Interview with Art Circle President

This is an interview done with the Art Circle President Isuru Sampath Hettiarachchi.

1.  What is this Art Circle?

If we take art, it turns a mechanical person to a sensitive person. Art is what makes a living person a human being. Hence Art circle is a place where our talents in arts are brought to light.

2.    As you think, what is the importance of having a club/society in the faculty, specially engaged in aesthetic activities?

   

Art was there before we even had a langauge, to express our feelings. When we imagine an engineering faculty, one’s idea would be that there is no connection to aesthetics. But for an engineering undergraduate it’s much-needed. At times when we are stuck in academics and other work, we need to relax our mind. Art circle is a really good platform for that.

3. There are various other clubs and societies which are functioning in the faculty. How does the art circle differ from them?

The obvious difference is the purpose. The responsibilities in the Art Circle are being divided among everyone. Not only among the board members. And those who are working hard for the success are the ones who have some special affection towards the club. Because of these bonds we created, the Art Circle is considered to be a family. Anyone can be a member of the family, and everyone in the faculty is indeed a member. There aren’t such societies around.

4. The art circle annually organizes an event to expose the aesthetic talents of engineering undergraduates to the outside society. What can you say about this year’s event?

Well, Arts circle is not just another arts society which does day-to-day art. We experiment with it. This year is no exception. We tried to express a strong concept, with an attractive story, in lesser time. We’ve observed that the people are busy with their day-to-day work, hence they have less time for a drama or anything aesthetic. Hence this year’s show expressed that, in the modern era, we don’t need two-three hours to express a story, and we tried to achieve this effectively in much less time.

It was the undergraduates of the faculty who did everything from writing the script, acting, performing, background music to stage design, without any involvement of outsiders. Hence the final output was a creation of our students alone.

The event was a success with many feedbacks, both good and bad. We know that we had the ability to do more. But still, we are happy with the effort, as there were many obstacles we had to overcome to reach this position.

5. What are the activities organized by the art circle other than the annual event?

Usually, we organize few “Padura” throughout the year. This is not something we do solely for singing and enjoying. This is a platform we use to discuss the deep meanings of the songs and have an enlightening discussion with the participants on how each song can be phrased differently in the eye of the other.

“Frame” is another program which we bring to life, where the artistic skills of the undergraduates are exposed to the world with the participation of lecturers and also experts in the field. We also arranged few workshops on drama for the whole university. And also as a part of introducing a platform for creativity for the fresh undergraduates, we conduct an annual orientation where the freshers’ batch is guided into organizing a show.

There are few suggestions to conduct sculpture workshops and exhibitions, which would come to light in near future.

6.    What can you say about the support and the assistance that you get from the faculty for the successful completion of the work carried out by the art circle?

7.    Any final remarks?

As the art circle of Faculty of Engineering, we always try to do something new, something experimental. In these experiments, our sole purpose is to build a relationship between art and engineering. And so far, I’m very proud to say that, we have achieved many successes in this voyage.

Reported By:  Charana Udugama