“...I wonder how people can be completely men, completely women after growing up, with a fair share of both...”

I listened to Rupesh Bhattarai perform his poem—An ode to the lady in me—while sipping warm lemon juice on a breezy April morning. We were at Basantapur, near where Kasthamandap once stood and the chatter of life in that ancient square, so full of people and goings-on, seemed like the perfect ambience in which to sit and listen to some poetry.

In medieval Nepal, during the rule of the king Pratap Malla—when the Kasthamandap was a bustling marketplace and the Kathmandu Durbar Square a hub of activity, much as it is now—poets gathered at a monument they called Kavindrapur. In the reign of the monarch who loved poetry and the arts, poets, young and old, recited their verses at this monument. Kavindrapur is what Rupesh Bhattarai and two other poets— Saras Chari and Prakash Chandra Jimba—call their poetic movement “Our Kavindrapur, is where the poets are, where poetic experiments happen,” says Prakash. Among these experiments are Kavindrapur’s innovative use of videos and the internet to disseminate their poetry, using YouTube and social media to expand their reach.

“Since the very beginning, we have explored alternative ways of sharing our poems with the world,” says Rupesh.

Now, they’re experimenting further, attempting to make full use of the technology that the information age has provided to further their art. One project that they are currently working on involves a dedicated poetry app that will allow users to listen to poems along with background ambient sound. They have other interesting projects lined up too— installing QR codes in different places around Kathmandu to connect places with poems, and short podcasts that involve deep conversations with apt background ambient sounds.

Today, technology is everywhere. From personal mobile phones we carry to the vast internet that has come to define our modern existence, technology has permeated all facets of our lives. And groups like Kavindrapur are attempting to harness the ubiquity of modern digital technology to explore new ways of making and sharing poetry, the arts and other passions.

Just as Kavindrapur is pushing the boundary between poetry and technology, the folks at Karkhana, an education company and makerspace, have long been exploring how technology can be used in interesting and innovative ways to further the arts and education. Aiming to catalyse a culture of experimentation to allow communities to solve their own problems, Karkhana was established five years ago in 2013 and has since been working in the education sector to inspire young minds to become experimenters, innovators and creative thinkers.

The founders of Karkhana see themselves tackling two different problems. First, Nepal and much of South Asia has been relying on imported ideas and external experts to come in and solve our problems, and this has not been effective. Second, with Artificial Intelligence and its growing applications, rule-based, predictable professions are being taken away from humans, leaving us with the creative and chaotic aspects of the world. The educators at Karkhana believe that the right mixture of art and technology can be a great tool for education. Introducing these two disciplines together forces one to think outside the silos of subjects, building skills in robotics, computational thinking and the hard sciences.

Working with over 50 schools from the Valley, Karkhana has been nurturing critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity in students by letting them explore elements of science through real life applications and examples. “In a class about how batteries work, we hand over some LED bulbs and a few coin cell batteries to students. They figure out the positive and negative terminals of the battery and the LED bulb on their own, and also create stories that never fail to surprise us. Some create a story where there is a red LED glowing as an ambulance light while others with a yellow bulb representing the sun,” shares Dipeshwor Man Shrestha, co-founder and teacher at Karkhana.

“But the integration of arts and technology alone is not enough,” says Sakar Pudasaini, co-founder of Karkhana. “We need to steal good tools from whatever discipline has developed the tool well. I was trained as an engineer and re-trained myself, with the help of mentors, to be a teacher. But when I started Karkhana, I found that I needed to learn how to listen to parents, teachers and students to understand what they are thinking. So I reached into the discipline of social sciences that has well developed and documented techniques to interview and observe people. So we need to be flexible and willing to integrate the right skill from anywhere.”

In recent photography and videography classes conducted by Karkhana, students were taken to Boudhanath Stupa, Kathmandu Durbar Square and Patan Durbar Square. Based on the problem statements and themes provided to them, students were prompted to learn composition, modeling, framing and reflection techniques. They then held conversations with locals about culture, traditions and religion, which they attempted to capture through digital storytelling. Later, they compiled and edited the frames they shot using Adobe Premiere Pro and GIMP software along with a mobile application, Snapseed, to edit their shots.

“Technology has brought the world closer, as I know about the traditions and cultures of foreign places through the internet. Our generation is focused on technology so why not make use of it to communicate to the rest of the world about our heritage too?” asked Shasta Bajracharya, a 14-year-old student on the final day of the videography class.

In 2014, Karkhana partnered with the visual arts collective Artree Nepal to create ‘Mane’, an interdisciplinary art piece. Mane consisted of a nine-foot prayer wheel that projected images with each turn, acting as a user interface that combined technology with tradition. The sculpture was an example of how the integration of art and technology can be a medium to inspire young generations to make, build and experiment while also allowing the older generations to realise that modern technology can also be used to inspire, protect and promote our traditions and culture.

“Art and technology have always grown hand-in-hand,” says Sheelasha Rajbhandari, co-founder at Artree Nepal. “They influence and grow together.” As an example of how art and technology can mirror each other, Sheelasha cites the artistic technique of pointillism, which includes drawing distinct dots in a certain pattern, and how it is similar to the way in which algorithms work in programming.

As individual artists and a collective movement, Artree sees technology as one of the many mediums to communicate their concepts, their artwork and a social message. Artree has also used the integration of art and technology to heal and provide relief in times of great trauma. After the 2015 earthquake, Artree Nepal conducted various art activities to address psychological trauma. A campaign at Thulo Byasi in Bhaktapur combined art with physical computing, where a playful, interactive station was set up and a software programme used to generate music alongside messages of proper sanitation in the local Newari dialect.

Furthermore, Subas Tamang, an Artree member, collected oral history from Thulo Byasi locals and created the project Basibiyalo—A Sharing Space, which featured portraits of community members printed on conductive ink screens on cartridge paper that acted as an interface through which viewers got connected to videos featuring stories and facts of history. “An interactive setup was created at one of the severely damaged falchas in Thulo Byasi. Locals spent hours watching the videos at the falcha,” says Sheelasha. “Even months later, the aftermath of the great earthquake was all too evident.”

The Nepal Children’s Art Museum (CAM) is another organisation that has been working to provide a safe space for children to explore their creativity while also integrating technology into their modes of learning and play. Priyankana Bastola, programme coordinator at CAM Nepal, explained that their attempts to integrate art and technology into education come from how technology for children has been limited to mobile phones and tablets and how art is still perceived as a leisure activity completely at odds with academia. “Through art, we engage our students in reflection, comprehension, problem solving and decision making which are skills that contribute greatly to the field of technology,” she says.

CAM Nepal recently conducted a coding and robotics learning lab for students aged 6-11 years, where students were asked to solve a unique problem by programming robots. Though the primary goal of the workshop was to introduce the children to algorithms and develop a foundation for understanding code and languages, the facilitators were amazed by the enthusiasm, curiosity and effort that the students put in learning and developing their robots, said Nistha Shrestha, director and facilitator at CAM. From discussing the robots’ features and design to the algorithms that they’d develop, the students even created their own skits for the robots to enact through coding.

“Instead of encouraging children to model instructors, we provide them with a safe space to run wild with their imagination,” says Priyankana. “Doing so makes the children feel comfortable and they start showing their personality and interest in the task at hand. The creative process that comes with art education helps children develop perspectives and focus on the process of learning rather than just the end result.”

To become a Luddite in this day would not just be nigh impossible but also irresponsible. Art is as much about pushing boundaries as it is about aesthetic, just as education is about finding new ways to connect with children instead of simply sticking to the tired old ways. With technology so freely available and so ubiquitous, harnessing it is not just a choice; it is an imperative.

Tech you can wear

With a glowing locket, a pair of glowing earrings, a lit up tie or a pair of blinking shoes, you’d be hard to miss. The products from Junkiri, wearable fashion technology, embody their namesake—they light up in colourful hues. Fuelled by a passion to incorporate technological advancement in the fashion world and to change the perception that technology is simply robots and computers, Shivani Chhetri, a computer engineer by day and fashion designer by night, started the company with Aavas Parajuli in May 2017.

“People tend to think that technology is limited to things that are trending,” says Shivani. “There’s so much more to it.”

For Shivani, art is a way of living and technology is something that makes life easier, better. Without art, technology is just a pile of tangled wires and cables, scrambled digits and data, she believes. It was this belief that led her to integrate her passion for fashion with her academic degree in engineering. “Being the first ones to produce wearables in Nepal excites us. And so do the positive responses we get from our customers and well wishers,” says Shivani.

With Artificial Intelligence (AI), the rise in robotics and the mechanisation of traditional jobs, Shivani believes that the time is ripe to introduce the younger generation to interdisciplinary learning where different interests and passions can be brought together to create something new. “With the right people, culture and values, one can accomplish great things. So, if we shape young minds and open them up to new perspectives and ideas by changing orthodox teaching-learning practices, they might come up with brilliant ideas to change the world for the better,” says Shivani.

The wearable tech from Junkiri is a creative outlet for Shivani, who works in technology in her day job. Bridging the gap between technology and arts is something she had long been interested in, as both are her passions. “Technology is taking the world by storm but there needs to be a creative tool for people to access this technology,” she says. “Art provides this platform. It gives technology a face. The integration of art with technology allows people to widen their perspectives, their imaginations.”