Immersive Futures: The Sixth Sense Festival, Bengaluru

The Tacit team recently attended The Sixth Sense Festival—India’s first and largest multidisciplinary immersive festival—held at Alembic City, Whitefield, Bengaluru. Conceived and realised by the team behind Echoes of Earth and curated by Swordfish, the festival brought together art, technology, music, design, and nature’s intelligence in a sprawling 200,000+ sq. ft. industrial space reimagined as a dynamic cultural playground.

Spread across multiple zones, the festival featured large-scale digital installations, spatial sound performances, immersive environments, and interactive art-tech showcases designed by pioneering creators from around the world. Among standout works were The Banyan Tree by Stephen Bontly, a reflective light-and-sound environment, and Adrift by Metanoeia Studio (Sasha Kojjio & Alisa Davydova)—a generative audiovisual installation simulating melting glaciers.

Immersive scale and responsive interaction

For us at Tacit, the most striking experiences were the 20-foot-high screens, expansive digital canvases, and interactive zones where motion graphics responded dynamically to movement, touch, and voice. In several exhibits, visuals did not simply display content; they listened and reacted, creating a powerful sense of agency and presence. Walking through the space, the Tacit team found ourselves not just observing but participating—an embodiment of how design can dissolve the boundary between user and interface.

Generative graphics and reactive design

Many instalments employed generative graphics—systems that evolve in real time based on user input or environmental triggers. These works invited playful experimentation and held deeper implications for experiential design: when visuals are tied to gesture, speech, or motion, every interaction becomes a design moment, and every participant becomes a co-author of the experience.

This reminded us strongly of how motion, code, and sensory feedback are reshaping design languages today. Instead of static artefacts, designers are now orchestrating behaviours and responses—patterns that unfold in time and space, inviting curiosity and collaborative exploration.

TouchDesigner workshops and creative coding

Some members of the Tacit team also attended the TouchDesigner sessions, presented in partnership with The NODE Institute (Germany)—a major highlight of the festival. These sessions, led by international experts, focused on creative coding, data visualisation, immersive media, lighting, AI, and live visual performance workflows. Tacit colleagues found the workshop especially stimulating, offering deep insights into interactive system design and real-time media creation.

Cross-disciplinary inspiration

What makes The Sixth Sense truly distinctive is its interdisciplinary spirit. Here, digital art sits comfortably alongside spatial sound works, ecological explorations, and participatory workshops. The festival is not just a showcase of technology or creativity—it is a platform for dialogue, where art meets science, where design practices converge with coding and ecology, and where audiences are invited to slow down, engage, and reflect.

For the Tacit team, attending The Sixth Sense was both inspiring and eye-opening. It reaffirmed our belief that immersive design is not just about spectacle—it’s about creating meaningful interaction, encouraging users to engage with environments not as passive observers but as active participants. In a world increasingly defined by screens and sensor-based experience, this festival offered a glimpse of where design might be heading: towards environments that respond, adapt, and evolve with human presence.

https://www.thesixthsensefestival.com