Truck Art, Recycled

The East and the West are like the two ends of a spectrum. The primary factors that lead to the differences between Eastern and Western thought processes have their foundation in the notions of collectivism and individualism respectively. Collectivism is the practice of prioritising a group over each individual in the group. On the other hand, individualism prioritises the decisions made by an individual over a group. In India, individualism was fuelled further as a post-colonial condition. However its growing prevalence today has been aided by the phenomenon of rapid globalisation. This is impacting the daily habits, movements, and even communication styles in India. Among many other impacts of this, the decline of truck art in India is one of them. The decorated freight trucks of India are a cultural identity and an expression of the truck driver’s values and beliefs. This art form is slowly going off the roads and is being used on merchandise such as cups, mobile covers etc. It has slowly evolved into a visual language. Therefore it is very important to study the reasons for decline of truck art and where this art form will be in the coming years. Taking inspiration from the current developments in the scientific sector, this project demonstrates the decline of the value of truck art in an individualistic society. Since, metal is a fast replenishing resource, this project speculates the use of metal from old hand-painted trucks, that have been replaced by more advanced models, to create robots for the general public. The project also speculates the wide acceptance of robots as machinery used in day-to-day life. hence, in an individualistic society focused on technological advancement, truck art is reduced to mere scrap metal. Not only is the authenticity of the art form is lost, but also the entire cultural value of it. Existing scrap metal pieces have been used for this project and then transformed into prototypes of robot models and painted over with existing truck art symbols. In order to portray the reduction of hand-painted trucks to re-useable waste, the painted prototypes were deliberately manipulated to look old and rugged.

Truck Art, Recycled