The project combines archival research, sound design, photogrammetry, and immersive storytelling. Primary research included interviews with musicians, makers, and scholars, while secondary research drew from Sangam literature and theories of memory and sound. Tharun Sekar from Uru Custom Instruments, who are the brains behind conceiving, redesigning, and bringing the instrument back into function, contributed music composition. It was important to me that the soundscape and music for the project were created using the actual instrument, both to ensure authenticity and to actively promote its inclusion in contemporary creative practice. The instrument itself was modeled through photogrammetry, using detailed 3D scans of the yaazh. Kinetic typography and animation were assembled alongside these scans to bring the project to fruition. Development involved prototyping an immersive experience with visual, textual, and auditory elements, tested in three phases with peers, musicians, and general audiences. Feedback from surveys and discussions guided refinements in structure, narrative, and interaction.
In recent years, Uru Custom Instruments have referenced historical texts and descriptions to successfully recreate a modern playable version of the yaazh. Alongside producing the instrument, they have begun teaching others how to play it, learning through the process themselves and forming a band around it. Their work marks a rare transition of the yaazh from text back into sound. This project responds to that phenomenon of collective remembrance. It explores how an instrument can be preserved through words alone, and how literature and language can act as vessels of cultural memory. Conceived as an immersive art piece, the work brings together the texts, poems, and references that remembered the yaazh, allowing those words to come alive, converge, and participate in the rebirth of the instrument and its music.
More Work
KĒLUM
KĒLUM (கேளும்) is a 3-screen immersive digital storytelling experience that is based on the extinction of the Yaazh, an ancient Tamil string instrument. It explores how language and literature held space for the instrument even after its sound and practice faded into silence. Through literature,descriptions, and cultural memory, the Yaazh was never entirely lost—its presence echoed in words. This project invites audiences to step into that echo, using immersive media to show how something forgotten can return to sensory form through the narratives that remembered it.
Scope
Research, Creative & Art Direction, Motion Graphics
Date
2025
Collaborators
Uru Custom Instruments, Selvam [Photogrammetry]
Exhibited at
Frameless London, BBC Television Centre, RCA Garden House