Sharada Srinivasan

National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

Abstract

Cosmic inspiration & art in relation to dancing ShivaNataraja bronze

This poster explores how ideas of cosmic dance or cosmic flux and motion have been seen to be perhaps metaphorically better evoked or visualised in the Indian tradition of the medieval Chola Shiva Nataraja bronze from southern India than in many other pre-modern cultural traditions (as suggested by the writings of Carl Sagan, Ilya Prigogine, Fritjof Capra, Ananda Coomaraswamy and T.S Eliot). Archaeoastronomical aspects in the ritual and iconography of the medieval Shiva Nataraja bronze are pointed to which relate to the Orion constellation, as seen in a festival at the temple of Chidambaram. I further explore how such notions of cosmic dance; (i.e. of a universe and cosmos in flux, and ideas from quantum mechanics that have led to a departure from notions of Cartesian order,) have, in their own way, influenced artworks and responses to the Shiva Nataraja metaphor. Examples include the artwork ‘Cosmic Dancer’ by Arthur Woods which was sent up the MIR Space Station.

Biographical Details

Sharada Srinivasan is Associate Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore and is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain. Her PhD was awarded by Institute of Archaeology, London (1990-6) and her MA is from the School of Oriental and African Studies (1988-89). She works in the fields of archaeometallurgy, history of science, archaeological science, art history, performance art and art-science connections; her major area of research has been on the scientific and artistic aspects of South Indian bronzes. She is also an exponent of the classical south Indian dance form of Bharata Natyam. In 2009 for the International Year of Astronomy, she collaborated with the French dance company K.Danse (led by Jean-Marc and Anne Matos) on a novel internet-streamed choreographic experiment 'Danse e-Toile: Nataraja et le Cosmos', with simultaneous, interactive performances across Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore and Cite de L'Espace, Toulouse. She is lead investigator on a British Council UKIERI funded project with Exeter on 'Pioneering Metallurgy' of steel from southern India.