BLOT! at Sheffield Doc Fest
The Alternate Realities: Interactive Exhibition at this year’s Sheffield Doc Fest showcased brand new, cutting-edge interactive documentaries, virtual reality experiments and video games that visitors could play with, touch and experience. The exhibition hosted the launch of the exciting new game prototype ‘Antariksha Sanchar - Transmissions in Space’ by Avinash Kumar, who is one half of New Delhi-based mixed-media collective BLOT! (which stands for Basic Love Of Things).
Antariksha Sanchar / Transmissions in Space
"Antariksha Sanchar is India’s first major video-game, a beautifully-crafted experience in which you follow in the footsteps of a young mathematician learning to make sense of the cosmos."
Sheffield Doc Fest 2016
Since 2007, BLOT! have been tinkering with electronic music, digital art, film making and installations. For the last three years they have been working on their immersive point‐and‐click cultural adventure game set in the early 1920s in a temple town in South India. Antariksha Sanchar is inspired by Avinash Kumar’s mother’s Indian classical dance production of the same name, and is loosely based on the life of the late Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Players immerse themselves in Ramanujan’s dreamworld world, solving puzzles, embarking on adventures, learning about mythical temple creatures and observing conversations on the cosmos from India’s past.
Trick or Treat
BLOT! also brought their project Trick or Treat to Sheffield Doc Fest. Funded by the Wellcome Collection as part of Medicine Corner – a programme of activity exploring India's rich plurality of cultures of medicine, healing and well-being – Trick or Treat is an interactive installation exploring street medicine in India. The project launched in January 2016, with a day-long workshop followed by an electronic music performance with video montage, in the courtyard of the British Council’s headquarters in Delhi.
You can sample Antariksha Sanchar game play and fantastic carnatic soundtrack below, as well as BLOT!'s video made for Medicine Corner.