Field Notes

PROCESS AND EXCHANGE

A shared journal record our time on the island, where observations and fragments of conversation are archived along with notes on quantum theories that guide our thinking about connection with people, place and self. The pages hold geometric motifs, small field sketches, found objects, bits of poetry, and references to scientific concepts that mirror the relationships forming through the work. These journals function as working documents, mapping how ideas surface through movement, materials and repeated returns to the site. 

CONCEPTUAL REFERENCES AND WORKING METAPHORS

The project is informed by the idea that attention is not neutral, but shapes what becomes perceptible. Rather than treating observation as passive, the work emphasizes how sustained focus and repetition can alter what is noticed, recorded and valued. 

Dynamical Casimir Effect:  Measurable energy can arise from fluctuations in a vacuum when boundary conditions change. Within this project, the phenomenon is used as a conceptual prompt for thinking about how relational conditions, rather than isolated entities, can generate outcomes. The project site functions as a constrained system, while collaboration becomes a way of attending to interaction rather than objecthood. 

Double-Slit Experiment: The double-slit experiment is referenced not for its technical specifics, but for its challenge to classical assumptions about observation. In this project, observation is treated as an active condition. Repeated visits, shifts in framing, and temporal distance alter what becomes visible, underscoring how perception is shaped by the conditions under which attention is applied. 

Möbius Strip: Used here as a spatial and conceptual model for thinking about continuity without stable orientation. Its single surface and absence of interior or exterior parallels the collaborative structure of the project, where authorship and perspective are continuously exchanged without collapsing into sameness. 

MATERIALITY AND FORM

The project uses materials gathered directly from the river island, including sand, grass, algae, shells, and remnants of human activity associated with indigenous fishing practices and nearby cremation rituals. These elements are used to create cyanotype photograms through direct contact with light-sensitive surfaces, exposed on site. The resulting images function as indexical records of material interaction and will used to construct a collection of handmade, sculptural books containing other influences such as poetry, research-based texts and mixed-media collage. 

LITERARY CONNECTION

Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European Nobel laureate in Literature (1913), wrote Ajoy River in the landscape that anchors this project, situating the fieldwork within a longer lineage of artistic and philosophical inquiry. The broader region later became the site of Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, founded by Tagore and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its unique approach to education and culture. 

Santiniketan is also the birthplace of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (1998). This literary and intellectual context deepens the project’s engagement with the material and perceptual conditions of place.

ENVIRONMENTAL URGENCY

The river island is undergoing rapid transformation due to illegal sand mining, an activity that has intensified over the course of the project. What initially appeared as a seasonally stable landform began to show excavated voids, followed by the arrival of heavy machinery and the construction of temporary sand roads that redirect river flow and enable continuous extraction. These interventions accelerate erosion and destabilize the island’s structure, contributing to its gradual disappearance. The resulting changes affect sediment movement, water dynamics, and access for local fishing communities, underscoring how informal extractive practices can reshape entire river systems within a short span of time. 

AMY'S PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRY: JANUARY 5, 2026 

As we approached the island, the landscape looked startlingly different from just a few weeks before. The same excavator was parked on the other side (during our last visit it crossed over the water while we were making cyanotypes on the island). Except now, the river had nearly disappeared with manmade sand bridges lined with palm leaves crossing where water has been dammed by sandbags.

Rather than wading shin-deep through mud to get to the island, Suman was able to keep his shoes dry during the entire outing. I pulled mine off to ground myself to the space, forgetting to remove my leggings until after I’d already covered my feet with a skin of mud. The narrow fishing channel we used to wade through now reached only as far as my ankles. And where the water could dip so low, up to my ribs, now only met me on my calves. Suman found some rocks further upstream and crossed over to our island, leaping around without baring his feet.

The island looked more alien than other. Mostly because it wasn’t an island at all. Where we last saw a dam going in, a make-shift bridge of sand lined with palm leaves crossed over from the other side of mainland. We explored these connections. A temporary house (Suman tagged “the mafia house”) had been constructed with a few pieces of laundry on the roof and a motorbike parked outside. The excavator wasn’t running, but a large lorry drove by on what seemed to be an impossibly fragile road of sand. When I walked, sometimes a part of it would cave away beneath my feet and I’d slip down its steep incline.

When darkness had fallen, we saw headlights bore through the mist from a distance. A few lorries were making their way towards us. One stopped just before the motorbike, with the driver shouting out his window. (I think assuming we were the owners.) Suman urged me to walk in the opposite direction and just keep moving. When we got enough distance, he said he had a new concern… that someone could possibly harm us out here since this was an illegal mining operation.

I kept questioning how this was possible with endless lorries lining the roadways and forcing us to change our path on the ride over. He said the government is involved. Though not the government directly, but corrupt politicians. It is a business we should not go digging around in or else we could end up killed.

Once the lorry passed, we decided to head back to the other side of the mainland. Suman stopped to take a video when suddenly I had the feeling of being followed. I looked back and I saw a flashlight making its way towards us. I tapped Suman on the shoulder, not wanting to speak and interrupt his video, but to catch his awareness. He ignored me. I tapped more. More. Harder. Finally, he paused the recording and I pointed back to the light growing closer to us. “Let’s go.”

He wanted me to walk in front of him. I moved quickly. When I turned back at one point, I was surprised to see that the light was getting much closer. It had matched my pace, and then some, in order to catch up to us. Suman remained steady (he's worked extensively with illegal coalmining operations and is skilled at gaining access without stirring suspicion). He stopped, pointed to a small piece of land rising above the water with an equal reflection beneath it looking like some perfectly symmetrical object. “Look at that,” as he implied for me to bring out my camera. And so I did, nervously clicking knowing the light would now certainly reach us.

I stayed frozen, camera in hand. I kept my eyes trained on that piece of land, though I stopped making any images. I just listened to Suman and this man exchange in conversation. The tone was not the friendly sort of curiosity that I recognized from encounters with the village fisherman. There was a suspenseful tension here. I could make out some of Suman’s responses. We came from the village. Then I heard Bolpur. Taking photographs.

We were being questioned. Where did you come from? What are you doing here?

I didn’t even see the man. I don’t know his build. His face. Nothing. I don’t know where he went. I kept my eyes fixed on that reflected piece of land until Suman told me it was safe. I had asked him earlier if he was joking about the danger we could be in. I stepped in close to read his eyes, but they were unmoving. He was serious. We needed to stay alert. This space is no longer ours alone. We’re sharing it with a crores-big illegal business. He said two bodies tossed in the river would mean nothing.