My research engages with textual and geospatial ‘data’ for public-spirited needs. This may take the form of archiving, designing digital interactions with the archives and developing data-methods to make these archives. My engagements with the urban through SafeYelli have largely driven my geospatial and civic research interests. They have grown to take political forms and positions over the course of my education at Srishti.


At Aruvu, I work with the Participatory Geospatial Lab, constructing and developing methods and technologies to enable engagements on the field and online. I am currently working on the Constitutional Observer and with Aruvu Collaboratory. I maintain the SafeYelli in Bengaluru project.


I am a 2024 graduate out of Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Reach me at adhavan [dot] sivaraj16 [at] gmail [dot] com.

A reading list for opinions and critiques on Veganism and Caste in India

Attemping a crowd sourced list of readings.

November 9, 2024 · Adhavan

Beta release of Constitutional Observer

I present a public beta of the Constitutional Observer that was in the works for a few months now. It brings together a corpus of the Constituent Assembly debates and questions from the LS. It is envisioned as a comparative interface to understand the historical context of a constitutional argument. You can ask it seemingly simple questions, and it will semantically understand and return relevant responses from both datasets. The conceptual framing of these questions is meant to poke curiosity at a primal level, outside of explicit notions of political questioning.These were first exhibited at SMI Collective 2024, a show case of Srishti Manipal final semester projects at MAHE, Bengaluru

May 28, 2024 · Adhavan

Innocent questions, innocent poetry, political personals'

I write in brief about the making of the questions that were exhibited along with the Constitutional Observer, and a little of the vision for it.

May 28, 2024 · Adhavan

Linguistic Pluralism, Migration and Disenfranchisement in Bengaluru

This paper will establish Bengaluru as a plural city with many lingua-cultural identities that have a distinct geographic spread. It will then delve into an attempted analysis of the linguistic demographics of the electoral roll of Bengaluru, thus building a pathway to measure representation electorally. It also attempts to understand language linked trends in Education.

December 28, 2023 · Adhavan

Research Narratives - Spatial and multimedia data annotation platform

We present Research Narratives that came out of a vision to have an environment that encourages responsible use of data for research and communication. It is a tool that provides a collaborative environment for multidisciplinary research or writing projects that communicate patterns from data.

December 4, 2023 · Adhavan, Sooraj Raveendran

Maps that are vessels of content, not the boring cartography of the digital age

I came across Maps of Uncomfortable Boundaries / Atlas of My World by Zarina at the Kochi Biennale. I would like to narrate my immediate set of thoughts, or observations, as a way to argue that maps are not simply representations but also vessels that contain, the visual nature by nature. Atlas of My World, 2001, six woodcuts with Urdu text printed in black on handmade Indian paper, sheet size 65 x 49....

December 2, 2023 · Adhavan

Mapping Hindutva using the Hindutva Watch Database

The HW database is a collection of news articles, tweets, and other sources of information about the activities of Hindutva groups in India. I geocode the database and integrate it into a prototype narrative explorer.

June 2, 2023 · Adhavan

Speculation: Can a Moving Market In Yelahanka New Town increase Social Cohesion, Participation and Security?

A speculative intervention to improve activity, cohesion and safety in Yelahanka New Town

January 30, 2023

Computational STEAM, teaching science with Scratch at Parikrma Schools

A short recount of my experiences teaching sections of the ‘Light’ chapter from standard 8 text books for Parikrma School Students.

October 15, 2022

Conversations on Security - SafeYelli

September 9, 2022

Terrain mapping with acne

I use acne as height maps to generate and play with terrain

February 25, 2022

Game aids for the elderly

Empathising with the reduced social mobility of the elderly and designing accessibility devices to allow them to participate in games

February 17, 2022

Mapping Harassment in Yelahanka

An ongoing project that is looking into capturing data on harassment inside Yelahanka, Bengaluru

October 3, 2021

Generative silly space cities with Structure Synth

This is a blog on my explorations with Generative/Procedural structures in Structure Synth

July 25, 2021

Panoromas, Conversations around the Arkavathi

Why Panoramas For starters, its a pretty good feature on my Fuji. For the main course, its wide format allows me to capture a uniquely framed landscape which is just another landscape on a regular aspect ratio. And for dessert, since it has to be stitched in-camera from multiple shots, movement is preserved as an artifact on the photo. It embolises that stagnant scene with the artifacts that blow an air of ‘edgy’ mystery into it....

July 4, 2021

Moments from exploring the Arkavathi's dependants

This is a blog on my experiences from exploratory trips to the river basin and places around the Arkavathi

July 3, 2021

Data is beautiful even without 'sense'

There is an entire world of data visualisations in the form of graphs and animations out there. Cleverly crafted, helping us to discover beautifully nuanced patterns and happenings. Check out the DataIsBeautiful subreddit to peek into the world of amazingly insightful visualisations that are produced everyday across the world. summary: An ongoing project that is looking into capturing data on harassment inside Yelahanka, Bengaluru Utilising the interstices between what we consider true, worthwhile and what we see as being abstract uselessness, I’ve begun to play around with popular and the standard forms of visualising data: Maps, Network Graphs, anything-graphs....

April 20, 2021

Visualising line of sight in 2D

How do you visualise line of sight on a 2D map? This is an exploration into doing that by visualising rays of vision. Street signs are mapped. The layout of a neighbourhood is also drawn. The cursor is you moving around in the neighbourhood. If it is a readable street sign, your vision turns green, if not, it turns red. The readability of street signs had been manually documented by me....

November 19, 2020