Bhubaneswar, April 21: Artist Himanshu Desai is conducting a video art workshop at the Utsha Foundation here.
Titled Calingae, the five-day workshop will lead to a video based on experiments with light and video cameras to create interesting patterns collaborated with images depicting Odisha's ancient identity.
The artists are using a video camera connected to a projector in a dark room. The images formed by overlapping of light on the screen are not only abstract and artistic, but very intriguing.
Using this concept, the participants of the workshop will create a video collaborating these patterns with images they shoot.
"This is my first visit to Odisha and I'm absolutely charmed by the beauty of its landscape, culture and history. When I was exploring more about the place, I found a reference of the place in Greek explorer Megasthenes' Indica where he mentioned it as 'Calingae'. Thus the workshop's name," said Himanshu.
"At the workshop, we will together conduct emotional and psychological archaeology and find out how that Calingae is still visible in and around Bhubaneswar even now," said the artist.
Beginning as an artist in fine arts, Himanshu is known for trying different mediums such as music and videos. He has been playing rock and jazz with various bands across the globe and has experimented with videos to create art.
Senior artist Jagannath Panda is also a resource person along with Himanshu at the workshop.
"This is a novel way to find out the presence of Kalinga or Odisha's ancient identity even today with us," said Panda.
At the workshop, he has asked the participants to collect various motifs from ancient temples of Bhubaneswar and share why they selected them. They will also collect random visuals of anything they feel like and finally, collect images of shops or products named "Kalinga".
"We will then collaborate all of these visuals and edit them along with our experiments with light and camera. It's a very exciting project and we are sure to create something fascinating with this," said Smrutikanta Rout, a city based young artist and participant of the workshop.
Senior artists such as Meenaketan Patnaik and Ramakant Samantray are also taking part in the workshop. The video formed at the workshop will be screened at Utsha on April 26.