Savouring art, the hi-tech way

Swathi Soft Solution's core area of activity is multimedia operations. Yet art and culture find prominence in their agenda.

K.S. Sudhakar smiles at the irony that has made him reasonably knowledgeable in the art of Bharatanatyam. His Swathi Soft Solutions has come out with a CD ROM and a VCD on the dance form. "My mother keeps pulling my leg, because as a kid I would insist on the channel being changed whenever she tried to watch a classical dance show on television," he laughs. The software professional and his two friends, multimedia experts Mahendra Kumar and Balakumar, came together a few years ago to set up Swathi Soft Solutions. "Our core business is not art and culture though we are doing a lot in that area too," says Sudhakar. The firm is into CD encryption, e-learning packages, web applications, multimedia presentations for corporate houses and client server solutions. Recently they've branched into back office operations too.

Swathi's second ROM on CD is an artistic sojourn in the world of classical dance. Bharatanatyam ? Essence and Essentials, with inputs by dancer Madurai R. Muralidharan serves as an instructional package where the student is told what should not be done. "Even established dancers have found our output useful. Not that they don't know about the content… but the ROM helps them refresh their memory… " Sudhakar explains. After working with Muralidharan on 13 hours of rushes the group is now able to identify slips and misses in dance. "And nobody is more surprised by the development than we are … " laughs Sudhakar.

K. S. Sudhakar, Swati Soft Solutions
 

The CD ROM format helped these young men use technology the way they wished to but they realised the need to switch over to DVD and VCD format soon. And that's what they adopted when they made 'Colourful Voyage into Classical Dance,' with Priyadarsini Govind, in which the 'sum and substance' of the Bharatanatyam Varnam has been dealt with. Jyolsna Menon, an instructor with Kalakshetra and their in-house consultant Nritya Jagannathan oversee the content of Swathi's dance and yoga CDs. So will they get into music next? "We are more interested in educative packages … not just songs … let's see," Sudhakar ruminates. The team's dream portal, kalakendra.com works towards promoting traditional art and culture.

Now to theatre Moulee's light-hearted yarn, `Flight No.172' in VCD and DVD format, is a Swathi product. How did the group embark on the production of the laugh riot? Says Sudhakar: "We've been diehard fans of the play for long and dad is close to Moulee. I kept pestering him for VCD transference of the play, which was telecast as a serial on Doordarshan some years ago."

When Moulee got the tapes he worked relentlessly to edit the 13 episodes into a two-hour package and with it Swathi has successfully entered the arena of entertainment marketing. Recently 'Crazy' Mohan's 'Madhu Cheenu' and Y. Gee. Mahendra's 'Comedy Utsavam,' comprising three of his plays have found their way into Swathi's repertoire.

Culture and multimedia expertise conjoin at Swathi to produce quality content and design. "Actually Swathi's foray in the field of culture began with the product catalogue designing that we took up for Sony Music," Sudhakar informs. Their brochure on T. K. V. Desikachar's 'Patanjali's Yogasutra ? an Exploration,' by Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Swathi's first CD ROM, looks promising. "That was an interesting experience," recalls Sudhakar. "Like most of us today, I turned to Yoga to get my aching back fixed. Till then KYM had been publishing their material as books. When I explained how the CD ROM format would be interactive, useful and less costly, they were game." Stress Management through Yoga is another CD Rom in the same genre. Swathi's other rare guidance packages include Pilgrimage of Sound, and In Union.

As you listen to Sudhakar you begin to understand the organisation's pertinent slug, 'Solutions Beyond Technology,' better.