The Vanishing: An Interdisciplinary Project
female feticide, India, girls, 7 million murdered
female feticide, India, girls, 7 million murdered
7-10 million girls were not born in India in a decade between 2001-2011 because they would have been girls, research estimates. This has caused a massive gender imbalance in the Indian population where today, every 5 minutes a girl is not born.
The population numbers are huge, making it difficult to visualize them in perspective. For instance there are 914 girls for every 1000 boys in India. 914 vs. 1000 doesn't sound like a big gap, but imagine the discrepancy when you start multiplying these statistics with the 1.3 billion people in India. Ironically enough, the big numbers that should alert the world and Indians, rob them of any empathy whatsoever.
The Vanishing is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project. The Vanishing aims to simplify the issue, and create empathy among the audience about the massive gender imbalance in India.
TIMELINE
It started as Gendered Arrangements in 2013 where the project was the outcome of a interdisciplinary class and one of the outcomes was Information Graphics that were published in Design Observer as a visual essay.
The publications page has links to scholarly articles, and published research, an outcome of the project.
I also collaborated with a visual art professor and students to create a video of depicting gender imbalance in India.
The project has been supported by external grants twice, ICAT SEED grant from Virginia Tech, and Autodesk.
Gendered Arrangements became The Vanishing in 2014 when I did fieldwork research in India to find out the level of awareness among the general public about female feticide, the phenomenon that has in large part, led to the imbalance.
One of the results was a manuscript of poems based on insights gained from the research.
That led to a collaboration with Kim Cunio, music composer and the head of School of Music at Australian National University. With the help of a grant from Autodesk, we were able to have women and girls narrate the poems that Kim recorded and composed found music to go along with the narratives.
Collaboration with designer and Chair of Industrial Design at Virginia Tech, Akshay Sharma led to the creation of an art, sound installation.
The most recent collaboration is with Dr. Doug Bowman and his team of students at Virginia Tech who have created an immersive Virtual Reality experience that was completed in May 2019.
The population numbers are huge, making it difficult to visualize them in perspective. For instance there are 914 girls for every 1000 boys in India. 914 vs. 1000 doesn't sound like a big gap, but imagine the discrepancy when you start multiplying these statistics with the 1.3 billion people in India. Ironically enough, the big numbers that should alert the world and Indians, rob them of any empathy whatsoever.
The Vanishing is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project. The Vanishing aims to simplify the issue, and create empathy among the audience about the massive gender imbalance in India.
TIMELINE
It started as Gendered Arrangements in 2013 where the project was the outcome of a interdisciplinary class and one of the outcomes was Information Graphics that were published in Design Observer as a visual essay.
The publications page has links to scholarly articles, and published research, an outcome of the project.
I also collaborated with a visual art professor and students to create a video of depicting gender imbalance in India.
The project has been supported by external grants twice, ICAT SEED grant from Virginia Tech, and Autodesk.
Gendered Arrangements became The Vanishing in 2014 when I did fieldwork research in India to find out the level of awareness among the general public about female feticide, the phenomenon that has in large part, led to the imbalance.
One of the results was a manuscript of poems based on insights gained from the research.
That led to a collaboration with Kim Cunio, music composer and the head of School of Music at Australian National University. With the help of a grant from Autodesk, we were able to have women and girls narrate the poems that Kim recorded and composed found music to go along with the narratives.
Collaboration with designer and Chair of Industrial Design at Virginia Tech, Akshay Sharma led to the creation of an art, sound installation.
The most recent collaboration is with Dr. Doug Bowman and his team of students at Virginia Tech who have created an immersive Virtual Reality experience that was completed in May 2019.
Poetry, research, recorded narration, music composition, vocals, slice of ethnographic reality
6 stories: 6 minutes.
Read @TheBombayReview, Medium
Interdisciplinary, complex social issues, creativity, problem-solving, feminism, female feticide, , sound installation, art installation, poetry, imagined, research-based narratives, stories, auto ethnography, honest, immediate, music composition, field work, Jaipur, India, creative writing, first person
music composition @ Kim Cunio, creative writing, research @ Manisha Sharma
Read @TheBombayReview, Medium
Interdisciplinary, complex social issues, creativity, problem-solving, feminism, female feticide, , sound installation, art installation, poetry, imagined, research-based narratives, stories, auto ethnography, honest, immediate, music composition, field work, Jaipur, India, creative writing, first person
music composition @ Kim Cunio, creative writing, research @ Manisha Sharma