BENGALURU: Many of India’s premiere research and educational institutes of science can be found across Bengaluru. Let’s play a game. Take the city’s map and start a drinking game of darts with your friends where the targets are these institutions and you take a shot every time you hit near said targets. Chances are that by the end of the day everyone’s going to feel very sorry for their livers. For you don’t need accuracy in this rendition of darts to get hammered. That’s how many such places there are here.
So for a city riddled with research institutions of various kinds, a public festival celebrating Bengaluru’s scientific heritage seems like a natural progression in science communication. And guess what? Sci560 is such a festival presently going on in the city. Organised by Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB) and funded by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, this science carnival will go on till the end of December and features a sprawling exhibition, workshops and masterclasses facilitated by various experts catered towards the general public. But that’s not all there is to it. In January 2025, Sci560 will be hosting their film festival.
Despite science’s heavy presence in the city’s identity, many of its impressive feats seem to have escaped the public’s notice. Or so has observed Jahnavi Phalkey, science historian and founding director of SGB. “We have had prominent scientists, citizens, and also industrial people come in and say, ‘Oh, God, I didn’t know this!’ People might be aware of some things, but seeing how all this adds up and understanding why Bengaluru is what it is today is where this exhibition has been taking baby steps towards,” she says.
The various programmes featured at this festival are a result of collaboration with multiple institutions in the city. One such collaborative institution has been the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) which organised four programmes for Sci560 including a masterclass, two interactive workshops and one astronomy quiz. But on top of these, IIA has also donated two of their old instruments – a transit circle and a photometer – to the exhibition for the entirety of its duration. But why these two? Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, scientist and the head of the Science Communication, Public Outreach, and Education (SCOPE) Section at IIA, reveals the reasons behind it.
“We chose these two instruments because they are easily portable and tell two different stories. The transit circle tells the story of the Madras Observatory in the 19th century, which eventually led to the IIA being created, where the initial concerns surrounded measuring the positions of the stars primarily as an aid to navigation and surveying, which also resulted in the The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India (1802). The transit circle is a link to that history of positional astronomy. The photometer, however, is a link to astrophysics because it is concerned with measuring and analysing the light from stars, which leads you to understand what stars are made of, how they are formed and so on. Therefore we felt these two instruments are complimentary towards one another,” he shares.
While the mysteries of outer space have captured the imaginations of many, not everyone is interested in the nitty gritties of fundamental science. Science, after all, is a much wider field and includes not just the analytical but the creative as well. One such institute bringing in the creative element has been the National Institute of Design, Bengaluru, (NID) who hosted workshops and exhibitions about information design and digital game design.
“We held sessions featuring games created by our students; a mix of digital video games and analogue board games. People from various fields and even schoolchildren who were interested in making games. Since the last 10 years or so, people have started recognising the value of design. It works as an interface between whatever you have made – a scientific artefact or an engineering machine – and between the people. Design helps in communicating these ideas better with the public,” says Swapnesh Samaiya, faculty of digital game design at NID.
Looking forward
A key feature of Sci560 is the film festival which will take the floor in January 2025. Gayatri Manu, senior programme associate at SGB and a member of the jury, is looking forward to the submissions. “We are finding film as a mode through which visitors can engage with the ideas displayed at the exhibition. We’re also looking for stories about the city, even if they are not linked to science and research, but stories that speak to the modern concerns of the city. We want to of course dive into the city’s past and its role in shaping modern India, but also look at the quirks of living in the modern city and the challenges that arise from it and how it can be captured on film. We are hoping that the film festival will be a coming together of people who both live and work in the city, but also people who have a curiosity about what Bengaluru has to offer on a global scale,” she concludes.
