We’re Social
Because we think global, act local… and are open to ideas, conversations and otherness of the other. Here, you will find
– Talks on media, art and design by key practitioners
– Interactive film screenings with discussions and Q&A, especially when directors, producers, artists come visiting
– Experiments in theatre with leading experts
– Shows at TOSS Dark Gallery, your free-thinking space for exhibitions, hot samosas, and hotter debate because creativity flow freely here
Talk: Digital Sonic Artifact
Listening to the Soundscapes of Imperial India, 1900-1930
Zamaana ba-De shauq se sun rahaa thaa
Hamiin so ga.e daastan kahte kahte
The world had been passionately listening
We were the ones that fell asleep, narrating stories
– Saqib Lakhnavi (1869-1946)
Understanding and accessing history through digital sonic archives
- How do we listen to the past?
- What can we understand about Indian history from listening to gramophone records from the early 1900s?
- Can we really access the history of oral storytelling traditions like dastangoi through digital sonic archives?
- What does this history teach us about how the global music industry has evolved over the past 100 years?
These are some of the questions that this lecture will explore as we collectively hold and examine old shellac gramophone records while listening to digitized recordings of storytellers like the dastango Baqir Ali (1850-1928) and courtesan singers like Gauhar Jan (1873-1930).
Speaker Huma Gupta, a historian who is completing her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in History, Theory & Criticism of Architecture + Art. While her dissertation research is focused on the urban history of Baghdad, she is passionate about the histories of sound. Prior to her doctoral program, she worked in Afghanistan and Syria on urban development and post-conflict reconstruction projects.
Concluded