This electronic visual duo's new immersive music project showcases India in 2079 with AI-generated art

What would India in 2079 sound and look like Audiovisual artistes Murthovic aka MSR Murthy and Avinash Kumar who go by the moniker Thiruda show us a glimpse of this futuristic world through their music project Elsewhere in IndiaWhat can be loosely described as Carnatic music meets electronic music meets AIgenerated art made its debut in the city last week Their live shows are a transmedia performance featuring digital human avatars of Murthy and Kumar in their own showldquoWe have been working on a video game called Antara for the past seven yearsrdquo says Kumar Antara is said to be Indiarsquos first cultural adventure video game produced by Antariksha Studios an Indian transmedia collective focused on crafting Indian cultural experiences for global audiences through video games performances and new media It was founded in 2020 by Murthy who focused on music Kumar the brain behind visuals and Jayalakshmi Eshwar whose expertise is dance ldquoWorking togetherrdquo adds Goabased Kumar ldquoled us to create Elsewhere in India where we could combine live performance and online gamesrdquoArtistes Murthovic aka MSR Murthy and Avinash Kumar who go by the moniker Thiruda the faces behind Elsewhere in India feature their own digital avatarsThe duo started discussing this project towards the end of 2019 but call it a ldquopandemic projectrdquo Since its inception they have managed to bag the grant recipient of the British Councilrsquos IndiaUK Together Season of Culture 202223 a cultural exchange programme celebrating Indiarsquos 75th Anniversary and friendship between the UK and India With successful tours in Australia and UK it was only last year at electronic music festival Magnetic Fields in Rajasthan that they made their India debutldquoFor the kind of stuff we dordquo says Hyderabadbased Murthy ldquowe need a good partner who has good tech required for an audiovisual show That is challenging and also itrsquos expensive to do such kinds of showsrdquo he adds Kumar also feels itrsquos the ageold paradox where ldquoIndians are more interested in what happens aboard and foreigners are more interested in what happens in India It is an unfortunate sociocultural reality that might make us more appealing to festivals abroad at timesrdquoElsewhere in India through its visuals paired with sonic sounds shows a story set in the futuremdashin 2079mdashby tracking three characters The protagonist Meenakshi is a cultural cyborg and her crew consists of artistes such as Murthovic and Thiruda who have formed a band The main aim of Meenakshi is to protect and preserve the Indian culture in a dystopic future where culture and heritage is rare and fragmented It is the job of the trio to remix whatever fragments of heritage they can find in the futureTheir project has different parts they tell midday during a video interview ldquoOne Part of the project is the live performance that is supported by the visuals made in the game version The music is supported by Murthy and we are doing it in such a way that music is part of the video game and there is an interaction between the twordquo They customise their set and style based on the location and the type of venue For instance their Mumbai show was focused on people dancing whereas their show at Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia was in a 180yeargallery and was followed by an hourlong QampASonically their sound includes samples from the British and Indian museums remixed into songs that reimagine the use of archival sound They also incorporate local and folk collaborations where Murthovic recorded with 40 artistes across South India and Kolkata ldquoWe have modernised a lot of sounds from films approved by the British Film Institute for usrdquo says Murthy ldquoWe have used mono recordings from yesteryears and old recordings from documentaries such as dialoguesrdquo explains the 47yearold electronic music artiste Hailing from a ldquoVJingrdquo culture Kumar believes that remixing is an integral part of their culture they wanted to bring that forth with the help of sound archives They have worked closely with a museum in Tamil Nadu called Dakshinachitra and in the UK with the British Film Institute BFI and are in conversations with museums such as Victoria amp Albert VampA Manchester Museum and Horniman Museum ldquoArchives for us also include creating new archives through recording sessions with a folk or classical musician or a vanishing art form These are part of the community archivesrdquo believes Kumar They have worked with unique instruments including percussion like parai which is played at funerals and rare artefacts like the panchamukha vadyam a fivefaced metal drumldquoThe ideardquo says Kumar ldquois to do a bunch of experiments and use AI to show how it can be creatively used for archives because all cultural institutions are scared of AI They feel it is replacing culture But we want to show that it can be beneficial if thought through in a holistic mannerrdquo For now they say they are having fun with itmdashone of their tools helps in splitting the music in separate layers such as guitars vocals violin etc and chopping sentences and dialogues into stems from different archival recordings with a vintage texture of audio But as Murthy says ldquoIt will take around two to three years to develop this project as AI is everevolving at a rapid pacerdquo