Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Painting on a virtual canvas

Art work: Education Minister M.A. Baby takes a look at the e-paintings of children at the Technopark in the city on Saturday.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ‘Putting mouse to the screen’ may not sound quite as aesthetic as ‘putting brush to canvas,’ but there was nothing less aesthetic in the imaginations that took colour in the digital painting competition organised at the Technopark on Saturday. It was the inaugural day of the State School IT Fest organised by the IT@ School and the Department of Education.

Thirty-eight children, who had topped IT fests held at the education district level, sat hunched in front of computers, dexterously using the mouse and the key pad to give life to paintings on the screen. The children got to choose from among the topics ‘Natural Calamity,’ ‘Monsoon’ and ‘Soul of India.’ The condition was that they could use only paint programmes on a free-software platform to draw.

For some children, the ‘natural calamity’ took the form of floods, with rivers overflowing banks, villages getting flooded and men and women seeking to escape the rising waters. For one student, natural calamity took shape in the form of an angry volcano spitting fire, fumes and great quantities of lava. In the shadow of the huge volcano were hapless villages and people.

If one participant set his monsoon against the backdrop of an idyllic backwater location complete with a lake and canoes, another made rain fall on the wide vistas of a lush green field. The ‘soul of India’ — for those participants who chose to paint on the theme — was invariably a village where people of different trades went about their daily life.

After an hour of creative tension, the participants were asked to ‘save’ their paintings and turn away from the computer.

Then came the announcement that Education Minister M.A. Baby would arrive at the venue to meet the children.

Mr. Baby who arrived shortly afterwards walked around the hall at the Park Centre popping questions at the children, some of whom suddenly appeared tongue-tied.

As many as 190 students and 36 teachers from schools in 38 educational districts in the State are participating in the three-day IT fest. In addition to the digital painting competition, multimedia presentation competitions were also held on the inaugural day. After the inaugural ceremony, the students participated in a presentation on ‘multimedia animation’ led by K. Madhu from Hibiscus Design.

On Sunday, the participants will interact with the founder-CEO of the Technopark, G. Vijayaraghavan, before sitting down for the project presentation and programming competitions. The multimedia presentations of teachers will also be held on Sunday.

On Monday, the students and teachers will tour various companies in the Technopark to get a feel of how the IT sector operates on a day-to-day basis. They will also interact with CEOs of various Technopark-based companies.

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