The brief of the project was to design the navigation and the visual language for the CD-Rom ‘Culturally Speaking’ which seeks to sensitise young people (12-15 years old) about our pluralistic society, help them acknowledge that our deep roots in pluralistic traditions are central to how we define ourselves as a society today, foster dialogue and create opportunities for peace and understanding.

We started with the belief that the articulation of a secular ideology is central to articulating a cultural understanding of society because diverse symbols and the cultural legacy of people are more often than not manifested in their ‘worldly’ practical activities. A significant objective of this campaign was to attempt an interactive synthesis between change-oriented technologies and the cultural traditions of the community.

CMAC’s programme will use several avenues to achieve its goal, creating strategic alliances with organisations working on issues of religion and peace and working with youth in order to build a rights-based culture of understanding and respect across religion.

CD-Rom as a medium was very exciting to work with as it allowed using different streams of art practices. The CD-Rom covers nine subjects: khayal, sitar, jalebi, kurta, miniature painting, Hindi literature, zero, arch and kite. Creating a CD-Rom was a challenging act which reflected the same dynamism which one is referring to in the context of South Asian culture. In that sense, it was the most promising tool for this project as it best contextualised art as part of everyday living.