Audiovisual Experiences To Catch at The Sixth Sense, India’s Largest Immersive Festival

Over eighteen days, a repurposed, 60-year-old glass factory in Alembic City, Bengaluru, is hosting the country’s largest multidisciplinary immersive festival. From the makers of Echoes of Earth, The Sixth Sense, running from Feb. 5 to 22, 2026, brings together music, art, technology, and sustainability through spatial, tactile, and interactive formats.

A display of current changemakers and pioneers, The Sixth Sense aims to push the boundaries of audiovisual expression through live music performances, art tech showcases, and waste-to-art installations. Steeped in multisensory showcases, it examines ecological concerns within an increasingly tech-driven world through experimental installations and sets.

Anchoring the experience is music, uniting a slew of ingenious composers, instrumentalists, and technologists who are striving to elevate experiential mediums of consuming live sound. Gracing the lineup are Zitaar virtuoso Niladri Kumar and Vieux Farka Touré, techno heavyweight Luke Slater, EDM renegade Jay Panelia, hardware pioneers Audio Units, sonic futurist Sam Barker (featuring Batavia Collective), and a headline set by Max Cooper, the scientist-turned EDM composer.  

From tech-integrated art setups to multisensorial electronic music performances, Rolling Stone India spotlights the most interesting installations to catch at The Sixth Sense Festival 2026

The Banyan Tree by Stephen Bontly

Emblematic of the human relationship with nature, Stephen Bontly’s installation is forged from the synthetic materials that have become part of our daily lives — laser, glass, smoke, windows, lights, and mirrors. Staging a subtle tussle between the natural and the mechanical, the work reflects a world entranced by the dopamine rush of the digital revolution, while the planet speaks in haunting, hushed tones. It urges viewers to recalibrate their bond within the growing tech-saturated sentiments enveloping contemporary life.

Rolling Stone India Reset

A special takeover inside the festival’s 360-degree dome at the Immersive Arena, Rolling Stone India Reset is conceived as a deep-listening audiovisual interlude, a deliberate moment of pause within the festival’s pulse. Framed as a journey through inner reflection, ecological memory, and shifting rhythms of change, the series pairs spatial sound with enveloping visuals to create a space for recalibration.

On Feb. 13, 2026, Roots & Wings by Elsewhere in India — comprising Hyderabad-based EDM composer, DJ, and sound designer Murthovic alongside creative director, media artist, and audiovisual designer Thiruda — will kick off the Reset with a 60-minute experience drawing on bioacoustic recordings, scientific archives, and generative AI. Rendered through game-engine cinematics to reimagine ecosystems as “Digital Ecological Heritage” in 2063, the showcase reflects on what remains when nature is translated into data.

On Feb. 15, The Rising Dusk by Milkorva offers a 30-minute audiovisual performance structured in three acts. Guided by poetic introspection, the work traces a passage from chaos to calm, dissecting the fragility of inner states and the sense of resilience they invoke. With sound composed by Valentin Fayaud, the piece features real-time visuals that react to the music, merging scanned landscapes, organic textures, and digital particles into a fluid, evolving environment.

RE:SORB Tessellation by Stefan Ihmig

Stefan Ihmig, founder of projection mapping studio RE:SORB, bends light into form using three-dimensional grids and high-powered projections. Conjuring mesmerising 3D holograms that hover mid-air like mystical creatures, there’s a sense of magic tethered to Ihmig’s practice, crafting tactile, tangible spaces that invite audiences to step inside and interact.

Sounds of the Ocean by Joshua Samuel-Miller and Elise Lein

Prepare to descend into the azure realms of Monterey Bay Canyon, Northern California, and experience the ocean up close and personal with Sounds of the Ocean, an immersive underwater installation by ocean activist and composer Joshua Samuel-Miller, along with co-director and expressive arts facilitator Elise Lein. Globally recognised as an official UN Ocean Decade Activity, the experience unfolds as a mindful symphony of whale and dolphin audio-visual soundscapes with calming percussion and woodwind instrumentals.

Archiving India’s Music History

A dialogue on cultural preservation curated by Rolling Stone India, this panel will explore how India’s vast musical legacy is being archived, documented and kept alive for future generations to discover. Featuring Nehal Shah, founder of India Record Co, Leaxan Freitas, collector and archivist of Konkani and folk music, and Sarvar Kahlon, Programs Manager at the Indian Music Experience museum, and moderated by Rolling Stone India’s Senior Editor Anurag Tagat, the discussion will examine the challenges of music preservation, carrying musical lineages into contemporary practice, and the role of archives, documentation, and cultural programming in shaping how music history is remembered.

Signals by Ephemeral Tomorrow

Ephemeral Tomorrow, a Berlin-based art collective comprising Riccardo Torresi, Maxime Lethelier, and Asako Fujimoto, are bound by a collective fascination for the fabrics that make up our universe. Using remote sensing instruments, the group harnesses light and sound to study interplanetary and space-based explorations. Their installation, Signals, focuses on bat echolocation, tracking and converting their live ultrasonic calls into pulsating audio-visual compositions audible to the human ear.

Mycelial Imagination by Cursorama (Yash Chandak)

Specializing in algorithmic art and interactive systems, Indian artist Yash Chandak’s Mycelial Imagination uses fungal mycelium as a metaphor, expanding on how its decentralized, interconnected structures mirror forms of network intelligence. Subtle yet provocative, the installation prods the viewers to dig deeper into their everyday yet often invisible environmental information systems.