The Samsara project is a virtual interactive soundscape where multiple performers can create and manipulate music through their phones in a new age collaborative music world.
This project was built around the Hindu mythological belief of Saṃsāra – the cycle of the world built around the three pillars – a Creator, A Preserver and a Destroyer. I imagined sound in a similar context where every sound has a creation, a preservation (moulding through effects) and a destruction. Each of these are represented as unique atoms of their type. White – creator atoms, green – preserver atoms and orange destroyer atoms. In the current demo prototype three performers each individually one aspect of the soundscape and can only manipulate only their respective atoms. The atoms all exist in a virtual physical space where they collide and interact with each other producing the resultant soundscape.
I plan to extend this project further to a massively multiplayer platform using more virtual reality and augmented reality concepts. (This way I will learn how to program for Oculus rift and 3d spaces in game design, and 3d sounds as well).
This project was presented at the Bulgaria Music Hackathon, that we won and shall be presenting our work at the NY monthly music hackathon hosted by Spotify. Here is a link to our demo at Bulgaria Music Hackathon.
Team Members : Manaswi Mishra, Kushagra Sharma, Siddharth Bhardwaj
Link to Code : Github Code
Here is a link to the live bulgarian national news interview covering the project and the event :
At CMMR 2017 Matosinhos, Pordugal, I demonstrated this project. I was able to incorporate a multiplayer context, where multiple people could use their devices to perform the roles of ‘Creator’, ‘Preserver’ or ‘Destroyer’ to perform their part in the collaborative soundscape formation.
Link to the paper : CMMR2017Demo
Next Plans: I plan to enable each unit generator to be replaceable by a sample of the creator’s choice for more interesting musically dynamic performances.
Manaswi Mishra 