What is miniature?

We start knowing about things by questioning them and getting in depth with the concepts through readings, experiences and understandings. "Miniature doesn’t really need to have the literal idea of ‘mini’ in it. It’s semantics has kept evolving over years starting from ‘to illuminate/ rubricate’ then to now ‘small or tiny’ (for which limn was the word.) MINIATURE as defined by Webster as a copy or a much-reduced scale or something small of its kind. That is a preconceived public notion of the miniature. We come across mini/small objects very frequently in our everyday life as souvenirs from our travels or just as a set of collections of a person. Most of the time we find them amusing and endearing. People have a strange fascination for these palpable objects. They could also be found in the form of manuscripts, paintings, models, figurines and other art forms as well. However, the vision behind these art forms is very different from the notion of being ‘tiny.’

How do we define miniature beyond the idea of scale and replica?

Our entry points to many of the projects were through the lens of scale, however over the course of four weeks through intense peer discussions, readings, and movies we broadened our idea of miniaturisation (a process). A process that helps you to either collapse, condense or challenge the idea of time, realities/facts from the everyday.

It broadens our imagination by helping us see the world from different optical lenses and enables us to bring our imaginative/alternate worlds that the viewers can also delve into. Layering plays an important role in the process of miniaturisation.

Way Forward

The process of miniaturisation helps in creating worlds of one's imaginations and allows people to inhabit these world. The act of inhabiting these worlds of imagination lies in the process of visualizing, constructing and materialising them. It engages the maker a lot more in the process of making and demands the maker to keep making more of these objects in order to continue living their world of fantasy, and of escape. It is the 'lack' that one feels/ find in their everyday which makes miniaturisation a helpful process to engage with.

As humans we are habitual in the act of dreaming, trying to fulfill our desires of escape from the mundane routine of our life. It is this act of dreaming and dwelling it in keeps us alive. Miniaturisation helps us in the act of dwelling our dream and giving it a physical form. It gives us a frame, a scale with which we can work and also enables us to shift our optic lens to that of a bird or of an ant or maintain the same as that of human, the choice is ours. It lets us zoom in 10 to the power of x without necessarily using a device for it and makes our imagination tangible.

It has the scope to increase the power of imagination by blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. It challenges the realities of every day, challenges the eye level/ optic lens with which we(human) view our immediate surroundings and becomes a tool to portray multiple realities simultaneously. Layering of varied ideas and concepts in miniaturisation becomes very critical. Details is it's essence and holds the idea concept and the object together. And it is in these challenges lies it's future scope to invite people from all walks of life and adapt it as a tool in their practice of seeing, questioning, knowing, telling, listening, organizing and managing.

Model making(virtual/ physical) in this light is then just not reduced to the idea of it being scaled down to 50, 500 or scaled up to 10:1, 20:1. The act of making of the model engages the craftsmen to think of it's spatiality much more rationally and in all 3 dimensions. It involves all the sense of the maker. It represents the idea/ concept of the maker and communicates to the viewer at a manageable scale and lens. Miniaturisation helps to collapse a sensorium into a box, cabinet of objects, a documentary( Memory Calendar, Memory box) The process gives entire control onto your hands and make you the creator of it's world.

Dipti Bhaindarkar (Personal take of the host)

"I think of my practice as an organiser - an organiser of fragments, objects, data, and the other. For this structure of thinking, I collect, create, make, arrange, construct and deconstruct. While my nature and self align with the thinking process of an organiser, my work is a constant attempt to sort things, to align, to schedule, to strategize and to plan things to set them in rhythm. It begins with the act of possession, collection, many times creation and making.

Miniaturisation as a medium allows me to engage closely with this practice. Miniature worlds are kits of parts that form spatial constructions. These relationships can be reimagined, taken apart, and reconstructed. They have an imprecise function; they can be disassembled and assembled again. They hold variation and multiple possibilities of imagination. Miniature objects allow a controlled engagement, along with possibilities to arrange and rearrange them to imagine alternate worlds, to construct stories, and string narratives."