a b o u t   t h e 
s o l a r   e c l i p s e   '99
p r o j e c t


While in tropical India the sun is taken for granted, in temperate Britain on the other hand, the sun can sometimes generate great excitement not by the intensity of its heat because there is no such intensity there, but by an impending eclipse. How does this concern all of us? By the simple fact that Eclipse'99 has opened up opportunities for articulating our role and identity within the emerging paradigm of the networking technologies.

The Project derives its name from a complete solar eclipse predicted for the 11th of Aug'99, whereby, the first land mass on the straight line of the Eclipse's trajectory is going to be Cornwall, UK and the last land mass India. Thereafter, the whole phenomenon will disappear into sunset over the Bay of Bengal. Consequently, the Project has been conceived as a shared initiative between Cornwall's Falmouth College of Arts (FCA) and India's Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.

This Indo-UK initiative had started off in early 1998 with the avowed intention - exciting and ambitious as it was and continues to be - of being able to create, by the time of the Eclipse, a "daisy chain" of communities along the line of the Eclipse's trajectory that should be able to connect up with each other through the networking technologies in order to collaborate and work with each other synchronously (online) and asynchronously (offline) over their shared visions, ideas and ethos across the Internet.

In the process, it has been our fond hope to be able to create "new art, new audiences and new experiences" through all this collaborative work centred around a set of design- technology initiatives inherent to this new media.

We shall create opportunities for everyone to interact on 11th of August 1999, the day of the solar eclipse. The impressions on the solar eclipse from people on its trajectory will be recorded online. We shall also work towards a common task of designing an application for use during the solar eclipse. This site will also be updated from time to time until the date of the eclipse on various aspects connected with the eclipse.

If you would like to be part of the event or have any suggestions, write to Project Solar Eclipse '99

 

 
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