Author: Pallavi Paul

• Objects as Exhibits: Performance of the Forensic

  This is the fourth and final research note from Pallavi Paul, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme.

  “Things are what we encounter, ideas are what we project.” ~ Leo Stein (A-B-C of Aesthetics, p44)

  In his work the The Theory of Things, Bill Brown asks us to turn our attention towards the distinction between ‘Objects’ and ‘Things’. The difference between the two Brown argues, lies in the threshold between the “nameable and unnameable, the figurable and unfigurable, the identifiable and unidentifiable[i].” In other words the relationship between the two is characterized by constant tension and possibility…

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  Phantasmal Tidings: Cell Phone Technology and Forensics

  This is the third research note from Pallavi Paul, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. Entering the cyber cell of the Economic Offences Wing (Delhi Police) is like walking into a time lag. One of the few air-conditioned rooms in the Mandir Marg police station building, it sits on…

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  Can Speak? Will Speak: Interpreting Digital Forensics

  This is the second research note from Pallavi Paul, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. In truth the subtle web of thought Is like the weaver’s fabric wrought: One treadle moves a thousand lines, Swift darts the shuttle to and fro, Unseen the threads together flow, A thousand knots…

• Video Forensics: Post 1

  In this post, Pallavi Paul, one of the researchers who received the Social Media Research grant for 2015, introduces her proposed work. The conception of the ‘human trace’ has acquired several dimensions in the digital moment. We find ourselves surrounded not only by many kinds of images of the body but also new kinds of…