Seeking Urban Interaction: Tools as a medium of Exchange

Issue #008, 2021                                                                                 ISSN: 2581- 9410 What Is a Tool? A tool is a device or implement, especially one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function. Tools can be of many kinds but the basic functions of any tool is to create, repair and destroy. There are 4 general rules when it comes to tools: Purchase quality tools, keep tools clean, use the right tool for the right job and be aware of your surroundings. As a designer and a zoomer, my tool of choice is my phone, it functions as a camera, a sketchpad, and a library all in one. Digital technology allows me to educate myself every day by granting me access to information that I use in my daily life and my professional practice. But in doing so it also overwhelms me with data and drives me further away from my physical reality. My physical reality is set in Yelahanka, a locality on the outskirts of Bangalore, where I came in the fall of 2017 to do my 4-year Undergraduate Degree. As a migrant student from North India, residing in the outskirts of the city, I felt excluded and detached from the cultural heritage of Bengaluru, the IT hub in South of India. There were a few instances particularly when interacting with service workers such as drivers and staff where the knowledge of my North-Indianness would be responded to with the presumption of vanity, my feminism...