2000, 2004 & 2005

Artist /Author: Sarai Media Lab (Raqs Media Collective. Mrityunjay Chatterjee & Iram Ghufran)

Title: 3 HTML Arrays : Global Village Health Manual (2000) & Network of No_Des (2004) & Ectropy Index (2005)

Photo: Raqs Media Collective

Global Village Health Manual (GVHM) is the first of 3 HTML works produced by the Sarai Media Lab that were located online and circulated as CDs. GVHM treated nineteenth century print culture as a source for the prehistory of new media in order to investigate bodily labour as part of the invisible scaffolding of the internet

Ectropy Index: If entropy is the net increase in the tendency towards chaos within a system, then ectropy, being its opposite, suggests a congealing and thickening of information from a mass of things known, half known and unknown. Ectropy Index takes these meanings to create its own tension between entropic and ectropic impulses, between the forces that tend to increase and those that decrease the levels of order and systematization (as opposed to randomness) within a system. This becomes a playful way to examine the insane increase of surveillance in this time.

The Network of No_des uses driftwood from web searches, messages in data bottles, re-mixed fragments of Hindi and Bengali film scenes and research notes from Sarai Media Lab’s exploration of new media street culture in Delhi in the early 2000s to present an array of associational possibilities.

The Sarai Media Lab (2000-ongoing ) was an atelier and playground for some of the earliest new media art practices in India. It was as part of the Sarai Initiative in New Media and Urban Life at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi and experimented with media works, video, radio works, books, events, workshops, sonic experiments and online lists.