VR Sanskrit Poetry is a collaboration with Liam Blaize Maddox. Inspired by the beautiful language of Sanskrit poetry, we decided to create an experience in virtual reality that captured its vivid sensual imagery. We selected five poems, intended to explore the 5 senses in relation to the 5 elements (according to the Hindu order). In Hinduism, the senses are ordered as follows:
- Sound (Space)
- Touch (Wind)
- Sight (Fire)
- Taste (Water)
- Smell (Earth)
The 5 poems we selected are intended to embody these 5 elements, and through these elements we explored the senses stimulated in each poem. Liam and I drew the environment for each poem in Google Tilt Brush, allowing us to play with both the traditional visual artist's tools of color and composition and also getting to use VR to its advantage by playing with scale and perception. By specifying a role for the viewer in each scene, we make them an active participant in the poem instead of a doting listener. Ultimately this is an engaging virtual reality experience that helps engage participants with the beautiful language of Sanskrit poetry in a new and meaningful way.
Video
The following video footage was captured in Tilt Brush and edited to show each composition alongside its original poem. Vedic mantras accompany each poem.
The Poems:
Selected from Sanskrit Poetry (From Vidyakara's "Treasury") translated by Daniel H. H. Ingalls
Rains 242
The god of love, angry at the transgression of his command,
orders the traveler sent back to his mistress
with limbs constricted in a crystal cage
made by the broad bright stream of water
pouring from his umbrella.
Sunset 878
The crimson circle of the sun, its rays less hot,
now tumbles from the sky upon the western hill,
bearing the rolled-up life of the departing day;
and now the world, grown somber from the touch
of a few packages of evening, takes the form
of an old painting rendered dark by smoke.
Moon 904
This is no sky but rather the salt ocean,
nor this the milky way but rather Rama’s bridge.
This is no moon, it is the tightly coiled serpent;
what seems its mark is in truth the sleeping Visnu
Breeze 1137
As the wind blows, bearing drops of frost,
the god of love, as though he feared the cold,
hastily enters the hearts of lonely wives
to warm himself at the fire of the grief.
Fire 1533
Here is seen a troop of stinking ghouls
their legs as long as date trees, their bodies
no more than skeletons bound up with sinew
and covered with black skin.
The gobbets of human flesh that half fall from their panting mouths
nourish the whining curcambient wolves
