Pravin Pillay - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Pravin Pillay is the co-founder and Managing Director of Humanitas Smart Planet Systems – a venture capital firm investing in climate tech and social technology of SME’s. He is an impact investor, and mentor at Spring Activator – an impact venture incubator. Pravin maintains a professional contemporary art studio that maps the space at the nexus of emerging technology, consciousness, and nature.
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University of Saskatchewan Electronic Theses and Dissertations - Samsara Unlimited: towards and ecology of compassion, Nov 2006
The present paper positions contemporary artists as aesthetic or value system subversives who are... more The present paper positions contemporary artists as aesthetic or value system subversives who are considered integral to a society’s functioning. This argument posits that the nature of the artistic function is revealed in cybernetic systems relationship between aesthetics and values, power and capital, society and its institutions. The analysis examines the tension between symbolic and biological universe and the artist’s role in mediating between the two realities.
University of Saskatchewan Electronic Theses and Dissertations -Samsara Unlimited - Towards an Ecology of Compassion, 2006
This paper is intended as a preliminary foray from a sociological perspective to provide a contex... more This paper is intended as a preliminary foray from a sociological perspective to provide a contextual map of the function of art in society, to explore the artist as change agent and to identify areas for further research into the topic. The scope of the present research is limited to an investigation of the nature of artists engaged in production of fine and media arts in contemporary society as agents of change."
University of Saskatchewan Electronic Theses and Dissertations., Nov 2006
This paper describes the philosophical and functional framework of the MFA thesis exhibition Sams... more This paper describes the philosophical and functional framework of the MFA thesis exhibition Samsara Unlimited: towards an ecology of compassion. Samsara Unlimited was designed as a conceptual social artwork that would engage a network of art students and interested participants in developing a collaborative network. Using established high art aesthetics and familiar consumer based signifiers; the gallery was transformed over a week into a production, design and retail facility. In this torqued capitalist micro-system, financial profit was considered critical for the functioning of the system but secondary to the generation of a field of compassion. The project sought to create a process through which the general public could become familiar with the perceptive processes engaged by artists in reconstructing everyday reality. It was posited that the ability to engage these perceptive processes would potentially lead to an ontological shift in the spectator. Participants who entered the gallery space could alter between the functional reality of a concept store and the altered reality of an art gallery. The public was encouraged to visit over the week of the installation to ask questions, get involved in the art making process or simply socialize with the artists and artisans involved in the project.
This paper is an attempt to reveal territories outside the vision defined by conceptual structure... more This paper is an attempt to reveal territories outside the vision defined by conceptual structures as understood by the present dominant global culture. Specifically, culture, gender and spatio-temporal order are examined as sites of creative intervention for non-dominant cultures to resist erasure from imagined global futures.
Ricepaper Magazine, 2002
This essay explores the idea of the Temporary Autonomous Zone as an artistic process that occurs ... more This essay explores the idea of the Temporary Autonomous Zone as an artistic process that occurs both within the individual mind and between minds, resulting in increasingly complex web of synergistic relations. Art is examined as creative process within Zen practice.
University of Saskatchewan Electronic Theses and Dissertations - Samsara Unlimited: towards and ecology of compassion, Nov 2006
The present paper positions contemporary artists as aesthetic or value system subversives who are... more The present paper positions contemporary artists as aesthetic or value system subversives who are considered integral to a society’s functioning. This argument posits that the nature of the artistic function is revealed in cybernetic systems relationship between aesthetics and values, power and capital, society and its institutions. The analysis examines the tension between symbolic and biological universe and the artist’s role in mediating between the two realities.
University of Saskatchewan Electronic Theses and Dissertations -Samsara Unlimited - Towards an Ecology of Compassion, 2006
This paper is intended as a preliminary foray from a sociological perspective to provide a contex... more This paper is intended as a preliminary foray from a sociological perspective to provide a contextual map of the function of art in society, to explore the artist as change agent and to identify areas for further research into the topic. The scope of the present research is limited to an investigation of the nature of artists engaged in production of fine and media arts in contemporary society as agents of change."
University of Saskatchewan Electronic Theses and Dissertations., Nov 2006
This paper describes the philosophical and functional framework of the MFA thesis exhibition Sams... more This paper describes the philosophical and functional framework of the MFA thesis exhibition Samsara Unlimited: towards an ecology of compassion. Samsara Unlimited was designed as a conceptual social artwork that would engage a network of art students and interested participants in developing a collaborative network. Using established high art aesthetics and familiar consumer based signifiers; the gallery was transformed over a week into a production, design and retail facility. In this torqued capitalist micro-system, financial profit was considered critical for the functioning of the system but secondary to the generation of a field of compassion. The project sought to create a process through which the general public could become familiar with the perceptive processes engaged by artists in reconstructing everyday reality. It was posited that the ability to engage these perceptive processes would potentially lead to an ontological shift in the spectator. Participants who entered the gallery space could alter between the functional reality of a concept store and the altered reality of an art gallery. The public was encouraged to visit over the week of the installation to ask questions, get involved in the art making process or simply socialize with the artists and artisans involved in the project.
This paper is an attempt to reveal territories outside the vision defined by conceptual structure... more This paper is an attempt to reveal territories outside the vision defined by conceptual structures as understood by the present dominant global culture. Specifically, culture, gender and spatio-temporal order are examined as sites of creative intervention for non-dominant cultures to resist erasure from imagined global futures.
Ricepaper Magazine, 2002
This essay explores the idea of the Temporary Autonomous Zone as an artistic process that occurs ... more This essay explores the idea of the Temporary Autonomous Zone as an artistic process that occurs both within the individual mind and between minds, resulting in increasingly complex web of synergistic relations. Art is examined as creative process within Zen practice.