In the weeks leading up to August 22 every year, Chennai pulsates with walks, contests, exhibitions, and other events. On the day when we celebrate its birthday — its 387th this year — social media feeds are flooded with tributes to the city we call home. For some, it is the comforting ritual of sipping filter coffee from a davara set; for others, it is watching the sunrise at Marina Beach, cycling along ECR, the fragrance of mallipoo, or the familiarity of its temples.
Vinay Chandrasekaran, founder of the US-based startup Layerpath, too, wanted to wish Chennai on its birthday. However, when he opened Instagram, every scroll revealed another “unknown” facet of the city. What he found was a slew of AI-generated content, some of it unverified, which piqued his interest. “My curiosity led me to question why Chennai is only 387 years old. Because we have a history dating back 2,000 years. So, that gave me a chance to go back and learn the history,” says Vinay.
The first stage of research involved understanding the reason behind the city’s name, how the date was observed, and historians’ take on when Madras was actually founded — the July or August debate. He then uploaded the findings of two days of “deep research” to Claude Opus 5.5 to create a video with music, not with AI-generated images, but using code written by Vinay.
The tool generated options, including one with a kolam to represent the city. “But I wanted to know how it can plot 380 years of Chennai in a single line kolam. The constraint I gave was not to break the kolam,” shares Vinay. It took him five hours to produce a horizontal video for Instagram.
He posted a 20-second history clip of Chennai in a kolam featuring the coast, temples, the Fort, Royapuram railway station, neighbourhoods like Thyagaraya Nagar, and the metro on his social media handle (@ivinay on Instagram) in September. The accompanying music — a flute melody in raga Bowli following the kolam, and a bell ringing wherever it crosses itself — was also created by Vinay.
After the kolam film received attention, he spent the following weekend creating a browser game, Madras Rush, to explore the city through the researched data — Francis Day and Andrew Cogan arriving in Madrasapatnam in 1640, a charter creating the Corporation of Madras in 1687, the first lighthouse lit on the Exchange roof inside the Fort in 1796, Madras Central station opening in 1873, and so on. Building the game took him two hours, but optimising it for mobile screens took 20 hours, notes Vinay.
The facts were initially collected using AI, and then verified by Vinay via government portals, newspaper clippings, and books. All the sources are attributed. “I was constantly challenged in terms of verifying these historical artefacts,” Vinay admits.
Soon enough, what “started as a fun experiment to post something for Madras Day turned into constructing visual artefacts from what is known and documented,” shares Vinay. The ultimate plan was, he explains, to create a world where people can learn and interact with the city through beautiful transitions of 386 years of history based on real data supported by verified sources.
The verified data is written as code using GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable. The choice of coding as opposed to AI was intentional. “Code is grounded in evidence. It gives you flexibility, maintainability, scalability, and easy accessibility. AI models are getting better and better. But image models still need more time. They use a different model of diffusion,” explains Vinay.
The code is adapted into 2D, which is converted into 3D in Blender and then rigged (creating digital skeletons) to create an environment with the fishermen’s settlements, the East India Company’s set-up, the lifestyle, and the trade. “I spent close to $2,000 to show a house, courtyard, godown, a middle-class British home, etc.,” he informs, adding that in two months he has collected and generated 130 GB of data.
All this goes into ‘the world’ — The Madras Project — that he is building, where individuals can experience the city in three modes — see Chennai from the coast, from the Fort, from a town. Vinay points out, “(In ‘the world’) I can choose to talk to or engage with the villagers, the British, people next to the fort, or I can actually go inside the artillery. I can also inspect the strategy to control the waves. I really wanted to create a role-play for people to experience that era.”
Vinay’s work now is building a pipeline that will enable more people and cities to join the initiative. “This is why we should open source (initiatives like The Madras Project) so that anyone who wants can create (something) for their own cities, temples, churches, and mosques,” he concludes.
Through the game, the film, and ‘the world’, we will take pride in calling Chennai “home” not just for its aesthetics but for its layered history too.
To play Madras Rush, visit https://madras.v40.in/