Five Digital India Learning (DIL) summer student fellows spent two months in India during the summer of 2023 working on their digital sonic and visual projects at the AIIS Center for Art and Archaeology and the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology, culminating in a presentation held on August 10, 2023 and the creation of virtual exhibits on the Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds. The project was partially funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Ava Bush, who recently received her B.A. in art history at Tulane University, worked on People’s Art: Clay Modelling in Ancient India
terra cotta from Maharashtra, ca. 1st-3rd C.E
She noted that the discoveries of numerous hoards bearing foreign iconography in India’s Maharashtra state over the last century have sparked a line of queries into this central coastal region, particularly regarding its connections to the Silk Route which encompassed the vast and frequently shifting land and maritime trade networks that facilitated the movement and exchange of goods, cultural traditions and people across the Asian, African, and European continents. The archaeological discoveries from the ancient Maharashtrian cities of Ter, Paithan, and Brahmapuri reveal the function of these sites as epicenters of production, trade, and cultural exchange during the height of the Roman Empire between the third century BCE and third century CE. There was frequent contact between these two societies, with trade functioning as a primary intermediary. This exhibition consists of four sections focusing on female figurines, zoomorphism, molds and amulets and medallions. Each section presents the assemblages from Maharashtra with contemporaneous examples from across the ancient world as a means of demonstrating the extensive network of cultural exchange that was taking place.
Arya Adityan, a graduate student in the Department of Religion at Florida State University, created the exhibit Oral Epics and Narratives: Villupāttu
The objective of the project was to curate a comprehensive and engaging digital exhibition that showcases the unique oral narrative tradition of Tamil Nadu, known as Villupāttu or “bow-song.” Villupāttu performances involve talented artists utilizing a musical bow (villu) to sing and narrate captivating stories, encompassing local legends, myths, and contemporary social issues. The primary focus of this project was to curate the digital exhibition utilizing the recordings collected by Dr. Stuart Blackburn from Nāñcil Nādu, Southern Tamil Nadu available at ARCE. The digital exhibition aims to provide an immersive and introductory experience, exposing a wider audience to the essence and richness of the oral epic tradition. The exhibition Ms Adityan created unveils the art form of Villupattu with recordings from performances that come alive through narratives that revolve around birth and death stories, revealing the mythic stories of gods and goddesses as well as histories of local heroes (real-life men and women), whose stories earned them a place among the deified. The exhibition explores existing archival materials at the ARCE (1930s to 1980s), the ritualistic context of the bow-song performances which bring the narrative world and the religious world together, and the heart of the matter—the songs themselves.
Balakrishnan Raghavan, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz who was designated the Pradeep Mehendiratta Fellow, worked on the project Oral Epics and Narratives of India: Annanmar Katai
The Annanmar Katai (The Elder Brothers Story) is a 15th-century Tamil oral narrative epic/ballad and is the story of three twins, two elder brothers, and their younger sister. It is “a view from the margins” about the lives and conflicts of artisan-trader, feudal-farmer, and tribal-hunter communities. It is a story of three generations of jealousy, quest for power, childlessness, magic, gods, monsters, love, and rivalry. The story ends with the two elder brothers sacrificing their lives willingly to the Gods and their sister performing the funeral rites for her brothers. An annual festival is performed every year in honor of the three twins to this day. This digital project aimed to introduce the Annanmar Katai to a larger audience and inspire them to engage with the archival collection through an online digital product that introduces the epic and shares interesting episodes across various themes.
Jamphel Shonu, a graduate student in the Department of History at Pennsylvania State University, presented the project The Great Monastery of Nalanda
The Great Monastery of Nālandā was one of ancient India’s greatest cultural institutions. The monastery was a complex of Buddhist monastic dwellings and temples. It functioned as a prominent place of Buddhist learning and teaching from at least the 5th to the 12th Century. It was noteworthy not just for its immense size but also for the considerable number of resident monks who studied and taught there. According to different accounts by travellers who visited Nalanda, there were around 3000-10,000 monks residing at the monastery. This virtual exhibition aims to provide a brief but comprehensive understanding of the monastery’s history and its excavated remains, using a critical assessment of the archaeological, art-historical, and textual sources. The visual basis for this virtual exhibit is indebted to the remarkable collection of images captured by Dr. Frederick Asher during his extensive research visits to the Nalanda excavation site.
Tyler Thom, a graduate student in the Department of Ethnomusicology at the University of Denver, worked on the project The Song Lines of Arnold Bake
The aim of the project was to create an offline digital exhibit and a smaller online exhibit of Dutch ethnomusicologist Dr. Arnold Bake’s archival collection, using a template that allows for the input of full-length audio files and images into three sections: themes, timeline, and map. This exhibit will allow users to interact with the Bake collection through a touch screen interface that displays audio recordings and images collected by Arnold Bake.