Kathasaritsagar
The Kathasaritsagar, also known as the Ocean of the Streams of Stories is an 11th-century Sanskrit text. It contains multiple layers of stories within stories. This is a web-based visual adaptation of the Kathasaritsagar using the visual styles and motifs of the ‘Pattachitra’ paintings. As you go deeper into the stories, the visual style evolves and grows, while keeping the Pattachitra as a base.
The brief of this project was to create a digital experience that translates the physical object or storytelling artifact and to expand the visual vocabulary of the traditional forms in a way that fits with the story and looks at traditional Indian Storytelling Art in a contemporary way. While the main goal of the project was visual exploration, I still needed to devise a platform that was logically tied to that concept and conveyed a sort of ‘narrative’ of visual exploration to the viewer. The starting point was the Pattachitra art form, that was based on creating a narrative through a series of illustrations encased in a very ‘comic’ like frame but one that promoted a non-linear way of reading instead of the traditional linear way that comic books are read. For the navigation, the concept of z-scrolling or depth-scrolling was used. The panels in this project appear to be in the same space yet distinct and distanced from each other. The user is made aware of the empty space between the panels in order to communicate that the stories belong to the same universe but still are narratively distinct. The objective of this project was to experiment and see if these ancient art forms can visually evolve and still retain a certain connection to their original format. The primary conclusion of this project was that these art forms and stories indeed have the capacity to evolve both visually and conceptually for the contemporary realm.
gandhar.vamburkar@gmail.com
