Few artists arrive and we start discussions on individual ideas and plans.
First recee with everyone to the Oak Forest (Dhobi Ghat). A few possibilities for on site installations and also various collections of insects for the slide projects were identified. Discovered that it is the season for butterfly groups in the forest. This is a phenomenon I have noticed every year, where a larger number of butterflies gather at one spot together on rocky surfaces beside the stream. When shaken, they fly out spreading all around and within twenty minutes you are sure to find them back at the same spot. Played with this a few times. Considered the performative aspect of this intervention on the peacefully gathered butterflies for the joy and beauty of having them fly all around. A bull followed us back, graceful and courteous, at one point where we were to part paths, it grunts, walks onward, gently trodding the stream to enter the forest on other side, disturbing a few butterflies that fly up and around him as he walks home back from grazing.
Second reccee, plans were changed last minute and we took a walk downstream towards the Kempty falls. Observed many eroded rock formations, as the stream flows through rocky and drier areas than its source forest. Found different colored algae, collected some dry algae for experimenting with sandwiched-slides and Anirban identified certain spots for burying photographs for weathering. Tomorrow we visit the pine forest.