In the industrial heart of Whitefield, Bengaluru, stands a 60-year-old glass factory that once hummed with the rhythmic labor of manufacturing. Its corrugated roofs and weathered surfaces are a palimpsest of the city’s industrial history. Today, this vast, 200,000-square-foot expanse is preparing for a different kind of alchemy. In February 2026, the Alembic City glass factory will cease to be a mere relic of Bengaluru’s industrial past and become a “living collaborator” for The Sixth Sense—India’s first and largest multidisciplinary immersive festival.
We are witnessing the birth of a phygital dialogue where the industrial past and the digital future finally speak the same language. The Sixth Sense, curated by Swordfish—the creative agency behind the greenest circular music festival, Echoes of Earth—represents a shift in how we engage with art. It is a move away from the era of the fixed object toward what Roshan Netalkar, Founder and Director of Swordfish, calls “experience-led” investments.
Listening Through Technology
The challenge with Artech has always been the “spectacle” problem—the risk that high-end lumens, custom algorithms, and massive LED arrays might drown out the human narrative. In a world of “Instagrammable” pop-up museums, intellectual depth often takes a back seat to visual noise. Yet, The Sixth Sense seems to have found its North Star by prioritizing “listening” over hardware.
“Technology is used only to serve the idea, never to lead it,” Roshan Netalkar explains. For Netalkar, the focus is on how music and art can be experienced beyond sound and sight alone. Whether it is artists like Max Cooper and Memo Akten, or Indian classical reimaginings by Niladri Kumar, every work begins with a clear intention rooted in culture, memory, or lineage. “The festival asks how music can be experienced beyond sound alone. Sound and visuals work together to deepen listening—allowing audiences to feel rhythm, raga, and resonance without losing their roots.”
This curatorial restraint is vital for critical audiences. By providing artist notes, conversations, and guided walkthroughs, the festival aims to reveal the thinking behind the code. Immersion draws the viewer in, but it is the craft and the idea that must remain.
The Factory as Collaborator for a Phygital Dialogue
Modern cities often lack innovative spaces with distinct character—places where one can immerse themselves in surroundings away from the noise and clutter of urban sprawl. Udit Amin, Managing Director of Alembic Global Holdings, sees the adaptive reuse of the Alembic Art District as more than just a venue choice; it is a mission to improve the human experience.
“The adaptive reuse of our buildings creates a space where heritage, art, and future-tech converge to foster community and creativity,” says Amin. “Tomorrow, as young people study, live, and work in this district, it will become a ‘third space’—an alternative to the office, the home, or the shopping mall.”
The festival moves beyond using the factory as a mere backdrop. Instead, it treats the 60-year-old glass factory as an active participant. Artists are responding to the specific acoustics of the site, the natural light filtering through the industrial roofs, and the raw industrial elements that define the space. This approach creates a multi-sensory bridge. By blending the tactile feel of old stone and aging metal with the glow of new media, The Sixth Sense fosters a truly human experience by encouraging people to be fully present in the “awe” of their environment.
Artists Lineup at the Sixth Sense
The lineup for The Sixth Sense reads like a manifesto for the multidisciplinary creator. These are artists who are simultaneously scientists, coders, environmentalists, and philosophers. Each installation seeks to use technological mediation as a means of exploring consciousness rather than escaping it.
1. The Marquee Symbol: Stephen Bontly’s The Banyan Tree
Created specifically for the Alembic City glass factory, this commissioned installation fuses light, sound, and technology to explore humanity’s relationship with nature. For American artist Stephen Bontly, the Banyan Tree is a “portal of communication” that demands attention regardless of its position.
“I found a symbol that holds space on its own,” Bontly notes. “Through light in space, The Banyan Tree will offer its audience a reflection of what is possible. It is a community experience where patterns reveal themselves based on where people are within the space. Those with open and curious minds will be the first to discover how it can be activated.”
2. Planetary Consciousness: Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter’s Superradiance
Merging film, poetry, and generative AI, Superradiance invites viewers to extend their bodily perception beyond the skin. Akten and Hofstadter explore the tension between the reality of interdependence and the felt experience of severance.
“We move through the world as if we are singular, bounded individuals—yet biologically we’re more like ecosystems, made with and by trillions of other organisms,” the artists explain. By utilizing “embodied simulation”—the cognitive phenomenon where observing another person moving causes you to feel that movement in your own body—Superradiance turns forests, oceans, and deserts into the medium carrying the dancer’s gesture.
3. Hidden Echoes: Ephemeral Tomorrow’s SIGNALS
The new media collective Ephemeral Tomorrow (Riccardo Torresi, Asako Fujimoto, and Maxime Lethelier) seeks to reveal hidden natural phenomena. Their installation, SIGNALS, captures ultrasonic bat calls in real-time and translates them into the human auditory range. Each signal becomes a pulse of laser light, creating a hypnotic composition. It is a reflection on the plurality of the world and the multiple ways it can be sensed by species other than our own.
4. The Digital Naturalism of Alex Xi: Roots
Using 3D scanning, Chinese artist Alex Xi translates physical tree roots into digital forms. His work, Roots, allows natural cycles of decay and regeneration to unfold visually. It does not ask the audience to intervene; it asks them to slow down. “Engagement happens through sustained looking—allowing the layered forms, rhythms, and textures to resonate internally, much like listening to something ancient that doesn’t demand attention, yet lingers,” Xi explains.
5. Melting Metaphors: Metanoeia Studio’s Adrift
Barcelona-based artists Alisa Davydova and Sasha Kojjio present Adrift, an audiovisual installation centered on the process of melting as a metaphor for impermanence. Driven by a simulation where every pixel acts as an ice particle, the viewer observes cracks forming as the masses dissolve into fluid streams. It is a contemplative landscape reflecting the fragility of nature and humanity’s irreversibility.
6. Underwater Mindfulness: Joshua Sam Miller’s Sounds of the Ocean
Recognized as an official UN Ocean Decade Activity, Joshua Sam Miller and Elise Lein’s Sounds of the Oceanis an award-winning immersive experience that blends spatial sound and underwater filmmaking. It is a sanctuary designed to reconnect the viewer with the ocean and themselves. Miller invites guests to “settle in and imagine themselves drifting alongside majestic marine beings,” creating a moment of togetherness and a deeper sense of love for the planet.
7. Network Intelligence: Yash Chandak’s Mycelial Imagination
Representing the home-grown talent of India, Yash Chandak (Cursorama) presents Mycelial Imagination, an installation that explores network intelligence through the metaphor of fungal mycelium. Chandak views the fungal network not as a biological curiosity, but as a “living model for distributed intelligence.” The installation invites audiences to literally step inside nature’s most sophisticated decentralized information system. “It is an invitation to connect with the energy of this omnipresent system holding life together,” Chandak notes, highlighting the invisible threads that sustain global ecosystems.
The Sound of Momentum: Musical Lineup and Spatial Performance
The musical component of The Sixth Sense is as rigorous as its visual showcase. The festival features curators who experiment with sound as a spatial tool.
- Batavia Collective (BTVC): The Jakarta-based trio will perform long-form, uninterrupted live electronic sets. Rooted in broken rhythms and restrained techno, their performance is designed for bodies in motion, responding instinctively to the energy of the room in real-time.
- Niladri Kumar × Vieux Farka Touré: This rare collaboration brings together the “Hendrix of the Sahara” and the fifth-generation sitar virtuoso who invented the electric Zitar. It is a powerful cross-cultural dialogue where Malian desert blues and Indian classical music intertwine through contemporary innovation.
- Max Cooper: A former scientist and electronic composer, Cooper’s performance is a cinematic journey where intricate electronic composition meets immersive visual storytelling. His work is the embodiment of the festival’s theme—blending sound, science, and emotion to expand the boundaries of the medium.
Is Ephemerality the New Permanent?
For the traditional art world—gallerists, curators, and private collectors—The Sixth Sense poses a provocative question: How do you evaluate or acquire a work that exists only for 18 days and is powered by real-time environmental data?
Roshan Netalkar argues that ephemerality is not a weakness but a strength. In the “Artech” world, value lies in the experience and the ideas left behind. However, the festival has established a framework for preservation. “For digital works, longevity is supported through careful documentation,” Netalkar explains. “This includes video recordings, sound captures, spatial documentation, technical notes, and artist instructions.”
Together, these form a clear framework that enables institutions or collectors to re-present the work while staying true to the artist’s original intent. As the art world shifts from physical objects to experience-led works, curators must ask new questions about intent, structure, and response. Evaluation now focuses on the “behavior” of the algorithm and how technology stays in the background to let the idea lead.
Sustainable Immersive as the Ethics of Production
With its roots in Echoes of Earth, sustainability remains a core pillar. For a high-end art audience concerned with the ethics of production, The Sixth Sense reconciles high energy demands through transparent operational practices.
The entire festival build and power requirements are supported by Alembic City’s ethically sourced, government-backed electricity supply operating on a 600 kVA line. Diesel generators are relegated to a minimal, back-up role. Operationally, the festival upholds a zero-plastic, zero-waste policy.
Furthermore, the festival maintains a circular loop of reuse. Over 20 waste-to-art installations from earlier editions will be showcased alongside the new digital commissions. By archiving and adapting digital works for future showcases, the festival ensures that the “tech” is as clean as the concept. This is the birth of the “Sustainable Immersive” aesthetic.
With its collaboration with The NODE Institute (Germany), The Sixth Sense is doing more than just exhibiting art; it is building an ecosystem. By hosting India’s first-ever TouchDesigner sessions—featuring masterclasses and interactive panels led by international experts—the festival is building bridges between India’s creative coding communities and global pioneers.
This move positions Bengaluru not just as a technology hub, but as a destination for serious art-tech patrons. It follows the lineage of global hubs like London’s 180 The Strand or the UAE’s Alserkal Avenue, but with a uniquely Indian soul. For the global patron, this festival changes the itinerary by proving that the next frontier of art isn’t just about exhibition, but participation.
As the sun sets over the Alembic City glass factory in February 2026, the 35,000 explorers expected to participate will not just be observing a spectacle. They will be witnessing a society actively using new media to reshape how we interact with life and our urban environment. In this historic space, the “sixth sense” isn’t a supernatural gift—it is the heightened, technology-mediated awareness of our own entanglement with the living planet.
The Sixth Sense debuts at Alembic City, Bengaluru, from February 5th to 22nd, 2026. For those looking to witness the future of Artech in South Asia, this is the new ground zero.
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