Sunday, March 25, 2012

Interview with LALITH VUMMITI


Interviewer: Johan Alamgir  (JA)
Interviewee: Lalit Vummiti (LV)
Designation: Graphic Artist
Date: March 21, 2012

JA: What do you see as the role of the visual arts in our mass-mediated world and particularly in your profession?

LV: Visual art is a medium of communication right? Like any sort of visual media whether its graphic design or moving picture it’s important to influence the audience. That’s what gets the audience excited right? To go and continue to research on a subject and to be entertained. The role of visual art itself is to make us relive the experience the artist had in his lifetime and share it through art.

JA: With new communications and media technologies, imagery is almost instantly available. Do you believe that this is having a positive or negative influence on the industry (provide example)?

LV: I think its definitely having a positive influence on the industry, because ever since the Internet got invented and it integrated into our lives, it has become easy to communicate ideas, or techniques. It is easy to access information for anybody whether it is legal or illegal on the web and still a medium of communication can be established.  For example, way back in the days when we had to go to the library for research that was such a downtime. We had to wake up at a certain time, go there and use the library card for books or even pay late fees. And sometimes not even getting the exact research material among the books. Nowadays I can just type a certain word in the web and get thousands of results in return.

JA: What popular images do you see that are frequently rechanneled throughout the entertainment industry?

LV: we see many images everyday; I mean images of rock stars or film stars. We see many kind of promotional material for larger production in form of imagery. This imagery can be presented in form of posters, digital media, or photographs all these images  get people to go and be a consumer. It gets people excited about some sort of topic and then they are compelled to go and watch the movie or buy the certain product.

JA: Are there particular images that this industry has popularized, and or created?
LV: Yah, when collaborating graphic and musical art field, for example the promotional material like the Jimmy Hendrix poster in your wall. This particular poster was published by winterland.com, so if u go to that site they will definitely have huge collection of Jimmy Hendrix posters or other promotional material. They are collectors and licensed publisher of those images. They are popularizing the depiction of history of music and you having that certain poster in your wall shows that you fit into that popular culture. That makes this art a popular (pop) art.
JA: Who is one of your favorite visual artist/s, and or what is your favorite style of visual art?
LV: When talking of favorite visual arts, I would say right this moment I couldn’t name any particular artist from the top of my head. But if there were someone I would truly admire, that would be director Steven Spielberg. He is a groundbreaking visual director, and has always gifted this world with amazing movies. And also another name like George Lucas comes to my mind as well, who is remarkable a visual artist. He is visualizing the sound scores in a movie, and bringing that into reality. He plays a different sort of role in the visual field, he sees with his ears. So yah I can say these people I would look up-to when deciding my favorite visual artist. as for my favorite style of art, I would say movies and games have always been my top choice of visual media.
JA: How has your knowledge of famous artworks influenced your creative process?
LV: Over the period of formal training that I have received, yah I can truly say I have looked at Steven Spielberg as my influence. I mean the amount of incredible work of art that he had created have always amazed me since childhood. The movies that I have grew up with and watched with great interest have been the Jurassic Park, Terminator, Back to the Future. These were the movies that had left my jaw hanging after watching. So I will always consider the man who originated these movies, as my major influence in visual arts.

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