Author: Samaya Sinha

Samaya Sinha is a freelance writer and designer, cat lover, and space exploration nerd.
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American politics and the importance of participation

Heat waves rose from the concrete streets of central Philly as I left my office at 1pm to join a protest in the streets. I melted as I walked the two miles down Broad Street from City Hall towards Temple University. The in-between space transitioned to ghetto territory—an uncharted war zone where people fought each day to survive. The American political atmosphere that week was especially bleak, the full-frenzied craze of it all taking place during the Democratic National Convention. Americans across the nation applauded the perfectly manicured show broadcasted on nationwide TV, proclamations of justice and equality and fixing…
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Sanjay’s Super Team brings Indian mythology into the digital age

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Pixar’s Oscar-nominated animated short Sanjay’s Super Team (2015) premiered last year, delivering a personal story about Indian culture and spirituality to a global audience. A largely autobiographical tale directed by Sanjay Patel, it centers around the duality of his Indian-American identity, a largely underrepresented demographic in the Western-dominated field of animation and digital storytelling. In an interview with The Verge, Patel said “It felt really important to me to have America see this, and have Pixar and Disney say it’s normal.” In the short, little Sanjay is enamored by a Transformers-like…
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The rise of women working in Indian videogames

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Many see gaming as a “boys’ club,” but Indian women are proving them wrong. Aside from the growing demographic of female players, Indian female game designers are also telling their own stories in innovative ways, showing just how creative the medium can be. While The Economic Times reported that women only made up 20 percent of the Indian gaming population in 2010, data gathered by Mauj Mobile this past April told a different story. Men still dominate the total percentage of players, but on average women proved to be more…
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Tetris and the future of architecture

French architectural genius Axel de Stampa created a dancing ode to Tetris (1984) with the 2014 debut of his gif art gallery Architecture Animée. The introductory image sees large Tetris piece-shaped buildings fall from a blue sky to interlock themselves with the grounded structures below. The result is a series of architectural tetrominoes that reveal an understanding of the choreography and composition of each great city. But this is more than a videogame reference, as it alludes to the need for movement in the skyscrapers and city blocks of the urban utopias of the future. There is a growing demand…
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The videogames preparing us for space

“There is only one essential question: What’s the next thing that could kill me? Focusing on that thing, whatever it is, is how you stay alive.” Ground Control, this is Commander Chris Hadfield describing his experiences as an astronaut and career as a pilot for the Canadian Forces, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (TPS) and U.S. Navy. To get the full story, just read An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (2013). It’s incredible. In order to successfully complete three space missions, two space walks, and live aboard the International Space Station (ISS)…
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Inside the mind games of cinema’s dangerous romances

Actress Marion Cotillard’s obvious allure brings the young Polish girl of the slums, Sophie Kowalsky, to life in Jeu d’Enfants (2003). It’s the ultimate film français, featuring a teasingly­ surreal yet ­realistic mind-­fucking game of cat­-and­-mouse ­that you won’t forget anytime soon. Sophie’s childhood bond with Julien plunges them into a game of mind­-morphing dares (“cap ou pas cap?”) that is both timeless and inescapable. And yet their game is not a prison­­. It gives the two jeunesse the freedom to fearlessly confront their impulses and invite one another into their own uniquely intellectual world as the heat and intensity…