INDIA: Transforming industrial architecture into immersive digital environments is rarely straightforward, but that was precisely the challenge presented by THE Sixth Sense Festival in Bengaluru.

Spread across more than 200,000 square feet of a six-decade-old factory complex at Alembic City, THE Sixth Sense Festival was ambitiously conceived as India’s first multidisciplinary festival that would seamlessly blend art, technology and interactive design on a scale that hasn’t been witnessed before in India’s emerging immersive art landscape. And delivering the visual backbone for this expansive and expressive canvas was Synergy Technologies – one of India’s leading visual technology solutions-provider.

With the host venue defined by stone-clad hangars, a towering silo and dense pockets of planted forest, THE Sixth Sense Festival brought together digital installations, spatial sound performances, interactive environments and workshops that pushed the boundaries of immersive creativity. Producers Swordfish designed the festival as a non-linear exploration of experience rather than a traditional event format. And it is within this ambitious landscape that Team Synergy’s projection mapping expertise powered three of the festival’s most visually demanding environments — the Immersive Room, the Silo and the Live Performance Arena — using advanced laser projection technology from Christie Digital Systems.

For Synergy Technologies’ Founder, Chirag Patel, the collaboration represented more than a typical technical engagement. “Swordish are true visionaries. Their ideas were bold, genre-bending and uncompromising in scale. India has not witnessed anything of this magnitude in immersive art before. And for us at Synergy, it was not simply about executing a technical brief; it was about enabling a cultural milestone that could redefine how world-class immersive experiences are perceived, produced and experienced.”

Synergy’s reputation for orchestrating visually enchanting spectacles had already been cemented through landmark projects such as the Mumbai Light Festival and a long-standing association with The Floating Canvas Company; among several other path-breaking projects across the country. Yet Sixth Sense presented a new order of complexity.

The scale of the undertaking was formidable. While planning and design spanned several months, with Synergy working alongside the organisers from the earliest conceptual discussions; the final deployment window on-site was compressed into just 72 hours. All equipment had to be transported from Mumbai to Bengaluru, requiring meticulous logistics coordination and contingency planning. Drawing upon extensive experience in large-scale productions, the Synergy team arrived with additional projectors, specialised lenses, media servers and signal distribution infrastructure to ensure operational resilience.

The industrial venue itself introduced its own complexities. Uneven surfaces across the ageing factory campus required careful preparation before installations could begin, while multiple artists arriving with different technical riders meant the signal architecture needed to accommodate both HDMI over fibre optic transmission and SDI workflows. Synergy therefore worked closely with each production management team in advance to map signal pathways and integration requirements long before rehearsals commenced.

Central to the visual design across the three zones was a standardised reliance on laser projection technology from Christie Digital Systems, chosen for its combination of brightness, reliability and colour performance. However, as Patel explains, selecting the right projector models for each environment required careful evaluation. “Every space demanded its own philosophy of projection,” he says. “Brightness, pixel density, throw distance, ambient light interference, architectural geometry — each of these factors dictated a different solution. Our job was to balance artistic intention with optical physics.”

Inside the Immersive Room, a 2,500 square foot enclosure designed to engulf audiences in projection across both walls and floor surfaces, Synergy deployed fourteen units of the DWU2400-JS laser projector from Christie’s Jazz Series, each delivering 23,750 lumens. All units were truss-mounted to ensure installation stability, but the space presented a critical constraint: the ceiling height allowed barely twelve feet of clearance from lens to floor for downward projection. To overcome this, four projectors were fitted with specially imported high-performance ultra-short throw lenses capable of achieving distortion-free floor projection within the limited vertical envelope. The remaining ten units were used to map the standing walls and were equipped with customised lenses selected to maintain consistent brightness, accurate colour grading and correct pixel ratios across irregular surfaces.

Media playback and synchronisation were handled by Dataton media servers running WATCHOUT 7 multi-display production and playback systems, ensuring precise coordination across the fourteen projectors. Supporting this data-intensive visual environment was Lightware’s HDMI20-OPTJ-Tx/Rx90 signal transmission system, enabling HDMI 2.0 distribution over fibre while maintaining near-zero latency and signal integrity.

“Within the Immersive Room, clarity, vividness and uniformity were paramount,” Chirag notes. “The Christie Jazz Series gave us exceptional brightness relative to its footprint, which was critical in the confined environment that we had. Our decision to specially import the customised ultra-short throw lenses proved to be a game-changer in this situation, as it allowed us to maintain geometry without compromising resolution and impact. Meanwhile, Lightware’s fibre extenders ensured signal stability over distance without introducing latency. When you’re projecting across every surface, even microseconds matter.”

If the Immersive Room demanded precision within a controlled environment, the Silo required a very different approach. The cylindrical façade of the former raw material storage structure presented a complex curved projection surface surrounded by dense trees and rocky outcrops. Preservation of the site meant the Synergy team could only position projectors from the front of the building, forcing them to thread projection beams through narrow gaps in the surrounding vegetation while maintaining exact alignment.

For this rugged outdoor mapping task, Synergy deployed six units of the Christie D20WU-HS laser projector, each delivering 20,600 lumens with BoldColor technology, alongside a single Christie Griffyn 4K50-RGB pure laser projector producing 50,000 lumens of native 4K output. Each unit was fitted with specially imported high-performance lenses designed to preserve sharpness, colour fidelity and coverage across the curved architectural surface. Resolume Arena media servers were used to drive the mapping workflow, enabling dynamic control over the geometry of the structure.

“The Silo presented a unique challenge,” Chirag admits. “In addition to all the environment challenges with the projector placement, which team Synergy handled with great finesse; the curvature of the structure meant we had to account for geometric distortion across multiple axes. The Griffyn 4K50-RGB gave us extraordinary colour volume and brightness headroom, essential for outdoor projection against residual ambient light. Combined with the D20WU-HS units, we achieved a layered visual narrative that respected the building’s architecture while transforming it entirely.”

The festival’s Live Performance Arena introduced yet another visual dimension, integrating projection mapping with live electronic music performances. Here, audiences encountered a panoramic 180-degree visual environment where stage backdrop and side walls were transformed into a dynamic projection canvas. A transparent mesh screen suspended between performers and audience introduced a two-layer projection design that generated holographic-style visuals during performances; all done with the intention to make the audience experience even more immersive.

Four Christie DWU23-HS laser projectors with BoldColor+ technology, each rated at 23,650 lumens, powered this visual architecture. One unit was dedicated to energising the holographic mesh screen, another illuminated the stage backdrop, while two additional projectors mapped the lateral walls to create an enveloping visual field that responded dynamically to live sets by artists including Max Cooper.

“Performance environments demand reliability above all,” Chirag explains. “The HS Series projectors provided the robustness and colour integrity required for extended live sets. The holographic mesh element required exact brightness calibration; too little and the illusion fails, too much and the transparency collapses. Precision was everything.”

Behind the carefully calibrated projection systems was a team operating under significant time pressure, where endurance and discipline were as critical as technical expertise. Reflecting on the experience, Patel emphasised the collective effort required to deliver the festival’s visual identity.

“This festival tested human endurance as much as technical expertise and creativity. Against time, environmental adversity and logistical complexity, team Synergy never allowed standards to slip. Delivering a flawless, uncompromising visual experience under such pressure reflects the discipline, cohesion and culture of excellence we’ve built at Synergy.”

Beyond the spectacle of immersive visuals, THE Sixth Sense Festival also sought to nurture the country’s growing creative technology ecosystem. Days before the event opened, the organisers partnered with The NODE Institute to host India’s first TouchDesigner sessions, bringing together international experts and members of India’s emerging creative coding community.

“We want to be associated with endeavours that build ecosystems, not just events,” Chirag concludes. “If India is to establish itself on the global map for immersive art, we must nurture technical literacy alongside artistic vision. THE Sixth Sense was not just a spectacle; it was a statement that our industry is ready to lead. And we’re always proud to support such visionary initiatives!”