Virtual Reality The Future of our Heritage

[Music]

in 2016

i took a sabbatical from my job for

three months

to work on my debut instrumental music

album titled

think void i devoted the first month

to research and conceptualization of the

album

and focus on composing and producing it

in the remaining months

as i approach the final days of research

around the fifth element

in indian schools of thought what we

call akasha

or ether or void i stumbled upon this

magnificent

nataraja temple at chidambaram

shame on me for discovering it so late i

was always fascinated by history

and architectures in school yeah one of

those

outliers who loved history and scored

high

when the seven deputy of chidambaram and

ether

presented itself before me

i was completely taken over by it

i traveled to the temple to confirm on

the metaphysics

aspects like satyajad which in english

means

sudden bond or epiphany

was facing west in the temple much like

in the metaphysical symbology of the

creator brahma

the frequency of the temple

interestingly corresponded to the

musical note

d or the which is shot for rishabham

metaphysically denoted by shiva’s

vehicle nandi

the dishaba so i got back

and i based some of the tracks within

the album to my understanding of the

concept of ether

and its manifestation in the chidambaram

temple

as some of you may know the nataraja

statue has an astonishing astronomical

significance

the statue is modeled on the orion

constellation

and on the day of which falls

sometime in december january the star

beetle jews

as it is known in the west is aligned to

the idol

in the temple you’ll be wondering why am

i saying all this

well it turns out that the concept of

the element ether

itself is fractal in nature it is bigger

than the biggest

yet smaller than the smallest

akasha as it is conceived is all

pervading

and at the temple this fractal nature is

so aesthetically presented to us

we really must bow down to our elders

and ancients

personally it was an overwhelming

experience and every time it is

to be one with divinity under the open

skies

with the fractal nature of the universe

right before you

as included as above

so below well the album was finally

released

after the sabbatical and what it did to

me

internally eventually led me to quit

corporate life for good

and no not for music but to focus my

entire life

on unearthing untold stories of our

heritage

my name is ajit padmanap and i am the

founder of who we are

a startup where we are all passionate

about leveraging virtual reality

to help us connect to our heritage and

cultural

roots well with the album

out i started working on concerts to

promote the album

and i had these grand stage ideas as

they say

with elaborate orchestration and when i

think about it now i

pity those who heard these ideas

one day i had this vision yes during the

day i have visions told you i am an

outlier

there are people experiencing my music

wearing bands around their head and in

tents

dancing and watching my concert from far

flung areas and i was blown away with

this vision

the concert had all kinds of stages

moving stages crumbling stages

historical cities morphing into one

another

and during the course of the concert

even two of me

i was blown away i remember john lennon

once said

and i quote life happens to you while

you’re busy making other plans

and rightly so here i was looking to

promote my music

and to my surprise my inner entrepreneur

birthed

i eventually realized the power of

virtual reality

to create worlds past present future you

name it

and the ability to present an incredibly

immersive form of storytelling

learning and experience life like never

before

it transports audience to an alternate

universe

much like what cinema does today only at

a larger scale and with a better form

factor

at who we are my mission is to marry the

ancient with the modern

and bring out the sciences the

architecture the art

the metaphysics the astronomy behind our

ancient heritage

you know our temple sites ruins all

across the country

bring it on imagine

all the untold stories about these

temples

the artisans who worked there the kings

who sponsored them

simple tales which you might have never

heard of for example do you know the

height of the temple or the monolith is

proportionate to the height of the main

sponsor

mostly the king or that the temple

architecture follows principle of

fractals

yes they do there is an old saying in

our

ancient texts yatha

it just means that whatever is in the

macro cosmos reflects in the micro

cosmos

and this is exactly what the temples

reflect

so there each of these temple

architecture provides a scaled human

body

as the foundation of these temples

look at the tanjore temple or this

hoysala temple in beluz

their tools were elaborate and their

skills were exquisite

we owe it to our elders to not only

preserve their works unparalleled even

today but also honor

and imbibe their values of dedication

and patience

because most of the temple’s

construction spanned across generations

we should consider ourselves fortunate

to see these structures in their

complete form

something the artisans sacrifice their

entire lives for and were not able to

see

when like-minded professionals from

different walks of life

converge on a purpose far greater than

either of them

something unique manifests and that has

been the case with who we are

thanks to ancient and modern historians

accounts

experiencing ancient grandeur back in

their day

as a time travel nugget is now possible

and here’s one such time travel

experience of the nandi monolith

at lepakshi in the present tanja pradesh

what you will see in the video is an

experience

that is scaled and nandi’s anonymity is

evident

as compared to your height which is

extremely important

for the immersive experience and it

allows you to truly lose yourself

in the sheer grandeur of its presence

as you explore this terrain this becomes

a uniquely personal experience

at least that’s what we hope it becomes

for you

how about traveling back in time

[Music]

welcome to lee pakshi 400 years ago

look all around you such greenery

what led such a land to become one of

the most arid today

turns out that during the british raj

forest lands were raised in large

numbers with the wood used to develop

the railway coaches

and wooden sleepers below the tracks

with time

the ecosystem that the forests housed

went extinct

making the land today arid a topography

that is absolutely calm and pristine

with her natural springs this used to

nest

mighty elephants and bears prowling the

knights

from their rocky dense

this is just one of the many dark

secrets that the royal sema forest

hides from plain sight ladies and

gentlemen i believe we are living in the

best of times

technology today provides us immense

opportunities to realize possibilities

that would have been

impossible just decades ago my goal

therefore

is to leverage the latest and the

greatest and bring them to india

for our citizens to experience and

cherish our past

let me talk to you about this new field

called archaeoacoustics

it is a field concerned with the effects

of sound

in past societies it tries to understand

the human past

beyond its materiality by recovering a

set of

less tangible cultural signs relating to

the sense of hearing

this cave art for example is from france

and is one of the oldest ever

archaeoacoustic researchers recorded the

ambient sounds of these caves

and results suggest that motives in

general

or lines and dots you know whatever

those forms are

are statistically more likely to be

found in places where reverberation is

moderate

and where the low frequency acoustic

response has evidence of other zodian

behavior

does this mean that our ancients knew

sounds or the purpose of the sound and

they chose such caves for their art

we are trying to explore these kind of

properties

in our temples so whenever we go to our

temples we record sounds using this

ambisonic recorder

and recreate the most sonically pure

experience

to help us understand if there is any

such link

all right how about narrating the

history of a city or the town

giving the viewer a sense of deep-looted

history

amidst the urban bustle today helping

people connect with their hometown

in essence connecting with their roots

imagine what this could do for tourism

travel wellness

et tech and a host of other verticals

another exciting possibility is what i

call heritage games

games on pc console or

vr that allow you to build temples or

learn the various symbologies

based on ancient temple architecture

and you know you end up creating a work

of heritage in your own right

at the end of it we would like you to

take the

3d printed sauvinis of this temple not

only

as a piece that you will own but also

appreciating the thought process behind

building such heritage structures

moving on here’s a vr music concert

experience

it’s a work in progress prototype at the

ancient

sharda shrine which is situated in the

inaccessible part of kashmir

yet another powerful aspect of vr it

lets you travel to worlds otherwise not

possible

we have a digital avatar of the artist

performing a composition in the now

extinct

shada script which floats in space

as the concept progresses

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namaste

[Music]

is

[Music]

me

[Music]

namaste

[Music]

ladies and gentlemen i believe i am on a

soul-purpose mission here

and i believe one can leverage

technology for good

most of today’s tech focuses on humans

being the problem

and technology being the solution but i

personally believe

humans are the solution and not the

problem

technology need not be a dividing facet

for humanity

but one that unites us all

we believe that history for the long

time has been uninteresting

filled with dates dynasties and wars

we want to challenge and change that

narrative to present history

in a way never attempted before hope to

see you all

in our journey to put the grand

narrative of ancient india on the world

stage

and realize the depth and power of our

heritage

and you know at the root of it all

realize who we are

and what we can do to make our world the

real world

a better place to live in thank you for

your

time interest and patience

you