I found really good instructions on how to use the top spindle from youtube and finally got the hang of it. Of course I dont look very expert - but the job gets done.

Am currently using twisted.etsy.com ’s rodney colorway roving that I got way back in spring of 2008 and am practicing handspun yarn. Its very “artsy”:)

will post pictures of the unevenly wound first attempts once I crochet it into something.

My mother will be ever so amused when I tell her I can finally use a spindle (she is quite the expert [at least in my eyes] - even now when she can barely see, her fingers are nimble - - spinner of khadi cotton yarn on her ancient charkha used when she and my father moved with Gandhi followers way back when…).

interesting how even this most recent article took me back to theorizing pvt and public through postcolonial feminist lenses - and I really wasnt looking to directly go there…

and of course the ubiquitous tension/dialectic of accountability to and oppression within community v individualization and illusions of liberation….

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When you ACTUALLY truly shift the lens of benefit to look at issues of sustainable livelihoods, accessible democratic practices and sharing of resources with future generations…… THEN what would we think of a progress? I keep thinking of the senior citizen who asked about why we were not improving our (US) railways - and why we always focus on better flying and fighting technologies (at least that’s the gist it seems of what he said). And of the rickshaw pullers that disappeared from the streets of Hyderabad from one visit to the next “back home” (India)…. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED:

PLEASE SUBMIT ABSTRACTS BY DECEMBER 1, 2007.

Title: Everyday 3D Lives: Digital Embodiment, Performativity and Globalization

Editor : Radhika Gajjala

[ http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik ]

In the recent past, there has been much talk of “web 2.0 “ and “web 3D” as new media. Educators and researchers all over the world are debating the pros and cons of such environments. MMORPGs (Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and online 3D environments for social and economic activity. Immersive environments such as secondlife are being examined from multiple disciplinary lenses. This edited will include articles based in examinations of embodiment, performativity, gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality and globalization critically, and will be open to multiple disciplinary intersections.

What sorts of convergences, conjunctures and connections emerge in relation to embodiment, identity and globalization specifically in 3D environment (such as secondlife) and MMORPGs? Researchers examining presence and absence or voice and voicelessness are increasingly mobilized to speak of identities emerging online, while binaries such as embodied/disembodied and global/local are deployed unproblematically in both utopian and dystopian viewpoints regarding the Internet. Performativity begins to shape exposure and privacy. Thus while claims are being made that the Internet is a “public sphere” in a Habermasian sense (Poster 1995) corporate privation and surveillance comes upon us in Internet mediated environments and we learn to negotiate our speaking within interstices of presences and absences, cooperation and isolation, community engagement and individual consumerism. Simultaneously hegemonic structures invested in particular ideologies of globalization and “free” markets learn to co-opt diverse identities and voices. Voice thus becomes a strategic construct in both cases. Notions of voice/voiceless and empowerment/participation in such instances are appropriated by status quo discourses and are themselves mobilized for the oppression of the subaltern (Gajjala, forthcoming 2008).

In the book on “Pedagogies of the Global”, the editor, Arif Dirlik writes that

“Rather than erase difference by converting all to Euro/American norms of modernity, however, capitalist modernity, as it has gone global, has empowered societies once theoretically condemned to premodernity or tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very traditions, as filtered through experiences of colonialism, neocolonialism, or simple marginalization by the forces of globalization “(Dirlik, 2006, 3).

Digital media plays a significant role in aiding these connections and shaping these re-presentations. I am interested in research that examines these connections, representations and productions through critical theoretical lenses based in postcolonial theories, feminist theories, critical race theories and so on.

500 word abstracts due by December 1, 2007 and full articles of no more than 8000 words length due by September 2008.

Email me with any queries - radhika@cyberdiva.org.

S writes - “Master weavers did pick up this technology…true, it was more for furnishing products, especially when markets opened out….but I again come back to narayanpet, where master weavers have framelooms, and are making sareees on it. It does have a clear product identity (unlike a more universal fursnishing fabric), but I think what matters is the existence of a market niche or demand which drives entrepreneurs to exploit the potential (of higher productivity) in frameloom technology. But if we go back in time to consider its introduction, then it was definitely an agenda of modernization and not market demand.”

Okay - so here I am a (not seasoned and quite ruptured and awkward) consumer of saris.. a consumer of fabric…

asking if the apparel shapes me or I shape the apparel?

if I wear a sari - where must I loose weight? if I wear jeans where must I loose weight?

Did the loom make the sari or the sari make the loom?

what kinds of looms allowed what kinds of saris (we know that as they exist looms are structured around the sari concept so it is difficult to adjust them to work with fabric for other garments etc)

how did the loom shape fashion and convention

and how does our distance from the loom in the market “freeze” notions of sari as tradition - even while it is a living shifting fashion/style practice in everyday life -

as also does bollywood and tollywood (and the fashion industry internal to India) shape the notion of the correct or chic way to wear a sari …

or dupatta…

What I write below may make absolutely no sense - but I have to insert this in the conversation - will elaborate later:

I am designing and producing saris on an online 3d social and technologically mediated environment (called secondlife) where people buy and sell clothes etc. - I have several stalls and shops and a studio there where I make these saris and sell. However different consumers respond differently to my way of designing saris (using handloom textures bought mostly from Dastkar Andhra). Some of them have museumized the notion of sari as traditional indian wear in a very particular way - and they have developed “traditions” of what it means to design and create a sari in secondlife - so they have begun to lay down the rules on what layers a sari must contain (and yet each of the sari sellers on secondlife makes them differently - some have bollywood style transparent flowy “fabric” others have pleats attached and so on) so when I adapt and shift the notion it is to experiment with how I can shift the fashion of sari wearing in that environment through providing a slightly different product - but also because of how I use the technologies that help produce these “saris” - such as digital imaging software, digital cameras and the actual building in secondlife after the raw “fabric” has been created offline and imported in….

of course there is the whole other aspect of the sari consumer on secondlife who is part of the Gor…and I dont what practices of sari designing that privileges…

Depending on who the consumer is and their prior experience with saris on secondlife I get different kinds of responses about how a “real” sari should be designed on secondlife and what sorts of practices secondlifers are used to and have come to expect in a sari.

Thus my virtual “loom” (a combination of a situated social panopticon and the digital technologies used to construct the product) shapes my particular style of sari (shall we call it “rad Zabibha pEta cheera”?;-)) - and also my offline practice and experience with sari wearing shapes the way I visualize saris - but some of the people setting the precedent for the “Tradition” of sari making may have actually never worn a sari in their life…

which version of sari is tradition and which authentic - and why

so to get back to the master weavers and niche markets - markets are formed in interaction with what the weaver can produce - that was when loom was the only technology that produced the cloth for the sari….

to find out more about what it means to “quilt conceptually” according to rad Zabibha (born in 2006) and Cyb Tabla (born in 2004)

go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brouwer/172/149/42

work in-progress - always

considering also linking to Diva’s earlier moo projects - at least those that are still accessible

Understanding through doing…. the assignment emphasis was less on techical expertise of website building (most of the builders are beginners) and more on attempting to convey the concept that came from the client (as interpreted and understood by each of the groups based in their socio-cultural contextual locations). Is there a concept without an interface?

Feedback from readers is most welcome (you can email me or post to the blog’s comments)

Kang and Shuang’s DAMA site

[our client LT had this to say about the website - "I really like the website as the process and product are well represented. Visuals are overpowering the information. But the information given is very good in terms of stressing the point that handlooms are better than other power driven mill fabrics without an apologetic tone."]

Anca, Bridget and Erin

[our client's final overview comments on this one - "It is a well designed website. Home page gives a clear indication of the nature of the industry and also explains the characters of handloom fabrics at a glance. It is a wee bit patronizing and also it could have stressed on the fact that the fabric is as stylish and contemporary as the fabrics the consumers are using today."]

Andy, Jacob, Mark

[client's comments - DAMA and Products page although starts with a question but flows into a good description of handloom process and industry. But the products itself were very not communicative enough.

The page on the community is very innovative and would encourage a healthy dialogue.

I also like the narrative as it explains the process and its advantages in a good articulate way. Home page is well done and I like the understated feel although there are a few spelling mistakes.]

Dan and Dexin

[client feedback - The main page is very good as the products are featured and it communicates the product effectively.

The potential buyer’s page gives both the buyer and DAMA a very good platform to establish contact, interact and take the business further.]

Amy, Brett, Nikki

[The sub heading ‘Weaving made Natural’ is very good although it sounds as if we made the technology natural but it gets the point across.

Product representation is very good with details of the fabric quality and aesthetic.

Although there is a whole page dedicated to the Natural dyeing process, there is confusion in the product range as the product ranges shown in the web site are both chemical dyed and natural dyed.]

I look at other people’s blogs - those that do research in areas similar to mine - at the “new” tech interface. I see that a lot of them are narrating their research thoughts - clearly articulated as such. Either ethnographies, assessment or predictions of such technologies….

I wonder then what my blog is about. I guess just scattered notes based in my life as it weaves in and out of teaching, researching, travelling, feeling, playing, talking, doing the everyday mundane stuff…

what theoretical insights or “important” information can a blog such as this give to the average reader. Or even - what entertainment does it provide?

In a sense then while I do write from myself - and for select few known people - I am wondering if I have an audience in mind when I write (to take from J’s teaching presentation yesterday - is there an interpretive community out there to make sense of anything I write).

hmmm

and to think I titled this blog entry as “yesterday”…:)

why did I do that?

Well - because when I began this post, I wanted to write about how yesterday’s workshop with AV made me realize why I have not been able to write the Rajavolu field notes coherently and with narrative flow.

I also wanted to write about some teaching advice I got from AM via cell phone in relation to the conversations on http://www.cyberdiva.org/729 - though I would not have written all of it - and would have made it private if I had. I also wanted to repond to MA’s email to me indirectly - but again - if I had done so directly, I would have set this post to protected by password and sent out the password to MA and a few others…

Because there is a personal story - a “fict-ethnography” that needs writing….there are several personal stories…

In her comment response to my youtube fict-ethno staging authenticities pce, MA asked something like “why would we want to return home”….

perhaps it is not a “returning” I am writing of - but of a re-discovery - and of a knowing through another person - who is my “home” - and her knowing comes to me in flashes of “memories” through the earth and water and air as I go to the field re-membering the journeys… writing my fict-ethnographic notes…

so what is my blog about…?

I’ll let you tell me if you are reading this.

it goes…

మేము ఇక్కడనుంచి 9 మంది రాజవోలు వర్క్షాప్పుకు వెళ్ళాము…

so now I have to piece together based on all these notes since I cant seem to locate the tapes…

” things are
made to look the same only when we fail to examine them too closely” - Nancy Cartwright, 1983