Dhruv Adhia – Hello Universe

New Portfolio Website

// January 23rd, 2012 // No Comments » // antarikShamM, Thirdimension

You can view my updated portfolio on
www.dhruvaryan.com

Hawan – Purification of internal & external environment

// August 15th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // antarikShamM, Freedom, Nature, Thirdimension

Hawan as I have known as a child gave me vague but right idea on the way “Pandits” carry them. Just do it for the sake of rituals. As a child I wondered, what are these mantras for? why are these mantras chanted? During marriages, meditation, sandhya, upasana, and the whole of ancient Vedic literature is crafted of beautiful mantras many of which are in the form of poetry. When I used to listen to those hawans at marriages and other temples, while seeing others hardly paying any attention to it. That gave me some idea of these so called hawans which are carried out at most of the places in India for the above mentioned reason.

Now we all know the fruit of performing an action without really knowing it and why we are doing it. Those so called pandits afterall nicely commercialized themselves to fool orthodox mass of India. Only one word comes to my mind that is how “Weak” of them. Because the true definition of Hawan is much more pure, scientific and spiritual in nature. It is the process which when understood, you will only enjoy. A process which is both scientifically and spiritually tested to be for the benefit for not only humans but also environment. The mantras there in are so beautiful that it fills my heart with joy and indeed that those rishis were true scientist in my opinion.

I am not sure how much Michio Kaku, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawkings have come up with the formulation of metaphysical concepts to form the theory of everything. I know one thing that those rishis have provided a Framework that makes sense. Behind any system, there is a framework and without understanding a framework one cannot understand how the system functions. The beautiful part of those ancient Rishis is that they didnt try and provide answer for everything like most of the religion and science try to do so, they just provided a general framework underlying the backbone of cosmos and rest is upon us on how we unravel the mystery. This is beautiful rather than formulating equations and trying to theorize everything. My question is , can you please show me the equation behind a smile? Provided you know what smile means. From computer vision point of view, I know how to detect a smile, but that’s only how an employee smiles to his/her boss.

To understand the framework, was not an easy task. They understood it through various Yogic practices. Yoga as I have mentioned before, meaning “The process of removal of the activities of mind” as said by Maharshi Patanjali. If the mind is clear, you are able to communicate to the mysteries of universe. Hawan is one such beautiful practice which the aryavarta before mahabharat used to perform daily to make our planet more sustainable through not only purifying air, but also through the purification of thoughts. We often think we dwelve in outter world not realizing the problems in outter world starts from inner world(thoughts). Isn’t that so creative to have a process which purifies both air and thought at a same time? That is called Hawan.

Below will I list some of the mantras in Sanskrit and their meaning in English as mentioned in Arya Samaji Hawan. And I have already mentioned the reason for my avoidance for other hawans. As they mostly are both spiritually dumb and scientifically falsified. To me when a process follows a principle, it justifies itself both scientifically and metaphysically(Spiritually here). And Arya Samaji Hawan is one such process.

If you think I am missing out any information or you want to know detail reasoning and information, please do get back to me via feedback. I would love to discuss.

Here are some mantras, which are my favorites I must say:

Om aapo  joyteeraso mritam brahma bhoor bhuwah swar-om swahaa.

In the performance of this sacrifice, I have sought to discover the secrets surrounding.
God, the Supreme-most, All-pervading, and of the nature of Light, Love and Immortality, and
the Earth, Sky, and Heaven

The beauty of above mantra is that yes it tries and defines god in one sentence, but it never utters nouns in the sentence. It is only karma(actions/verbs) that matter.

Om yaam medhaam deva-ganaah pitarash cho-paa-sate. Tayaa ma-madya medhayaang-ne medhaa-vinam kuru swaaha.

O Radiant Lord of Knowledge! Make me knowledgeable today with that same knowledge which the company of learned men and fathers of wisdom strive to attain, so that I may indeed know You and the world.

I call this the prayer of everything. If at all you want to ask for something from universe/god/yourself. Why don’t you ask for instrumental intellect? cause as I told, solutions for all the problems lies in there.

Praying for a discriminating intellect

Om asato ma sad gamaya,
Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya,
Mirtyorumam amritam gamaya.

Lead me from the falsehood to the truth.
Lead me from darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.

This is simple and powerful enough to recall from time to time.

Sarve bhavantu sukhinah,
Sarve santu ni-raa-ma-yaah
Sarve bhadrani pashyantu
Maa Kash-chid dukha bhaag bhavet

May all be happy. May all be free from misery. May all realise goodness and may no one suffer pain.

Happiness not just for oneself but for entirety.

Om dhyo shantir antariksham shantih prithivi
shantir apah shantir oshadhayah shantih
vanaspatayah shantir vishvedevah shantir
brahma shantih sarvam shantih shantireva shanti
sama shantiredhi. Om shanti shanti shanti.

There is peace in the planetary region; there is peace in the atmosphere; there is peace on earth; there is coolness in the water; the medicinal herbs are healing; the plants are peace giving; there is peace in the planets; there is perfection in the eternal knowledge; everything in the universe is peaceful; peace pervades everywhere. May that peace come to me.

May there be peace, peace, peace.

One more beautiful mantra which speaks of peace not only for oneself, but for entire universe. In the end there is a reason why peace is chanted 3 times. In vedic times they already knew the causes of problems, misery and sufferings. They knew where they came from.
1) From self
2) From others
3) From physical nature

So peace in that sense is chanted 3 times bringing peace to all the 3 energies which is essentially the universe minus the god as mentioned in Vedas.

Here is another interesting article. Its based on bhopal gas tragedy and how one family survived by just performing hawan regularly.

http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=439710

Namaste
Dhruv

Digital Video Illumination

// May 31st, 2011 // No Comments » // Networking, opencv, Technology, Thirdimension

Recently I got a wonderful opportunity to work with FreidchWood Theatres group at UBC to work in their latest innovation named “Digital Video Illumination”. The objective of this project is to create a modular framework for people from non-technical background to create content on the fly for 8-12 different project, and all of them synced together with monitoring system so that previewing and creation of content becomes easier. Currently we are going through Design and Research phase, I have started working on setting up basic framework. With all legalities dealt within upcoming months, this project will be open-sourced on Github. Yes Developing for the world and with the world. I must say I love open source communities and it is always a pleasure giving something valuable back to community. Sounds like some sort of tech governance, whatever it may be, its good.

I am working with Robert Gardiner the head the theatre mentioned above and here is a glimpse of what he thinks can be done. The applications of this project are quiet wide open interms of what you may do with it, every abstract innovation has it and I see this project along similar lines. Apart from theatres I can also think of huge installations for which it has good use. Especially when it will have added element of interactive with various sensors/cameras later on.

Peace 
Dhruv

Visiting MIT Media Labs

// January 6th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // antarikShamM, MIT, Technology, Thirdimension

I was recently given opportunity to visit MIT media labs and also present the work
we do at Dsign Labs. Nearly 80 prospective students and several industry guests
are allowed to visit the labs in a year. My visit was for 3.5 days and fortunately I could stay
at Seth Hunters place during my visit. Seth Hunter is 2nd year PHD student for
fluid interfaces group at Media labs.

Structuring of Media labs comes very close to SIAT research labs. The only difference
that I found between SIAT research labs and MIT media labs is that of focus.
While SIAT focuses more on content side, Media labs focuses more on interface side. Their internal
culture amongst faculty and student is similar to GNWC as well. At media labs they have
masters and PHD program in the field of media arts and sciences. That means it is
highly interdisciplinary course. Many of the known programs like processing, scratch,
open frameworks were the work of this lab.

They have several groups which focus on the given set of problems. For example,
Object Based Media group focuses on interface related to various objects in our
day to day life. Tangible media group focuses on everything that is tangible and how
that tangible thing can be used to represent relevant digital information.

Because of Seth Hunter, I got a very good tour of MIT media labs and Boston at large.I actually felt
at home as we do similar work at Dsign labs in the field of machine vision based interfaces.

I primarily met with 3 professors; Henry Holtzman of Information Ecology Group, Pattie
Maes of Fluid Intefaces group and Micheal Boey of Object Based Media Group. And all
were quite impressed with our work at Dsign labs. Some of them found our ways of
reaching out to people through interface a unique approach and strong philosophy.

Along with professors, I met around 15 students and they all spent a good deal of time
to explain me what they had worked on and about their current projects. From them, I came
to know about one more similarity with GNWC and that industry guests and affiliates. They very
much encourage a hacking and practical culture. They often have industry guests visiting and
sponsoring the projects. In this way students are not only able to think in terms of innovation but
also in terms of its usability in the relevant market and commercializing their products.

All in all I found I was back to GNWC and SIAT Research Labs in many ways.

Digital Monalisa – Sensification

// November 9th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // antarikShamM, Biomimicry, Fluid Interfaces, Nature, Networking, opencv, organic media, Technology, Thirdimension, Ubiquitous Computing

At Dsign Interactive labs, I am working on my latest creation, which we call “Monalisa.”
Past few months I worked on various computer vision related algorithms. They were to do with
color, object, tracking, gesture, emotion and speech recognition. There were various other small
algorithms like OCR, image analysis etc.

For Dsign 2.0, I am working on Monalisa software which will eventually combine all such algorithms
with Dsign Framework at the center and utilize it for practical purpose.

My personal intentions out here is not to prove that we are just evolved/programmed/tangible beings.
Its actually the other way round

I personally think that the beauty of AI lies at the application level and not at the conscious or intelligence level.

We at Dsign labs believe that we will create a dent in the universe through our approach of humanizing
interfaces that would better equip with human senses.

The project is under NDA.
But over time I will post some pics and videos as I have more freedom

Peace and lots of love,
Dhruv (Currently in love with Digital Monalisa)

Keynote presentation through Hand Gestures from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.

Ubiquitous University – “A creative and ever way of learning”

// October 25th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // antarikShamM, Fluid Interfaces, Technology, Thirdimension

We often like gaining information about places, cultures, food, technology etc.
We often also realize that there is no way in which I can gain knowledge in a seamless manner
and knowledge that matters. For example I come across a painting at  museum in Italy.
I love the painting and wish to gain information on authors bio-data and meaning behind the
painting. But as I don’t have any information, I ask people around and start ticking away buttons
on my iPhone to gain the information.

Now I have to be a good googler to get the information that I want. Information that matters pertaining to that painting. Now this certainly does seem to be a waste of time and especially the moment.

Imagine, if I could have wearable augmented reality glasses or some device that could do object recognition and can overlay information on the top of the physical object. The information can further be browsed with the help of gestures.

It could also be creative in some cases. For example, if you look at Mountains and natural elements of life then it might sing out an interesting poem for you.

In future, I see that education wont be just trapped inside a classroom. In fact practical learning will creatively be followed by respective theory introduced.

Law of relativity and Awareness

// September 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // antarikShamM, Thirdimension

Its a wonderful weekend and thought of adding a spiritual topping to start it

Yesterday when I was done with meditation I got this thought.
When we are not aware the knowledge becomes relative by nature as the conscious (chetana) is in the periphery and not in the center. When we are aware of ourselves, knowledge becomes absolute.
When we are aware, we are able to grasp knowledge through conscious(chetana) being in center and we therefore understand the knowledge in its true nature. When we are not conscious
of ourselves, the attention is in the periphery/surface/body/senses. And whatever senses register we get it. However senses do not have “intelligence” i.e. conscious of its own. It is always
changing based on external factors. Therefore it is never still making knowledge relative. Einstein explains it this way

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes.
When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours
that’s relativity.”

To understand truth we have to be aware of ourselves and it is only then we grasp absolute knowledge and not fall into believing that senses are intelligent. Some of the yogis have rightly said about brain and senses. Use brain as means to get to final objective. But don’t consider it a driver. You are the driver not the senses and or brain. To complete the analogy. You : Driver :: Brain/Senses : Car

i.e. you are the driver and brain is the car.

Here is a song by M.C. Yogi called Mahatma’s Message (featuring Sukhawat Ali Khan)                       Click on the link below if you see a cross mark. HTML 5 mp3 player support is only for safari and chrome at the moment.

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Mahatma’s Message (featuring Sukhawat Ali Khan)

Humanizing Technology – An Evolution

// August 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technology, Thirdimension

Recently we at Dsign interactive Systems rolled out first touchless interactive product recommendation system at Pacific Centre in Downtown, Vancouver, Canada.

The system tracks human bodies and hands. It also does noise cancellation based on depth recognition and point cloud readings.

Here is the video

Future refinements,

We are working on creating a new framework which would allow us to easily tweak input as well as output based on client needs. Also for the system to be more intuitive.
We have already been working on natural gestures. Also we trying to work on the fact that user can move in space at a same time cancelling others people noise and making it one to one communication system.
As most of the clients need one to one communication system, however system can support many to one communication system.

An Evolution,

iBot – Virtual Social Robot for iPhone/iPad/iPod

// August 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // organic media, Technology, Thirdimension, Ubiquitous Computing

We recently at Dsign Interactive Systems + SquareCube LLC worked on interactive virtual social robot.
The robot reacts to touch drag gestures on the iPhone. It also reacts to accelerometer. In a way the robot
has a sense of where you are touching it and also gravity up to certain extent.

This is what we call “Bridging Humans and Virtual Agents” or “Humanizing Technology” in simple terms

In future versions we are planning to create a concept of time and space taking it to a level of creating
a virtual world for the robot. So that it can move around and do more Human actions. And we mean to
spread awareness in human actions by making spotty behave more humanly.

Coming from India and dealing with actions, the word that penetrates my mind, body and soul is “KARMA.”
I wrote Karma algorithm to reward and punish based on the actions of the user. This way we are trying to bridge the gap
between humans and virtual bot. Also we have named the bot “Spotty”

iPad version will be released soon too.

Here is the glimpse,

Credits:
Yangos Hadjiyannas – Creative Director
Mckane Lee – Digital Consultant and Animator
Dhruv Adhia – Technical Director and Programmer

Love & Peace,
Dhruv Adhia

August 15th, 1947 – The day lives forever

// August 13th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // antarikShamM, Freedom, Thirdimension

The independence day. Once again India was free. However the irony is that Mother was always free. But mother cared for her children’s and to see if they were free or not? It is true we the children’s are not free completely. Cause materialistic freedom is not the only one. We are working, thriving , running , thundering towards it while mother India sings lullaby

Who is weak, who is strong, who is right, who is wrong, who is tall, who is short, who is white, who is black, who is who , who is that? is all dissolved when I look into her eyes. It is all gone and what remains is the light, is the energy, is the India thundering as ever, holding, embracing the whole universe. Is my mother India.

The day will live forever

This song goes for you

Millions of reasons,
in every season,
You were there ,
Holding my hand
While I was walking ,
You were holding
And that hold,
was a light, even at night
you made me see stars
not the darkness,
its your brightness
which lives forever,
Oh Mother
August 15th, 1947
the day will live forever
in hearts of every Indian
and the people who felt India
To the breadth and depth of life
she was the symbol of sacrifice
to see her childrens allright
Oh Mother
you take me beyond senses
you gave me something
which is ineffable to describe
No matter where I go
You made me look beyond tribes
You made me look at the light
it was your gift
without which I never had that sight
it was you who was the reason behind my uplift
Oh Mother
the day, 15th of August, 1947
Will live forever!

From,
Your Son
Vande Mataram