and then we start to produce the fabric. But I think the two are a good fit together in terms of seeing how the fabric's woven and then taking it and activating those billets.
[00:18:29.830] Kent Bye: Yeah, I was just thinking around this pipeline from doing this type of augmentation in a virtual space and then coming into physical reality. And I think it's pretty normal to start in the augmented space and then go into the physical realities because there's a lot more unboundedness for what you can do in a virtual space. And so I wanted to ask around this connection to fashion because you do have this interesting pipeline between using projection mapped types of technologies on the physical loom material, like the physicality of the strings But then you also have the augmented reality on the columns, which is in this more virtual space that you have a little bit more of that unboundedness where you can just be constrained by what you're limited for, how much pixels you can push. But then eventually, you know, I'd imagine that the type of fashion that we may see from augmented reality types of fashion to maybe even projection mapped experiences, but eventually maybe into like smart fabrics that are actually like more dynamic into augmented having more of this life that you're exhibiting in your project here may be a part of future fashion trends once some of the stuff that is starting in an augmentation context actually gets embedded into the materiality itself. And so I'm just curious if you have any reflections on like the smart materials or other things that, you know, the cutting edge of the material science end of things, and if that's not really quite there yet and you have to kind of lean upon these more virtual augmentation and projection map techniques.
[00:19:54.844] Meghna Singh: So it's funny you ask the question because Simon and I just finished our fellowship at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. And the project we went into the lab with was a project which we proposed that we'd be using smart fabrics which emit information on its own to tell the story of resistance and struggle and protest. And I think the idea was a structure, a central structure, a bit like a tent, but not really a tent. And then to basically work with some of the labs at the MIT Media Lab and see what they were doing to kind of develop this smart fabric and have archives of protests from different parts of the world under different themes and kind of, you know, have that as a kind of motive of resistance. But we didn't want to use any projection. I think where we got to was, yes, this fabric that exists with these tiny LEDs which are sort of inserted in between the layers of the fabric and it can be programmed and it can respond to a sensor and then you do see this information. However, I believe it was a bit limited in what it could showcase. So we were imagining videos, but I believe that was not possible. It could be just one imagery which could slowly change, but still exciting. However, we were asked to make a trip to China, and that never really happened. But that is a project which is still in the pipeline. And I have seen fashion designers who have used smart fabric where... things like depending on the temperature of the body the color will change and and those things already exist but I think it will be wonderful to be able to just roll a bit of fabric and put it on the screen and then you know without any projection just actually watch a film I don't know when that's going to happen but that's also a project we have we've kind of I think the loom also was because we were already looking at fabric and had gone into the history of fabric in India and looking at Gandhi and how he was weaving the cotton yarn. And so the project which I'm talking about is called The Beautiful Ones Will Be Born, which is around the idea of protest and resistance through smart fabrics. And we used the round charkha, the wheel and Gandhi's idea of resistance. You know, fabric is resistance because he basically started spinning cotton as a mode of resistance against the British colonizers and saying that we're going to make our own fabric. We don't need you to take our fabric, take it to the UK and send it back. So we buy it at like 10 times the price. So fabric is resistance. That's the project which we have in the pipeline.
[00:22:41.969] Kent Bye: No, yeah, yeah, no, it's a real interesting intersection there just because it's a pipeline going from what Alfred North Whitehead, a process philosopher, would say the mental pole, so more of these ideas down into like the physical pole of things that are actually manifest into physical reality. So I wanted to talk a bit about the actual structure of the piece, because it's six different chapters, essentially. With each of the different chapters, there's maybe some core textural patterns that are happening. And when you're watching the loom, it's scrolling up and out of the frame. So it's a way of editing between these. But within the context of each of these six different chapters, there's a way that you start to use glitch art to have at the edges the sense that it is a dynamic unfolding process rather than something that's static. And so it gives a sense of aliveness to it. But then you're also like deconstructing the normal patterns and almost like creating these portals sometimes as I was watching it and you're like, oh, and now you're having this shape that's kind of overlaid and then you get a viewpoint into another world and then you have these other scenes that are you know sometimes with these square or rectangular these get broken up into other little squares that those squares are able to then see these other video clips that are using different generative AI techniques and so just curious to hear a little bit more around the process of settling upon the structure of how to tell the story that's projected onto this loom and you know, this mixture between the art and the textures and these other generative AI pieces that we're trying to give some magical realism and poetic interpretation of these scenes.
[00:24:14.223] Meghna Singh: So, I mean, I think what you see installed at Tribeca is a bit different than what we imagined. We tested the loom in Cape Town and it was in a completely dark studio space. And if you were to put the loom in a completely dark space, It really feels like the cloth's being woven. I don't know if anyone's seen a digital loom, you know, how it moves and weaves the cloth. So in terms of the edit, Simon working with our editor and post-production person, Michael Carter, they made sure that it would, and with the sound of a real loom, it would kind of simulate a digital loom. So you always see it moving left to right, left to right, and that's how it's kind of weaving the textile. And so you kind of see that the textile's woven. And what was important for us, I think I mentioned earlier, is not to have the video as something which is then imposed onto the textile, but the textile is birthing these stories. And so you always see these patterns, they always remain with the visuals. or like sometimes if there is something which overtakes the entire canvas then you still see kind of lines beneath it and that's the reason we also call them textile films and not just films or videos. After one cloth is generated or woven and then you see the kind of film being birthed and interwoven between the patterns then it disappears and then we wanted it to be quite luminescent we superimposed threads with your threads on to real threads to this kind of idea of you know it's the power loom it's a magical loom it's not just a normal loom so i think that's when you see like the glitches and and the kind of luminous threads which maybe don't look so luminous because of the light but you know that's the kind of idea and the top bit which we actually kept there's a thread is a position where we place this heddle which is something if you're weaving then you would actually have that bit of gap and threads so it was kind of trying to simulate a real room i don't know if it answered your question
[00:26:23.737] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I wanted to dig into also the way that you're telling the story because you're not using any narration, you're not describing, you're not giving the context as to where things are specifically sourced. And so there's a lot of poetic imagination and magical realism that you're using to interpret different aspects of the story and using different generative AI techniques. And I guess the other thing is that you have a soundtrack, which I think is also adding like another emotional layer of giving a context where you kind of hear these like machine like sounds, but also other audio and music augmentation to this whole experience. But there's no words or there's no kind of explanation, no narration or dialogue or anything. And so it's left up to the viewer to interpret the symbolism that's there. So there's a lot, I think a lot of use of dream logic in these different pieces. And sometimes the dream logic has these universal symbols and sometimes they're more contextual or regional. And so I feel like this is a type of piece where there's a lot of these symbolism that I don't know exactly how to decode. And so it's very rich as a piece to start to understand those symbols. But I'm just wondering if you can maybe elaborate on both of the symbolism and this decision to go into this more magical realism and poetic imagination track for how you're telling the story.
[00:27:35.302] Meghna Singh: So I like the question around the sound because we did, working with Andre, I think one of the things he was told was imagine a futuristic loom. Like what is a loom sound in the future? And so he got quite excited and after the first pass of the sound, Lesiba was like, I've got sounds of a real loom from Uganda when we'd gone on a field trip. I think we have to use that to ground the audience into what the sound of a real loom is. And so you hear the sound of real loom, and then it kind of goes sort of machine-like. And I think Jazia might have said that in an interview with you, is that, you know, like, what does the future hold? The future might be going back to the basic source, which is like cotton, yarn, and thread. and so the question around like there's no dialogue there's an explanation of this is this fabric and this was the myth and so we made this responding to this myth you know i think in general to kind of like have people immersed in this kind of magical world without any words is also to maybe kind of respect and show knowledge systems which don't necessarily need to be told in words in a certain language in English you know and so where these stories come from from the different regions like how would they tell you this story I mean if they were to tell it in a way it would be very different than how we would say it so the last thing we were going to do is sit with some textile expert from Africa and say this is what this means you know And so in terms of respecting these knowledge systems, I think we just wanted people to be in a dark room, feel like they're watching the production of real fabric, and the fabric is dreaming. And what does this fabric dream of? The fabric dreams of these stories that are connected to the fabric. So in the village, if you think of the Okara cloth, there's a story around this mermaid rising from the bottom of the ocean and spreading these symbols, and that is a folklore that goes around. so we we just wanted people to have a sense of like this futuristic loom is producing this fabric and the fabric is ancient or contemporary but it comes from these spaces and what is the fabric dreaming of the fabric is dreaming of these certain stories that are held by generations and kind of circulate in those spaces yeah
[00:30:02.455] Kent Bye: Yeah. And in terms of using AI as the means for helping to generate some of this poetic imagination, AI is already from sometimes some questionable practices for how they're acquiring all this information and kind of synthesizing it. So that within itself is a colonizing force that then is being in some ways decolonized or trying to be tuned. And so maybe just talk about your process around negotiating the ethics of the AI in general, but also just how you're able to prompt and take a decolonized approach of trying to, or even just to elaborate on the different types of biases that you were discovering in this process of taking some of these models and then trying to do what you wanted to do and discovering some of the blind spots or things that weren't necessarily included within these data sets for trying to create this type of imagery of cultures and the African continent. So I'd just love to hear just a little bit more about your process of navigating all that.
[00:30:59.529] Meghna Singh: I think firstly like practically the decision to use AI was we had very little time and we did want to create what we'd imagined and so we're like let's give it a shot why it took much longer and we did believe we're going to encounter problems but obviously we hadn't been through the process so we didn't know what it was so like you know there's one of the fabrics Kuba from Angola where it's actually a beautiful velvety cloth where The association is around cosmology and the connection to ancestors and a story of the sun and moon chasing each other. So what you see is this elderly man and you see the sun in their eyes and then that man slowly turns into a younger man, to a boy, to a baby. oh we struggled with that one you know because the images of African men a lot of the times or most of the times were like them being looking really sort of shriveled and like you know kind of poor and really like all the cliches just play out in front of you and so it was like where do you find someone just like dressed up and normal looking that a man should be and then take that and try to you know but also things like inserting the Sun in someone's eye so it did take a lot of time like women like representation of women you know always somehow like you're trying to describe women they'll end up like in bare minimal clothes very sexualized which I guess maybe happens not just if you're trying to represent African woman but you know otherwise so we did struggle with that a lot but but I think there was a moment when Simon finally After trying for days, got this beautiful image because the story is this African queen who's leading her people to another land because they're escaping from war. And then she has to sacrifice her baby in the river so that the river will part and the people can cross. You know, it's that kind of a myth. And so we were trying to create the image of a beautiful African queen holding a baby. and struggled and struggled and struggled and finally, like, you know, he got this incredible image. But then the next day he was like, look, this is like the top image on Sora as a creation. And so with that, we were quite pleased because we like, OK, we were trying to play against the tool and, you know, kind of trying to create an image finally, which we are happy with. But we are also creating a new set of images then which will start existing. which don't necessarily exist so in terms of like when i say decolonize one thing is to kind of move away from what's being offered and push that further but also then to create a new data set a new set of images which are celebratory and beautiful and then they start to be shown as the image of the week you know and you don't necessarily see that kind of an image so I think there was like two things. Like we did create a new set of images which then I guess will exist for other people to use but those are very different than what exists.
[00:34:08.908] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I guess one of the things that I also find in seeing a piece like this is that I am left with an emotion of a feeling of a piece, rather than a story that I'm able to piece together, because it feels fragmentary, nonlinear, and a lot of symbolism that I'm not able to fully decode. And so I'm wondering, as you think about a project like this, because it is so rich with mythology and folklore and Other information, if there's other outlets, like if it's in a museum context, if there's like a program that people could read afterwards or if they want to read something and then come back to it and then appreciate more dimensions of it, because I feel like it's a very layered piece. But there's a lot of it that feels inaccessible to me because it feels like I'm walking into a dream and I don't know quite how to interpret the dream.
[00:34:50.942] Meghna Singh: I mean you basically are reflecting my emotions about the project. We planned to actually have a booklet with the different fabrics and the myths and how we imagined them. I think it wasn't possible in this specific context because no one else has booklets to be given out and I think in a museum context that would be the case. because we do want people to feel it and see it and see the visuals but it is important that they then understand what fabric it is and you know what is the myth instead of just kind of leaving with kind of more questions and the idea is not to kind of mystify it also the idea is to show people to share the knowledge of the selection of the fabrics So the next time we do it, and if it's in a different context, we definitely have a booklet detailing the different fabrics and the stories.
[00:35:45.560] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, as someone who's seen it and curious, I'm just wondering if you'd be willing to share a little bit more context as to the fabrics and the myths. Also understand if that's too broad or depth of a question that could spend hours describing it, and you may want to prefer to wait to produce the actual written text. But yeah, just whatever you feel willing to share around some of these other deeper layers that are maybe not fully explicated here at this exhibition.
[00:36:07.182] Meghna Singh: I mean, maybe I won't go into all six fabrics, but, you know, just to give you an example of how we've chosen the associations across a different time period is there's a fabric from Mali, which is called the mud cloth, is popularly known as the mud cloth around the world. and there's the fashion designer from Mali, Chris Hedon. His mother was a tailor, a seamstress, and he basically went off to France and then returned, and he sort of put mudcloth on the global map, like, you know, started using it as jackets and miniskirts. In fact, it was quite interesting, like, yesterday with the VIP and press day, there was an elderly woman, and I was telling her about the fabric, and she's like, yeah, I have mudcloth jacket. You know, so I was pleased that she knew what that was. So he's still alive, the designer. And so we just kind of wanted to have a visualization that was inspired by him because he's such an inspiring figure. You know, this designer who put a fabric on global map of fashion and also was someone who was invited to participate in this fashion show in the Timbuktu desert. And I think mostly they were French designers, except him and another designer from Morocco. So I thought that moment and I'd seen footage of this fashion show in the desert. I mean, it was stunning. So I was like, okay, you know, let's think about the fashion show in the desert to talk about the mud cloth. Because what we were trying to do is find these moments in time, which felt quite celebratory and special to us. So that was from Mali, the cloth. And then I mentioned Kapulana, which is from Mozambique. I mean, that's kind of also contemporary, like every year on Justina Michelle's death anniversary, they celebrate Women's Day. That's the day she passed in the mid 70s. And then, you know, there's other fabrics like Kuba, like which I said, around cosmology. And I remember when Lasiba gave us this myth. And I was like, why are you giving us the sun chasing the moon? How are we going to do this? You know, can it be something like simpler? But no, that was it. You know, one of the things also was not to question what he gives. He's curated the fabrics and he's given these associations. However hard it is, we have to respond visually. So, yeah, and then the Okara fabric is the one which you see with all these symbols, which is from Cameroon and Southeast Nigeria. Ancient fabric, the Sibidi language, they call Sibidi symbols. And even to try to represent the story of a mermaid rising from the bottom of the ocean and spreading these symbols was a challenge to try and do that. But we sort of holistic that challenge. So, yeah, I mean, these are the kind of different, I'm simplifying it, you know, for the audience in what the stories are. But I think, you know, it'd be nice to have a booklet with the proper details and attention to them.
[00:39:03.581] Kent Bye: Yeah, Duchamp-Bianna last year at Venice Immersive had a booklet that was being passed out. I think some immersive creators are starting to lean into that. I feel like the poetic dream logic is something that is a real affordance of these immersive projects, especially because you do get a lot more immersion that as soon as you start to use language or words, it does break the illusion of this magical realism that you're creating. I'm just curious to hear around your thoughts and reflections on dream logic, dreams, magical realism, and this poetic imagination that you're really leaning into as a technique, and then why you decided to go that way in terms of trying to create these deeper levels of immersion. So yeah, it seems like it's a deeper trend. Just love to hear some of your thoughts and reflections on this kind of dream logic.
[00:39:48.908] Meghna Singh: Yeah, I mean, this is, I guess this is something we've done in our previous work as well. Like even with container, you know, even though it could easily fit into the sort of documentary genre of like showing these different scenarios of slavery and modernist slavery, but there was no, we do consciously think of like, how do you make something accessible beyond language, you know, the language barriers, because most of the times it ends up being in these kind of languages and here we would say the language of the colonizer and we don't necessarily want to use that the loom yes when I said that what is the fabric dream of you know its associations or its memories of like who's used that fabric and when is it still being used where's being passed around the kind of energy the women in celebrating women's day bring like using the skipping rope and dancing or So it was the idea of having all that energy. And when you see the loom being made also, you see the running of the lines, that energy flowing through the loom. But in terms of the AR experience, I don't think... that's magical as well but I think there in the public space it's site responsive because we very consciously want people to go there look at the site and kind of have a response to the site which becomes visible so I think you know because we still do AR through the phone or the tablet you're so conscious of like your environment and this is just a layer that's added and So I think that spell of dreaminess is probably broken with the AR, but we're very conscious that there are these spaces that exist in the public realm. Something like New York Stock Exchange, where there are hundreds of people coming every day and picking up their phone and taking selfies and kind of celebrating the symbol of capitalism. And we were like, okay, it's already being celebrated. Why don't we disrupt that celebration with another kind of celebration? Because that needs to be challenged. So there, I think, for us, it becomes almost like a political tool. Even though we say, you know, it is a celebration, it's a memorial, it's playful. But playfulness can be political as well. Yes, so, yeah. Yeah.
[00:42:05.962] Kent Bye: i'd love to hear a few more thoughts or elaboration on this ar portion of the piece because i think the loom really feels like the heart of the genesis of so much of the project and so then when we go out and look at this symbol of capitalism in new york city and we're projecting over these images and you know knowing the history that it originally came from mit with a similar architecture the colonial columns that are referring to the slaves and then their heritage from africa and so But here we have the New York Stock Exchange and sort of a symbol of capitalism. Maybe you could just elaborate how these two symbols coming together of how these fabrics are then either reminding us of that, because again, it's like we're seeing the image, we're not seeing any of the additional story, but love to hear how you see these two symbols colliding and then What that does to the viewer as we're, you know, you've mentioned that there's a whole movement and group of AR folks that are thinking around how can we use AR as a mode of deconstructing some of these symbols in public spaces. So I'd love to hear some elaboration on the intent and what you hope that people may start to feel with that.
[00:43:09.454] Meghna Singh: I think our vision and the other people who are working with AR and probably have similar ideas is, you know, the public spaces and we don't necessarily see people represented or cultures represented or people represented, which we would like to see more of. And with AR, where you can navigate yourself, navigate your way around getting permissions, which makes it also an interesting tool. is that as artists, can we give these missing stories that space? So the New York Stock Exchange, yes, I mean, you know, people celebrate it in a way that groups of tourists and people from around the world will go there and they stand next to the fearless girl statue. But, you know, and they photograph themselves in that way, celebrating capitalism. but like no one really questions what the start of capitalism in this country rests on right like where is that history and so it's it's also difficult without being didactic and kind of like you know this is the history and this is where there was a slave market and this is what happened like which there is a placard which exists you know with that information And I think for us, it's about, like, how do you move beyond that? Like, we're not school teachers. And that has a place, and we respect that. But, you know, like, how do we just create something where for 90 seconds, so I think it's two minutes, people can just pick up their phone and hear a certain music of celebration and see beautiful imagery and also be shocked that something can be wrapped around these textiles, you know? Like, where are these textiles from? So just... even if some people out of all the hundreds of people were to question that why are they doing this like maybe I know this textiles from like you know Mozambique or this is from the region of West Africa and like why they put it there and then maybe like think of like well the New York Stock Exchange maybe was built on the finance of the money of human trafficking and also if they don't that's also fine we've just given 90 seconds or two minutes of that moment to a different space and different people and different culture And so, yeah, I guess that's the idea of like kind of navigating our way around permissions and giving space to something joyous or joyful and playful and beautiful, which comes from... Somewhere which is not necessarily represented. And also like maybe for some people to like then go back and question why it's there. Because you keep seeing these billboards every day, which is kind of, you know, celebrating whatever, you know, this new company and they are like financial heroes. And, you know, how much more are we going to like celebrate capitalism? So it's nice to disrupt that for a bit.
[00:46:00.449] Kent Bye: Yeah. With all these new billboards, there's also other side effects that you have as an AR creator. Just wondering if you want to say a few words about that.
[00:46:07.694] Meghna Singh: Yes, since I got here, I mean, in the beginning, it was just the New York Stock Exchange. And it's got this beautiful black glass, which we're quite excited about, but difficult to actually... We're working with Hovele and Hunter. He's a developer. He's been helping us do the AR work. And, you know, we were struggling to actually align the pillars. We're trying to look for anchors, but we were nearly there. And then after three days, there's a new billboard. And we dealt with that. And we kind of, you know, use that as an anchor. And we put the pillars over that billboard. And we were like, okay, it's not what we imagined. But, you know, maybe it's kind of reflecting on corporate greed as well. And then it changed yesterday when it was the VIP and press day. And I freaked out. But, you know, Hunter kind of saved the day. And we managed to have a new anchor and make it work. Aligned everything perfectly. And today is the opening. And I was like, you know, I'm going to go late. It's not going to be rushed. And I get there. And in the morning, what are the chances that they change it again? in just one day so there's all this and and and the thing is i think someone could just take these billboards and put them together and make a new piece of work around that because the wording is just like i don't know it's a bit of a cliche but like just so funny in in celebrating these kind of financial heroes or crypto and this and that yeah
[00:47:27.538] Kent Bye: wow yeah so so yeah just i guess the pains of being an ar developer these days so anyway i guess finally as we start to wrap up i'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of these new forms of immersive art and immersive storytelling might be and what they might be able to enable
[00:47:43.974] Meghna Singh: Oh, Ken, that's a big question. I don't know, just my two bits. I'm very excited about AR. I wasn't, to be honest, if you asked me last year, two years ago, I thought that, oh, you know, holding up a phone and then you can actually see the place. Maybe if you had glasses, you would be totally immersed. But I've, in the last year and a half, changed my mind. I was part of a project at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. I'm also an academic on a project called Playing with Ghosts, which was looking at playful and humorous ways that artists who are working and what does that mean. And so we did a residency at the Aarhus Museum where people were introduced to tools of AR and VR. And most people took to AR because it was this thing of it's quite easy like the simplest form of ar to create but everyone has a phone so versus we are the question of accessibility and especially like with container when we took it to these different port cities in south africa and rural spaces as well you know like how many people have to wait in queue to get the vr headset on and then most of the times is like panic and you know you have to have a person in charge of like every headset to like comfort people with ar everyone has a phone And they can do it. So that's easy in itself. But I'm increasingly more interested in what does this layering mean? When you can see around you, but then you can see what's being augmented. So that's quite an interesting aesthetic. So I've changed my mind around that. And recently I've got funding to make a new collective. It's called the Nordic AR and Public Space Collective. I've got partners in Sweden and Norway and Iceland. But it's looking at AR and its potential. kind of rural spaces and kind of spaces where there would be no physical signifiers and what does that mean to do AR like you know in cities like we have the New York Stock Exchange so there's a physical signifier there's a physical building we can augment but in spaces where you're looking at Nordic colonialism but in small towns rural spaces when none of that exists and what do you augment and how you know what is the kind of opportunity there to use AR So I'm excited about AR at the moment.
[00:49:58.462] Kent Bye: Yeah, I just did an experience of snap spectacles and being in this fully immersive environment and seeing the low field of view and then contrasting that experience of having levels of immersion be broken with the AR glasses and then having the phone. I'm used to using my phone and mediating a lot of my physical life experiences by like taking photos. And so I feel like the AR filters end up being like there's a way that I can suspend my disbelief a little bit easier sometimes with the portal of the phone because I'm already used to using the camera as a way of capturing something. And so, yeah, it's just kind of an interesting twist there that, you know, there's going to be other affordances of head mounted display AR, but even with the phone base, there's still a place there to create these light portals of immersion and interaction and augmentation on the world. So anyway, um, yeah. Is there any other thing that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:50:51.126] Meghna Singh: I think we are fairly new to the immersive community, but, um, Yeah, I mean, you know, come see the work. I really respect, you know, people are making it happen. So Jazia and her team, you know, just sort of pushing through and giving us the space to show this work. I appreciate the creators, but I also appreciate very much the people who give us the platform to showcase this work.
[00:51:16.260] Kent Bye: Yeah, the whole space this year at Tribeca having like more of an art gallery feel and I think your background in art installations and you know it's a real great mix of all these different fields and domains and yeah it creates this kind of magical realism portal into another realm so I really quite enjoy the piece and all the different dimensions and also just to hear a lot more around the stories and myths and just look forward to seeing these other layers of elaborating on the folklore and the mythologies and the fabrics and you know see what other kind of artifacts you produce to kind of dig into it because i feel like looking at that and then going back i'll be able to appreciate even more dimensions of this piece that i don't fully grok or understand at this point but yeah, just a really beautiful piece and yeah, just really enjoyed having the opportunity to help break it all down. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast.
[00:52:02.167] Meghna Singh: Thank you. Thanks Kent.
[00:52:04.309] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the voices of your podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a, this is part of podcast. And so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
