Saptan Stories, a unique crowdsourced short-story writing project, harnesses the digital space to tap into collective creativity, says Gargi Gupta
Digital' and 'crowdsourcing' are two buzzwords of today's hyper-connected world. And Saptan Stories, a project conceived of and run by British Council India (BCI) as part of the ongoing UK-India Year of Culture, brings the two together in what's being touted as "India's first ever crowdsourced digital arts project."
Saptan Stories is, to quote Alan Gemmell OBE, Director, BCI, a "giant game of Consequences across the digital space." The reference is to the well-known parlour game called Consequence where each player writes a word or phrase that is strung together in the end to create a sentence. Saptan Stories runs on a similar concept, except that what's being created here is a 'story' taking off from a first line posted on the Saptan Stories website in early August – "I found it hard to get over my broken heart, I thought I never would. Then one night, by the moonlit river, something happened that changed everything." Participants – it's open to Indians only – send in one or two lines to take the story forward, which are run past a jury and put to an online vote before being uploaded on the website. Thus, every week a line gets added to the story. For instance, line two was: "As the moonbeams danced to a heavenly beat upon the silvery water, I gazed to the stars and contemplated my future. It looked bleak on introspection, when out of the water arose an apparition."
But the text is not all. There are also illustrations done by a panel of seven British and Indian artists. Among them is Mumbai-based graphic artist Priyesh Trivedi of Adarsh Balak (comics) fame, who says he found it a challenge to respond quickly to the evolving story. "Usually, it takes a week to 10 days to come up with an illustration. Here I have only two days. I also have to keep in mind that the story is evolving as the images cannot be too overt. In the first line, for instance, there was a reference to 'something' in the moonlit river. I interpreted it as a pool of green light, which in week two becomes an apparition, but at that stage I didn't know – it could have been a UFO. The format forces you to push your skills," says Trivedi.
Adrita Das, another graphic artist says the "process is very democratic" and being flexible in creating images is a challenge. Das's solution was to "keep it abstract, choosing colours that were morose, but had potential to be brighter" depending on how the story progressed over the seven weeks.
Seven is the recurring theme – seven weeks and seven artists. "Saptan is the translation of the Sanskrit number seven," says Neil Pymer, Interactive Creative Director of Aardman Animations, the British studio that's collaborating on the project and has made Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit films. "When we started creating the project, it was important for us to root the project thematically; seven began to become a recurring symbol to inform elements of the project. The number has significance in Western cultures, Eastern ones, and religions world over,"he signs off.
HOW IT WORKS
To quote BCI director Alan Gemmell OBE, Saptan Stories is like a “giant game of Consequences across the digital space.” While in the actual game, each player writes a word or phrase that’s strung together in the end to form a sentence, here what’s being created is a ‘story’ taking off from the first line posted on the Saptan Stories website in early August
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