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This article explores The Sixth Sense, a new multidisciplinary immersive festival by the team behind Echoes of Earth, developed by Swordfish. Expanding their sustainability-led vision beyond music, the festival brings together immersive art, technology, live performance, and ecological inquiry through large-scale installations, sound works, workshops, and performances.
From the team behind Echoes of Earth, India’s long-running sustainability-led music festival, comes a new cultural proposition. After over a decade of building a festival that placed environmental responsibility at the centre of live music and public gathering, its creators at Swordfish are expanding that vision beyond music. Their next project, The Sixth Sense, takes the ecological concerns that shaped Echoes of Earth, and reworks them into a larger, multidisciplinary immersive format, bringing together art, technology, performance, and nature across an 18-day showcase in Bengaluru.
Conceived over two years, The Sixth Sense positions itself as India’s first and largest immersive festival of its kind. It is designed for audiences navigating life between digital ecosystems and the natural world. The venue, Alembic City, is a 60-year-old glass factory repurposed through adaptive reuse, spanning over 200,000 square feet, and the site will be transformed into multiple stages, galleries, and immersive zones hosting more than 30 art-tech experiences, over six live music performances, masterclasses, workshops, a 360-degree dome, and more than 20 waste-to-art installations.
At the centre of the festival is the growing distance between people and the natural environment. As cities expand and daily life accelerates, The Sixth Sense aims to make questions of ecology and conservation accessible through hands-on, sensory experiences. Installations, spatial sound works, digital art, and participatory workshops are structured to encourage engagement, reflection, and curiosity.
Roshan Netalkar, Founder and Director of Echoes of Earth and Swordfish, describes the festival as a continuation of their decade-long engagement with sustainability. He frames The Sixth Sense as an attempt to translate nature’s intelligence into immersive formats, especially at a moment when artificial intelligence is reshaping how people understand creativity, systems, and intelligence itself.
Live performances and installations form a key part of the programme. The immersive showcase will be headlined by Max Cooper, an electronic composer and multidisciplinary artist with a background in computational biology whose work combines sound, visuals, and scientific thinking into live performance.
Among the major installations is Adrift, an audiovisual work by media artist Sasha Kojjio and creative producer Alisa Davydova of Metanoeia Studio. Built on a generative algorithm that simulates melting glaciers, the piece reflects on climate fragility and human impact. Another commissioned work, The Banyan Tree by production designer and new media artist Stephen Bontly, uses interactive light, and sound to examine resilience and interdependence, drawing from the cultural symbolism of the banyan tree.
The festival also includes Sounds of the Ocean by ocean artist and composer Joshua Sam Miller and co-director Elise Lein. Recognised as an official UN Ocean Decade Activity, the immersive experience uses whale and dolphin soundscapes to place audiences within underwater environments. The project has travelled to 26 countries and supports ocean clean-up initiatives through global non-profit partnerships.
Another significant international collaboration comes through The NODE Institute, which will bring India’s first TouchDesigner sessions to the festival. Running from February 5 to 11, followed by dedicated sessions on February 12 and 13, the programme includes masterclasses, panels, and workshops led by international practitioners, covering creative coding, data visualisation, lighting, AI, and live visuals.
With over 35,000 visitors expected, The Sixth Sense positions itself as a major new platform in India’s cultural calendar — one that uses immersive art, and technology to highlight concerns around ecology and where wer're headed within a shared public space.
When: February 5 - 22, 2026
Where: Alembic City, Whitefield, Bengaluru
Follow Sixth Sense here.
