Bambaiyya VR is a virtual reality experience that takes you on a journey through different communities that helped shape Mumbai to its present form.

This project creates a visual and lyrical testimony of the multifaceted cultural reality in Mumbai. It is intended to create an experience that will bring the younger population to appreciate and protect the cultural richness of the city and help them discover their roots in the process.

CONTEMPORARY TAKE, BEYOND CULTURAL HERITAGE PROGRAMME

The Contemporary Take, Beyond Cultural Heritage Programme helps make projects like ‘Bambaiyya VR’ that enable young people to engage with diverse cultural heritage within their own context and/or across six countries of South Asia (i.e. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) through contemporary artistic and new media interventions.

The Prince Claus Fund and the British Council believe that both heritage and arts have the potential to create dialogue between communities and foster mutual understanding, and that new media opens up further opportunities for such dialogues to become inclusive and immersive experiences.

Proposal - Proof of Concept

Proposal was drafted by Pooja Sivaraman while attending EyeMyth workshop in 2017 based on our group discussions during the event. Here are some screen shots from the word file that was submitted which mapped out our potential concept and plan.
To set the mood for the project, we sketched out a character wearing a bioscope like an VR headset to suggest a fusion of old and new.

With a very tight deadline for submitting the application, so we focused on creating a small proof of concept using available assets online

research and tests

We visited multiple Parsi cafes to collect references and test equipment like 360 cameras and photogrammetry with Samsung devices and Ricoh Theta.

To build on the narrative of the city, the first task was to collect to talk to people and understand the heritage and culture of Mumbai. The research for Bambaiyya VR has underwent multiple phases.

It started with finding out intriguing narratives that people must have overlooked, oral folk narratives that are very peculiar to specific communities, visual references of these narratives and spaces occupied by the communities became the major step to get a better understanding of the city.

This process got us in contact with a few communities of the city namely, Koli, Bhandaris Pathare Prabhus, Jains & Marwaris, Muslims, Parsis, Christians, Marathas, Mill workers, South Indians, Bene Israelis etc. All of these communities have contributed in their on ways to build the city as we see it today.

The VR experience that would be created would be a collection of the various spaces that belong to them along with the oral narratives specific to these communities.
https://salilparekh.work/posts/bambaiyya-vr/

Building on the narrative, the three communities on which work was started are the Koli Community, the original inhabitants, who provided their land to build Mumbai Parsi Community, the immigrants, who provided their money and administrative skills to build the city of Mumbai Mill Worker Community, the labourers, who provided their skill and hard work in the various industries to build Mumbai.

Exploring ideas, visuals and storytelling

Horoscope and future telling robots

Interviews and script

We spoke with multiple people from different communities with extremely quality interactions thanks to Jyoti and her contacts.

We recorded over 4 hours of interviews and tried to turn that into a script. based on the audio and photos recorded on location, i started doodling visuals that could be turned into 3d later.

final characters

based on our interactions, we created personas that would share information about their community and way of being.

story journey and experience maps

Tests and optimisation

As we were designing the experience to work on Oculus GO and lower end android devices using cardboard and other vr headsets, we simplifying the crowd characters to paper cutouts, so that we could populate the scene without making the shot too heavy.

The main characters and elements of focus where in 3d with detailed textures. This helped us guide the viewers attention in a frameless space.

character creation

Based on the interviews and photos collected during the start of the project, we went through a iterative character design process. The focus was on keeping the characters approachable. We used Procreate for the character design phase.

The 3D assets were created in Blender.

For rigging and animation we used motion capture data from Mixamo.

The final VR experience was compiled and developed in Unity.

interfacing in vr

Very early into our interactions Alap stressed on the aspect of navigating the VR space without an interface coming between the experience and the user.

Most typical VR experiences around the time of the project had a dot or a cross hair in the centre of the HUD that could be used as a tool to interact with the VR experience.

We bounced around with some ideas and came up with visual and audio cues that could be used instead of a visible crosshair to make the interactions more immersive.

As VR was still a relatively new medium to interact with when it came to masses, we designed a small training module at the start of the experience.

When ever the wearer framed the object to the centre of their viewing, a while line would appear around the object, with a sound cue. if they gazed at it for a few seconds, that would trigger the corresponding event.

view the first 40 seconds of video at the start of this blog to hear the audio cue.

spatial sound

The camera icon is where we start the experience, right outside CST station, where the cab-wala picks us up. As you can see with the sound icons, they have been placed spatially to create depth and layering in storytelling and VR experience. The blue path is where the flat cutout crowd walks randomly based on Alaps code wizardry.

Once we enter the cab, we are introduced to the three locations that we can navigate to to begin our experience. these are how the audios are placed for those interactions.

Similarly sharing audio locations of the chawl experience. for this particular experience, the audio sources are not only spread across horizontally.

but are also layered vertically, as there are clock towers, speakers on poles and mill sounds that trigger from different heights in the scene.

press

The Hindu: "bambaiya: a magic carpet tour of mumbai"

Mid-Day: "Mumbai: up close and personal"

LiveMint: This summer, reconnect with your city through quaint experiences

Vice: The Guide to Setting up an ‘Anti-Art Fair’ Art Fair

Colour Quotient | Asian Paints:"take a taxi-drive with bambaiyya vr and explore mumbai through virtual reality (BrokenLink)

festival Gallery

Cyberia Festival | Pune | Dec 2019

EyeMyth Festival | Mumbai | Mar 2019

Immersive Futures | ISDI | Mumbai

Irregular Art Fair | Studio Khirki | Delhi | Feb 2019

Magnetic Fields Festival | Alsisar Mahal | Rajasthan | Dec 2019

Urban Lens Festival | Godrej India Culture Lab | Mumbai | Dec 2018

Tales at a Museum | Bhau Daji Lad Museum | Mumbai | May 2019

end credits

Feedback

some of the wonderful feedback we received during the fair

Beautiful work, I wasn't able to visit Mumbai, so I appreciate the lesson, very effective visual tool. I would love to see a version that one day delves deeper into some of the issues raised. Thank-you, great work.
Hamishi (The Irregulars Fair)

Amazing, Imaginative, Inpiring efforts. Delightful treat for architects and anthropologists, immersive and inpiring, awesome !! it was so good, it made me want to go there in person. I wish i could see myself there at-least inside the taxi.
Anonymous (The Irregulars Fair)

Immersive Experience. Great way for accessing information.
Himanshu Kadam, (Bhau Daji Lad Museum Curator)

Thankyou for an out of the world experience. Nostalgia is an apt work for those who have lived and seen these monoliths. Simply awesome.
Santosh Saraf (BDL)

Great learning experience. Loved the integration of art and history blended with immersive technology.
Winnie(BDL)

Well done project. Very informative and an interesting story telling methold. I think you should have a quiz after to check retention. Good characterisation and attention to detail. Would be interesting to see how you will be trying to take this forward.
Ashwin Menon

this was such a good creation and the story was so simple yet so good. it was an amazing experience and i wish it went on for longer.
Stella

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Bambaiyya vr