Vineet Singh Hukmani believes that music has untapped potential in the immersive space. A year after he released a multimedia book Nine that showcases nine stories combined with nine tracks, he dropped the world’s first music multiverse on May 9, 2023.
The fascinating, one-of-a-kind superhero comic book Run Storm and The Hope Star comes with an embedded QR code which, when scanned, plays the song ‘Run run run’ and a 3D animation film featuring the superhero Run Storm. An electronics engineer by education, Harvard Business School alumnus and former MD and CEO of 94.3 Radio One, Vineet is the first artiste in the world to have nine number-1 singles in the European Top 100 charts in 2021.
Speaking over a Zoom call ahead of the launch of his multiverse, Vineet holds forth on this musical experiment:
Excerpts from the chat:
How did this music multiverse idea come about?
I see people leading multiverse lives these days. They have one dimension of their regular day job and you see other dimensions of their existence — say as a photographer or a cake maker — on Instagram. Gamers have virtual personas that are different from their real-life identities. Therefore the entertainment they seek is also multiversal. Most movies now use the existence of their characters in various dimensions to make the storytelling more immersive. So I felt if songs have to appeal to this type of entertainment seeker, they too must have multi-dimensional appeal.
Globally, movies and games have always used music as a backdrop and comics that have existed for decades have had nothing to do with music! So my ‘music first,’ multiverse idea favours music creators and allows a song and its creator’s persona to not only innovate but also offerslucrative collaboration opportunities that make the resultant ‘immersiveness’ more surprising for the audience.
Vineet Singh Hukmani from the video ‘Run run run...’ | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
The comic book depicts your journey and what you stand for in life. With the superhero depiction are you living out your childhood fantasy?
The comic Run Storm and The Hope Star starts from when I felt the need to write the song ‘Run run run’. I was recovering from a viral fever about two months ago and was feeling quite dejected. I pushed myself to go for a run and suddenly things started to feel more hopeful and energetic. I recorded that emotion in my heart and realised that superhuman effort is needed to keep yourself hopeful through life’s travails! That’s what gave rise to the transformation to a superhero in my comic book story.
Yes, my belief of spreading ‘hope energy’ to others, is certainly reflected in the song, film and comic book. At some level, I’m still a child and I have a new fantasy every day. I feel fortunate that I can turn those into interesting forms of expression for my audience.
After discovering the joy of writing along with singing, do you plan to juxtapose both in all your future projects?
My joy is to be able to see things multi-dimensionally now through the creation of this first music multiverse. Song, visuals, interactivity and the written word co-exist effortlessly in new-age entertainment. I am grateful that I am able to do all these things by learning new facets of expression, written or otherwise and taking them to new heights.
Every future project promises to teach me a new skill, like how this one taught me to create music in cinematic Dolby Atmos or to work with 3D animation. The music multiverse has ‘un-limited’ me from the limits of parity posed by unidimensional music that has become an undifferentiated commodity in the digital age.
