On the 29th of November, students of the Ecocentric project took a short trip to Avalahalli forest which is about 30 minutes away from college campus.
There was no fixed itinerary for this trip, and it was made just to get an overall sense of being around nature and the forest. They began the day by helping an old lady (a caretaker of an agricultural plot) harvest Ragi.
The Ragi pods are easily recognizable, as they come off in brown clumps, and by rolling the pods in one’s hands, one is able to extract the Ragi easily.
Then, we collected all the waste that lay around in a plastic bag. Although this was forest/agricultural land, the reach of humans was still evident by the large amounts of plastic left behind. We continued to carry plastic all through our walk.
We headed towards a dense growth of Eucalyptus trees, where we gathered and discussed certain patterns and facts of the forest that we had observed.
It was also interesting to note the natural patterns made on the forest floor by many years of fallen leaves and natural mulching that had taken place. We collected many samples of bark, quartz pieces, and even feathers.
Soon after our session, we broke for lunch. After lunch, we had a quiet session where everyone laid down and listened to the sounds of the forest. There was a strange natural rhythm that the forest had, which none of us had noticed before. The passage of the wind through the leaves almost had a musical effect on the ears. After having listened to the forest, we were asked to replicate the noises we heard. We discussed using natural noises as a background for our final installation.
