Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines

Thanks a million for posting! As a Kanchipuram native(can trace lineage all the way up to 5 generations at least), this was totally unexpected and a pleasant surprise. I have visited one of these Co-op looms and it's mindblowing how to this day the Kanchi Pattu(silk-Tamizh) is made with a handloom. aptly named handicraft. of course, the piece de resistance is the Varadharaja Perumal Kovil which has some of the best and well maintained sculptures on the planet.

This being one such exhibit https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianHistory/comments/1j75nc0/the_...

Brings back my joyous/carefree youth where I would spend summer vacations ambling around the massive temple complex.

Looking past the writing style, which I intensely dislike, I am very disappointed in how the article identifies a real problem (Hari is not paid enough) and gives inane solutions (saree NFTs).

Why is Hari not paid enough?

1. "The visual language of the loom is deteriorating into digital gibberish"

2. "the chemical dyes are poisoning the very water the weavers drink"

3. "the market is flooded with fakes that have destroyed consumer trust"

You understand why 1 and 3 are problems to be solved when you consider the solutions proposed: AI and Blockchains. If Hari happens to ask an AI and Blockchain company to help him out, the outcome is clear: after they take a cut, his remaining salary reduces from 5000 to 500, and the consultants walk away to next solve manual scavenging using LLMs and room temperature superconductors.

Naturally, the Cyber Lime வெறியன்s in Paris care whether the yalis are the right way up. The goal is to sell the sarees in "Upper East Side in New York or London’s Jermyn Street or haute Paris" while touting them as culturally authentic. Wikipedia dumps of 5 different kinds of vision models reinforces the idea that AI is, of course, the solution. The only question is which kind.

Using CRISPR-Cas9 for better microbial dyes is interesting. Unfortunately the one link provided is about R&D for food dyes in the US, so I am not convinced (without checking it up myself later) that this is feasible in Kanchipuram yet.

"[LVMH's] Aura Blockchain acts as a digital notary for their diamonds, recording the specific mine of origin and cut history." You can already verify that your blood diamond has been mined by an exploited, underpaid worker. The only thing you need to save Kanchipuram sarees is authentic Proof-of-Exploitation so no one can doubt that your precious clothes are hand-woven by Hari who can't afford his groceries.

Indian luxury clothes made "with a solid bar of silver and gold", the process enhanced with AI and Blockchains, to be sold to a Met Gala market as the solution to underpaid weavers in Kanchipuram is... idk. The cherry on top is them admitting to using AI art in an article about underpaid artisans.

"Even while developing this piece, the irony of using AI was not lost on us." I wish I could pull this off with a straight face.

> Yet, the market for "Indian Luxury" is booming globally. We see European houses acting as colonial curators of Indian heritage: Prada rebranding the Kolhapuri chappal for ₹84,500 ($930); Gucci selling the common kurta as an 'exotic kaftan' for the price of a small car; and Dior releasing a ₹18,180,000 ($200,000) coat dripping in Lucknowi Mukaish work without a whisper of credit to the artisans. The global appetite for the aesthetic is ravenous. But in Kanchipuram, the very hands that feed this hunger are vanishing.

The Western colonial imperial system never truly went away, it simply morphed into an opaque inscrutable machinery to make it palatable to its own highly refined taste. An empire of human rights.

This is a greatly researched article, and the site is just awesome!

Kanchipuram Saree has a rich history, and I learned so much more by reading this article.

I am intrigued by the Kanchipuram saree and have dreamed about owning one. The digital ledger is a unique idea – if authenticity is established, it would be easy to invest in this as art piece.

The sad part? This is just one piece of heritage among countless which have already been lost or haven't got a voice to save them. Just like Kancheepuram, nearly every district has a rich heritage in cuisine and fabric which is hundreds of years old. A lot of it was just lost to history because it became commercially nonviable to preserve and so much of it is disappearing in front of our eyes while we do nothing :(

That was a pretty fun article. Nice use of parallax scrolling and everything.

An amusing personal connection is that my wife wore a sari for our wedding (I'm from Chennai) and I wore a sherwani that she, a graphic designer, designed with Dall-E's assistance. A friend of ours knows an embroiderer in Bangalore who then put the design to the coat. Loved it, to be honest: https://x.com/arjie/status/1855328068883353665

Saris (not quite from Kanchipuram - American fabric) and Thinking Machines!

My sister and mother insisted on having Kanchipuram silk sarees.

Every upper middle class woman had to have them, back in the day.

really impressive work!!! the depth of research and the way the website presents it are both well executed.

i grew up in erode, a major handloom hub in tamilnadu.. so this hits close to home. research like this helps preserve and better understand regional textile ecosystems that often don’t get enough structured documentation.

thanks for sharing.

It toon me two tries to actually read this because the first time the scrolling to get to the article irritated me so much I closed the page.

lol what even is this article. Embedding a chip into sari so that someone from New York can get whole "biography" of sari, and hence this blockchain adaptation will mitigate economic distress in India by owning the Hermes style of "handcraft" consumerism?

Amazing article, and love the storytelling format. Checked the altermag.com, I wonder why I didn't stumble upon it before. Easily one of the best websites I visited in recent times.

damn that’s one greatly designed website.

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I hate it when people mispronounce/misspell Yazhi. It's pronounced using the the most unique feature of the language - "zh" instead of "L" just like Tamil itself (it's actually Thamizh). The original wikipedia page:

https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%AF%E0%AE%BE%E0%AE%B3%E0...