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DIMENSIONS OF DEATH

ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer, death egg

What dies, who dies, which part of us dies?

 

or do 'we' really die at all? 

ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer, Study on death, Banaras, kashi
Dimensions of Death
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ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer
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ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer
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Graphic Guide Glow Sign on Main Board Ou
Children explore melodic passages by ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer
ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer, air tabla
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ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer, musical chairs

Children's learning workshops, at

National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai

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Children's Workshop, Music and Goddess
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ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer
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The Unity Pillar installation focuses exploration into collaborative interfaces.

 

It requires people to hold hands to light up a pillar symbolizing the destruction of caste prejudices and social in justice. Here the computer has totally disappeared and people themselves have become the interface, touching each other, touching loving, human hands, not objects, dissolving the skins of their otherwise separate bodies into a single, unified collaborative body.

collaborative interfaces by ranjit makkuni

Eternal Gandhi

National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2006

DISMANTLE ALL BOUNDARIES

Eternal Gandhi @ National Gallery.
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plant computer ranjit Makkuni, museum design, leading asia designer

Against the rapid rise of infrastructure building activity and urbanization in Asia, which has resulted in a exponential degradation of people’s health and environment, the Planet Health museum project commits to the urgent documentation of traditional Green Worldviews, Ayurveda and Yoga, indigenous systems of medicine and therapies, so that traditional knowledge, which has been ubiquitously available and passed down across many generations, remains forever free.

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Say No!
    to
Toxic computing!!

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Yogi Ranjit Makkuni
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World's first walk-up

Health Dictionary!

Planet Health Museum
Healing the Hyperconnected Man
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Goddesses of Music

Healing the

Hyper connected Man 

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Prayer to Heal Modern Hyperconnected Man.
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Winner A Award,
Design Italy

Ranjit Makkuni, dont let computers tell you you arent good enough
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So here's the big take-away:

Can we  Design

a more  Compassionate Web? 

The Betrayal of the IT Revolution 

 

For those of us who have missed the IT revolution, consider yourselves lucky,

we may not have missed a thing!

Abstract

 

When the original vision of the Dynabook (later to become the laptop) was conceived by Alan Kay's team at Xerox PARC in the 1980s, computational tools were envisioned as a medium for creativity and leisure. Indeed the first slides of the Dynabook showed people freeing themselves from the shackles of their offices, lying in sprawling natural landscapes, pursuing their artistic creativity. 

 

Nearly 50 years later, that vision had become a nightmare, with deep impacts on the society: at levels of connection, health, psychological well being, and, deep questions to privacy and fundamental freedoms and 'Truth' loom and await answers.

THE BETRAYAL of the IT REVOLUTION

Ranjit Makkuni

Talk at WSIS conference, Geneva, 2018

Betrayal of the IT Revolution
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Conversations on

Design & Asian Music

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Conversations on Asian Music and Design
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Eulogy to a MENTOR
Ranjit Makkuni plays Uma's Bells.
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Rand Castile Eulogy

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With a musical performance
of
Uma's bells

Eulogy to Asian arts' Guru
Crossing Project
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The Crossing project, a multimedia exhibition shown across the world, was and still is a pioneering effort to unite the finest and the noblest in Indian tradition with the then, nascent multimedia and mobile computing technology.

 

The focus of the project was to create a unique idiom of Indian modernity where none of the streams of knowledge, technology or tradition were at variance, but integrated in a harmonious semblance. It is in this consciously innovated fusion that Banaras gets represented in a unique way, and the project becomes an important cultural preservation tool and a learning tool for audiences.

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Crossing exhibition by Ranjit Makkuni, Asia Design
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Asia Society Museum,

New York, 2002

 

OK Center for the Arts,

Linz, Austria, 2002

 

National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai 

Habitat Center, New Delhi

Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

India, 2001/2

National Gallery, Bangkok, 2005

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THE CROSSING PROJECT

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Winner

ID magazine

Design award, New York,

2002

Ars electronica, Austria,

2002

Intellectual Traditions of Banaras
ranjit Makkuni The intellectual Traditions of Banaras
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Intellectual Traditions of Banaras

Throughout the centuries literature and cities have shared a special symbiotic relationship. Modern metropolitan cities carry the complexity and tension of modern life. The creativity they inspire bears a special genre of literature of discontent and tension conflict and existential angst. In comparison Kashi, Banaras, the  ancient city of enlightenment, revels in a generative environment of traditional learning. As early as the 7th century B C, the sacred city became the focal point of increased intellectual and spiritual activity. And since then, has flourished as one of the greatest centers of traditional learning and of established theological and philosophical discourse.

From Makkuni. R., and Khanna, M., "Banaras: The Crossing Project," Sacred Word Foundation, 2002.

Eternal Gandhi @ Gandhi Smriti, New Delhi
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ranjit makkuni salt march painting eternal gandhi
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The Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum, one of the world’s first digital multimedia museums is located at Gandhi Smriti, New Delhi the site where Mahatma attained martyrdom, it not only preserves the historical events of Gandhiji’s life, but presents a spectrum of information technology visions inspired by Gandhian thought.  

Spiritually, the project was situated against the backdrop of globalization, polarization of communities, a growing urban-rural divide, rapid urbanization, and the degradation of hand-based skills and village-based art forms.
 

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Winner

ID Magazine Design Award,

New York

2002

village computing and design ranjit makkuni
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See

Gandhian messages

animating

Product Design!

Museum @ Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, i.e., at the site of Gandhiji's martyrdom.

Learning Workshops @ NGMA, Mumbai
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Children explore melodic passages by pla
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Learning Workshops @ NGMA,Mumbai, 2014

Musical Landscapes, National Museum opening
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The Musical Landscapes and the Goddesses of Music exhibition, at the National Museum, New Delhi, in 2013,  presented advances in interactive art through an exploration of the science, art and spirituality of music, and their reflections in the goddess images across Asian cultures.
 

The project represents one of the world’s first explorations showing the relationship between the sacred feminine and music.
 


Musical Landscapes &
the Goddesses of Music 

ranjit makkuni, interaction designer, multimedia designer, exhibition designer
Musical chairs Ranjit Makkuni
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National Gallery of Modern Art

Opening

In an era of rapid technology provoked changes, and an age of information anxiety, this exhibition  shows healing alternatives of re-‘centering’ available in the practice of traditional music.

 

Newly designed musical instruments in the exhibition allow people to ‘tune in’ and recharge to brace for an environment of relentless technological change.

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jit makkuni shakes pheroza godrej hands musical landscapes and the goddesses of music
Children que to see the Lalita Sahsranam
jit makkuni musical landscapes and the goddesses of music
jit makkuni musical landscapes and the goddesses of music
jit makkuni musical landscapes and the goddesses of music
National Gallery, Music and Goddess Opening
Electronic Thangka
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Asian Art Museum,

San Francisco, 1989.

THE ELECTRONIC SKETCH BOOK OF TIBETAN THANGKA PAINTING

World's First Multimedia Learning system of any kind 

At PARC, during 1985-7, my work explored visual, kinesthetic gestures as a means to interact with computers, and these gestural interfaces served as a way to humanize the then popular button pushing paradigm of interactions with computers. As early as 1985, I built a system in which one could wave a gesture on the screen and the computer would ‘understand’ what the gesture meant and translate it into parameters for the design of, say, a Tibetan deity.
 
Remember that these were designed in a period when the screen was text based. Gradually, my work added video representations on the screen and the Electronic Sketch Book of Thangka painting project developed one of the world’s first ‘multimedia leaning system of any kind. 

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Intellectual Traditions of Banaras

Throughout the centuries literature and cities have shared a special symbiotic relationship. Modern metropolitan cities carry the complexity and tension of modern life. The creativity they inspire bears a special genre of literature of discontent and tension conflict and existential angst. In comparison Kashi, Banaras, the  ancient city of enlightenment, revels in a generative environment of traditional learning. As early as the 7th century B C, the sacred city became the focal point of increased intellectual and spiritual activity. And since then, has flourished as one of the greatest centers of traditional learning and of established theological and philosophical discourse.

From Makkuni. R., and Khanna, M., "Banaras: The Crossing Project," Sacred Word Foundation, 2002.

Intellectual Traditions of Banaras
Sitar Music
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Classical Sitar Music

In parallel to his work in technology and design,  Ranjit Makkuni is a Sitar virtuoso, and was emerging as as a rising star in the Indian classical music scene in the early 2000s before his design works on new museums consumed him entirely.

 

Having studied under the maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Ranjit carries jewels of composition from bygone eras. His early years spent on guitar allow him a unique modern musical style yet grounded in deep classicism.

  

 His geometric compositions, Intricate fret work, cross rhythms produce  deep exhilarating energies, and the audience is transported  beyond the realms of “here and now” to   higher states of consciousness. He has been  interested in the connection between sound structures and visualisation structures found in Tantra Yoga.

In addition to his visual works which focus on both abstraction and ornamentation, Ranjit has been searching for correspondences between scales and visual abstractions, especially looking at how  how higher energies can communicate with human beings through economy and abstraction in music.

Awards
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Winner

ID Magazine Gold, New York

2002

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Winner

Ars Electronica Austria

2002

Nominated for National Design Award, USA, 2012

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Designer of the year, 2012

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Winner

ID Magazine Gold, New York

2005

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Winner

A Award

2014, 2012

Mahamaya Jazz Rock Band
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The Mahamaya Experience is a project from sitar player and composer Ranjit “Mahamaya” Makkuni.  In a modern world that encourages instant gratification and constant stimulus, Mahamaya’s compositions offer ‘pause’ for transcendence.  By fusing ancient musical traditions with a psychedelic mindset inspired by 1960’s musical styles, these compositions encourage the listener to unplug from the never ending stimulus of digital life and focus on finding their harmony in and with the universe.

JP WIlson.

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