The exhibition is happening right now at Lalit Kala Akademi and ends this Sunday, 2nd March 2008. So go ahead and catch this fresh breath of imagination.

This artwork of a lady has been done only using leaves.

About 200 works made by the 2nd and 3rd year students are on display, of which 110 are photographs. There is no particular theme to this exhibition, but like the coordinator put it to me, it is a collection of beautiful things. I particularly liked the portraitures. But what stumped me was their graphic works. From the ship with its mast open to the flashy red car, from a lady genuflecting resplendent with a floral pattern to innumerable zebras in a meadow that seem to be galloping, the artworks express a million ideas that words simply cannot. Uncommon concepts such as mathematics, fashion, engineering, zoology, botany, seascape, portraiture, calligraphy and even architecture are depicted.

Some of these works, which are a part of the students’ portfolio, make you wonder whether it is painting or graphic or photograph. One of the coordinator, a third year student of Viscom, told me that this whole exhibition was organized by the students only, who were part of the Create Club, with a bit of backing from their professors. I must say they have done a fabulous job running this show.

Prakash Sayini, Developers Relations, Forum Nokia spoke on “The route to global market opportunities with Nokia – for mobile application developers Going to market with Nokia”. It was a brief overview of the offerings from Forum Nokia for developers. He called the mobile phone screen as the 4th Screen, after cinema, PC and TV. There were some interesting questions from the audience about how to market an application. Location Based Services are the next big thing on the mobile and there was some discussion in this regard.

Widgets are very common these days and some of you might have heard about Widsets. Widgets are a new way of sharing and displaying content. Next Came Balagopal, Technology Expert, Forum Nokia India Team who spoke on “Getting Started with WebRunTime development on S60″. It dealt with mobile widgets. Sadly, WRT is present only in S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 phones. Web Run-Time widgets are small applications developed using standards-based Web technologies, such as XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax. In fact, you can port existing desktop widgets to Web Run-Time with very little effort – and you can use your existing tools.

Next up was David from MobiSiteGalore who demoed their free tool that will let you build your mobile website in absolutely no time. The tool was impressive and powerful.

The last talk was on iPhone Web Development which was given by Prabhu. Unfortunately there wasn’t any demo of this. Prabhu is organizing WebCamp next week, I hope I learn more about iPhone web development from him there.

Hope events like this happen more regularly in the city which still needs to catchup with other cities on the mobile development sphere. I also hope that MoMo Chennai takes the Open Coffee Club format, where people with similar interests gather and discuss, instead of this conference format with power point presentations where the audience learns pretty much nothing and in most cases put to sleep.

Some photos from the event

Apart from the usual events (Lits, DumbC, dance, music, dramatics, debate etc.) this time they have introduced four new events including Solo dance and Short Film Making. Short film making was actually introduced last year, but it didn’t take off as expected and hence it has been re-introduced this year.

But what takes the cake this year is their impressive workshop line-up, from hairstyling to cookery with Sanjeev Kapoor to animation workshop with Soundarya Rajnikanth (who is right now working on the animation film ‘Sultan’ presenting Superstar as a 3-d avatar) to DJing to dance to Kalaripayattu workshop.

I am impressed with their efforts to showcase an ancient Indian martial art form, Kalaripayattu, at their cultural festival. And oh! I am not going to forget to highlight the heart of every Saarang ‘Pro Shows’. This time they are flying down Lucky Ali on Saturday night.

Now enough of writing/reading about Saarang, it is time to experience it.

The race is divided into several categories: Amateur – Men (140 km), Amateur – Women (70 km), College Race (12 km) and School Race (5 km). For those with a stomach only for spirit and not competition, there’s also a non-competitive corporate rally spanning 5 km. Details of time, venue etc can be found at their website.

You can register for the race by emailing the organizers at icr@schoolsforindia.org and submitting filled registration forms by the 26th of January, 2008.

For any information or enquiry contact:

Venkatesh – 99400 74889
Archana – 98410 56596

The ticker in the official site of Chennai Marathon still reads “Congratulations to the winners of Chennai Marathon 2006. We thank all the participants who made the Marathon grand success. See you all at Chennai Marathon 2007″.

Chennai has a lot of marathon runners and it is sad that the Chennai Marathon 2007 didn’t take off. 2008 – a new year and a fresh start. I can only hope, like the hundreds of others, that Chennai Marathon 2008 happens without any hassle.

PS: I still wonder why there is no category called ‘sports’ in Chennai MetBlogs.

Hrish Thota and Co., the people behind FilmCamp.Tv – a film academy in B’lore, are spreading the film making spirit to Chennai this December.

On Decmeber 9th, 2007 (Sunday) they are organizing the first film-making workshop in Chennai. The one day workshop aims to provide a hands-on experience in film making, under the guidance of professionals. It covers every aspect of film making, from script writing, story boarding, shooting (with the cameras they provide) and editing with Final Cut Pro (on the Apple Mac that they provide at the venue).

With professionals to help you at each stage of film making, this workshop will give you an undiluted insight into the world of film making. The event starts at 8:30 am in the morning and stretches till late in the evening, by when they promise to educate you to complete your first short film (one minute).

This concept has been a roaring success in B’lore, where they have managed to get participants to finish 11 films in the past workshops held there. They also help you popularize your film, by launching it on their site.

All this, for just 1000 bucks. Trust me it is worth every rupee. When I made my first film, I had to go thro’ a lot of pains, without people to guide me and learning small things the hard and costly way. But here you get all the knowledge in just a day for a mere sum of Rs. 1000.

Also you will be put into a random 5 member team at the venue (the venue details will be mailed to you at the time of registration), which adds to the real life experience of many film makers. While making a film, you have to get in touch with many strangers and make them visualize what you have in mind, an art that any good director/script writer must possess. FilmCamp.tv gives you an opportunity to test that too.

The registration process if fairly simple, just shoot them a mail at direct [at] filmcamp.tv and they will guide you.

FilmCamp.tv – Chennai Workshop

Last weekend saw some real high speed action packed games. I almost ran out of nails to bite by the end of the semi-finals. It was heartening to find so many interested folks getting up at 5:30 in the morning and driving down all the way to the beach to cheer us.

Here is a nice picture of Mahen (team red) in action, snapped by Manoharan.

After the tournament gets over on Saturday (Tomorrow), the CUF (Chennai Ultimate Frisbee club) will swtich to its second season. So if you are interested in the sport and would like to learn/play it, this is the best time to join, for, the next tournament will be held at least 3 months later and you will get adequate practice playing at least 25 regular games by then.

So all you have to do is to join the club is land up every Saturday and Sunday at Bessie (Elliots) Beach (near the gym/police booth) at 5:30 AM, starting this Sunday and play the game. We are also implementing 2 level tiers, so that it will help the new comers to settle down and play their game with people of their skill set for the first few games.

And ho! Did I forget to mention the match schedule for tomorrow:

6:00 am – 7:00 am: Finals, Team Blue Vs. Team Yellow (My team)
7:00 am – 8:00 am: 3rd place decider, Team Green Vs. Team Red

So see you folks there. :D

The tournament will be held this weekend and the finals will take place next weekend. There are four teams taking part in this event and with 4 games scheduled each day, this tournament promises to deliver some high speed action (not to mention the test of stamina). The matches are scheduled at 6:00 am to 8:00 am this Saturday at Bessie beach, near the Memorial.

Be there to cheer us, to click some beautiful snaps or just plainly boo away the opposite teams (Look, without Vatsan in my team I am plainly counting on your support).

Ever wondered how many things have happened/changed in these 368 years of Chennai’s existence? If I were to give these changes a digit, then it would just about take me the closest value to infinity.

With a flick of a finger, Chennai has become a million things old. What if we could take one second out of this city’s life and capture, store and time capsule it? We can’t document everything that happened in that one second in Chennai, but we sure can have a good collection of events/scenes/stories that took place in that one second.

Calling all you people to take part in this ambitious project “03:11 PM”.

Grab a camera, sync. your watch and take a snap of whatever you see at 3:11 PM on 3rd November, 2007. It doesn’t matter what camera you use, it doesn’t matter if the scene is not aesthetic, all that matters is you take that ONE shot telling everyone else, that is what was happening in that part of Chennai at that particular instance.

Do also realize that more the number of people taking part in this project, the more successful it will become. Feel free to blog about it, spread the word to your friends and please refrain from spamming orkut (if possible).

Project 03:11 PM

The other option was to run on a national highway, which thankfully wasn’t haunted by stray dogs, like the ECR. But then again, the lorry drivers and bus drivers wouldn’t stop to take a second look at your dead body after they have run over you. Times were certainly difficult for us, marathoners, then.

But things have certainly changed a lot. I kick-started my Ultra Marathon B’lore, practice a few days back and I have noticed positive changes. Firstly, there are fewer dogs. Way fewer than what used to be back then. Credits go to the municipality corporation. Secondly, the drivers are more friendly. The bus drivers are no longer rash in the wee hours of morning. A couple of them honked gently and overtook me properly, instead of choosing the more time efficient path, running over me. A few car drivers even stopped at crossings to let me pass.

It is a bliss to run in such conditions. All one can hope is that the organizers behind Chennai Marathon 2007, don’t fumble it up again and conduct the marathon before this year ends.