Filed under: Digital Dynamics Across Cultures (2006), Online Projects: | Tags: Digital Dynamics Across Cultures, Kimberly Christen, NFF2008
Digital Dynamics Across Cultures
Digital Dynamics Across Cultures, produced by Chris Cooney, Kim Christen, and Allesandro Ceglia introduces viewers to the knowledge and access protocols of the central Australian Aboriginal Warumungu community and countries (places). Place, according to the project home page, “is a significant identifier for Warumungu people as it serves as both a point of relation and a site for knowledge creation”. The site teaches about local Warumungu protocols for knowledge circulation, production, and interaction, deliberately intervening in common expectations that that the Internet should be used to share and distribute, rather than restrict and protect, forms of knowledge.
Filed under: Online Projects:, The Whale Hunt (2007) | Tags: Jonathan Harris, NFF2008, The Whale Hunt
The Whale Hunt
The Whale Hunt, created by multimedia artist Jonathan Harris, depicts his trip from Brooklyn, New York, to Barrow Alaska, to photograph an Inupiat Bowhead whale hunt. Images taken every five minutes for nine days are displayed online in multiple visual and functional modes that push the boundaries of digital interface design, programming, and image-based narrative practice. While this site was not produced by the Inupiat community that is the subject of the project, Harris’ subjective, reflexive, interactive, and flexible design of the viewing and storytelling experience aptly reveals the multi-faceted conditions of his experience as the producer of the representations and his interaction with the community as he was allowed to participate in the hunt and distribution of food.
Filed under: Dane Wajich- Dane-zaa Stories and Songs: Dreamers and the Land (2007), Online Projects: | Tags: Dane Wajich- Dane-zaa Stories and Songs: Dreamers and the Land, Doig River First Nation, NFF08
Dane Wajich- Dane-zaa Stories and Songs: Dreamers and the Land
Dane Wajich- Dane-zaa Stories and Songs: Dreamers and the Land was produced and directed by the Doig River First Nation in northeastern British Columbia, Canada, in collaboration with curators Amber Ridington and Kate Hennessy, and a team of Dane-zaa elders and youth, ethnographers, and linguists. It introduces viewers to the history of Dane-zaa Dreamers, and the community’s past and present relationship to the land. The exhibit’s community-directed production process facilitated the articulation of local goals for revitalizing language, recording oral traditions, and traveling to important places in their territory. It also resulted in wide-ranging discussions about what cultural information and knowledge could, and could not, be shared over the Internet, and extensive community participation in determining how they should be represented on-line.
Filed under: Isuma TV (2007), Online Projects: | Tags: Igloolik Isuma Productions, Isuma TV (2007), NFF2008
Isuma TV
Isuma TV is an Internet portal for indigenous filmmakers that creates new artistic and cultural communities by bringing virtually filmmakers together and making their work available worldwide. Attentive to the intellectual property rights of filmmakers, the free service allows films to be viewed, but not downloaded. DVDs are available for sale upon request. Created by Igloolik Isuma Productions, the makers of Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, this site depends on the contributions of indigenous filmmakers to generate the site’s content. It is committed to broadcasting indigenous language media, and sees indigenous audiences in remote communities as their core audience.
UsMob
UsMob is a production of the Australian Film Commission and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in association with the Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs, in central Australia. UsMob introduces viewers to Aboriginal teenagers Charlie, Della, Harry, and Jacquita in a seven-part “choose-your-own-adventure”- style series set in their community. Narrative and verité style videos depict the teenage hosts interacting with each other and with members of their community, but they also invite participation from the viewer, enabling the contributions of user-generated video, games, forums, and text-diaries. Signing up to participate in Us Mob can only be done by “applying for a permit” to visit their home, Hidden Valley, a Town Camp of Alice Springs, drawing attention to legacies of colonial administration and the regulation of real– and virtual – spaces.
Filed under: FirstVoices (2000), Online Projects: | Tags: First Peoples Cultural Foundation, FirstVoices, NFF08
FirstVoices
FirstVoices, a production of the First People’s Cultural Foundation, provides web-based tools and support services for Aboriginal peoples in Canada who choose to use digital technologies for language archiving, teaching, and revitalization. Now archiving languages with over sixty First Nations communities, First Voices integrates text, audio, video, games, and support resources to enhance ongoing community-based learning efforts. Participating communities can choose to share their language publicly, or restrict it for their exclusive access. FirstVoices virtually connects remote Aboriginal communities in their shared efforts to record and revitalize languages that in many cases were historically violently suppressed by the Canadian government. It can also facilitate the interaction of youth and elders within their communities as they work together to record and upload their language, reinforcing social relations and strengthening personal relationships.
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