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Let's enter the painting?

What do you call a work of art that has elements of paintings, music and culture?

DIGITISED ART A swirl of colours, pixels and sounds

She calls herself B2Fays like Rajnikant's song B 2 the A 2 the B. And just as irreverent and avant garde is her art. On Thursday evening, she gave a preview of her show. Stepping into a darkened long hall at the Kalahita Art Gallery, she strapped on a microphone and a belt-like contraption, and started dancing. On the screen was the Parliament House, transformed into a three-dimensional grid like object that moved. As she did a pantomime and danced like a ballerina, crouching, leaping into the air and moving her hands like a break dancer, the image on the screen got transformed. The moving image of the Parliament House got an overlay of colours from her paintings leaped out and blended in as an aura-like image moved, leaped and danced. As she spoke into the microphone the ambient sounds changed, as did the colours of the aura and the swirl of colours from her images. If some people were watching the unfolding art in the darkened hall, the same image was being shown in a parallel hall for others' benefit. Welcome to the world of digital art or digital palimpsest or interactive art.

"The visitor enters the painting and reveals what is in it. The visitor reveals the painting," is how B2Fays sees her installation. In the database are 3D images of real iconic buildings and live recording of sounds and images. Then there are the paintings (in this instance all of them are by B2Fays who is looking for collaborators who get their calling from their milieu).

The moment a visitor steps into the space of the installation everything changes and gets modified. "Digital Palimpsest is making the spectator an actor, as he/she contributes to the creative process. His movements and voice are creating a visual and acoustic mixing that transforms in real time the pictorial and musical world passed through. With his visual and acoustic presence, and his movements in the space, he is modulating musical and pictorial shape of the artwork," writes B2Fays.

As a lot of technology is involved, B2Fays explains that the image of the aura is created by an infra-red lamp mounted just below the screen and an overhead camera that captures the movement. The installation has been created by using software like Max, MSP and Jitter with the graphic designers from India pitching in: Kuparaj and Dora Babu while the music has been contributed by Lotfi Zitouni and Paul Jacob.In the first show of its kind, illustrations from Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mamalapuram have been used.

Oh! B2Fays is a French artist Beatrice de Fays and has been working on her project for the past two months in India.

The installation is at Kalahita ends today .

SERISH NANISETTI

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