I have a special fascination for matchboxes! As a child I used to collect them and once in a while make models of animals. Now as a grown up I mostly use matchboxes to light a cigarette! One fine day, I decided to go back in time and use my present education in animation to make models out of matchboxes again; but this time they would move! I made a short film for Sesame Street India using this technique and completely fell in love with the idea of taking this further.
My present idea deals with interactive storytelling where audience looks into an installation and conjures up their own stories. Imagine a hemisphere which has been formed on a spiral with enough space to place the characters and design a backdrop using cardboard material and strategically placed light. Since I will be using matchboxes to make the characters, the scale would be cheated by placing them accordingly. For example, an ant will be nearer to the audience than an elephant, which could be placed in a further distance in the hemisphere to create a reality in terms of scale. The characters will be placed randomly on the different layers of the spiral, so for one the story will be completely different from the other person depending on what all he or she can see. Sometimes it could be a story of a group of ants marching for a better place; or the same ants could be fleeing from a terrible monster depending on where one is standing to see the installation.
I would love to create a fantasy world with lots of stories to tell!
