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
[Music]
[Music]
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