Immerse Yourself in History
TimeTraveller™ is a short machinima production being shot on location in Second Life, an on-line virtual world. It is the story of Hunter, an angry young Mohawk man living in the 22nd century. Despite the fact that he possesses an impressive range of traditional skills, Hunter is unable to cope with life in an overcrowded, hyperinflated, technologized world. He embarks on a vision quest that takes him back in time to historical conflicts that have involved First Nations. Though his intention is to right the wrongs of the past, he ends up discovering the complexity of history, and of truth itself.
Visit timetravellertm.com.
Otsi:!
Rise of the Kanien'kehá:ka Legends
Otsi:! Rise of the Kanien'kehá:ka Legends is a videogame developed by students in Owisokon Lahache's art class at the Kahnawake Survival School during the 2008 - 2009 school year.
The students drew on several stories from the Kahnawake community to create the narrative for Otsi:! about an Iroquois hunter is on a mission to stop a monster, the Flying Head, from destroying his village. The students designed an entire multi-level game that took players from the Flying Head's origin story through to his confrontation with the hunter.
The game was implemented as a mod on the Unreal first-person shooter engine. The player takes the role of the hunter, and sees the world from his eyes. The player begins outside of a village that has been razed to the ground. The sole survivor tells him about the Flying Head and its attack on the village, and warns the player that it is now heading towards Hunter's village.
Several of the students are currently (Spring/Summer 2010) working in the lab to refine the game further.
Visit otsi.abtec.org.
Skins
Storytelling in Cyberspace (or, How to Translate The Oral Tradition Into Virtual Reality)
Skins is a specialized workshop that has been created by a team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal academics and artists to specifically address the unique world view of Native youth. Taught by game-industry professionals, 3D animators, computer programmers, artists and storytellers, Skins teaches Aboriginal youths how to create their own virtual environments. The workshop covers traditional storytelling as well as important topics in game and virtual environment production, including: art direction, 3D modeling and animation, sound, and computer programming. A unique and important aspect of this workshop is the inclusion of elders who lend their considerable expertise as storytelling consultants. As such, they help ensure the authenticity of cultural elements, ensure that the language is correct, and provide moral support to the young producers. The professionals who teach in the workshop also agree to be mentors to the youth, and are committed to guiding them through to their finished projects.
In this way, Skins can provide an avenue through which elders can pass on their knowledge to the next generation, and an opportunity for the youths to explore their culture via a new medium that is exciting to them.. The project aims to empower Native youth to be more than just consumers of these new technologies by showing them how to be creators and builders themselves, able to participate in determining the future of cyberspace.
Skins was prototyped at Kahnawake Survival School from September 2008 to June 2009. You can view a draft of our curriculum here. Skins 2.0 will take place in the summer 2011. Visit the Skins blog at skins.abtec.org.
One Pager here.
Avatar Performance Stream
LIVE Biennale of Performance Art 2007
Skawennati Tricia Fragnito was invited to produce a special curatorial initiative as part of the Avatar Performance Stream of Vancouver's LIVE Biennale of Performance Art. It was a great opportunity for AbTeC to see how Second Life could accommodate Aboriginal storytelling! Skawennati commissioned new works by two AbTeC Research Assistants, artists Bea Parsons and Bonnie Quaite, who created performances for Second Life.
Read Skawennati's Curatorial Statement.
Read Artists' Statements:
Bea Parson's Statement.
Bonnie Quaite's Statement.
CyberPowWow
An Aboriginally Determined Territory in Cyberspace
CyberPowWow, a project initiated by Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, is the direct ancestor of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace.
From 1997-2004, CyberPowWow used the Internet to bridge the vast geographical distances, both in Canada and around the world, that separate Aboriginal people, especially contemporary Aboriginal artists. Four themed exhibitions took place, topically exploring the intersection between technology, art and identity.
CyberPowWow featured a website and chat space furnished with commissioned works by a mix of emerging and established, First Nations and non-Native, artists and writers. These included: Rosalie Favell, Greg A. Hill, Joseph Tekaroniake Lazare, Ryan Johnston, Archer Pechawis, Jason E. Lewis, Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew, Michelle Nahanee, Travis Neel, Sheila Urbanoski, Trevor Van Weeren, Edward Poitras, Sheryl Kootenhayoo, Lori Blondeau, Bradlee LaRocque, Ryan Rice, Melanie Printup Hope, Marilyn Burgess, Lee Crowchild, Jolene Rickard, Audra Simpson, Paul Chaat Smith and Skawennati Tricia Fragnito.
Each exhibition was launched with a simultaneous, distributed on-line event. Roughly biannual, the events put the "pow wow" in CyberPowWow and took place both in cyberspace and at official, real-life Gathering Sites across Turtle Island. These artist-run centres, community centres and galleries opened their doors to the public to increase access to people who might otherwise not log on.
CyberPowWow has informed AbTeC in many ways. We learned about the particular needs of Aboriginal artists and their communities when working with new and networked technologies. We learned about the various concerns that Aboriginal communities have in regard to cultural intellectual property, and strategies for addressing those concerns. We learned that even on the Internet, First Nations need a place to call their own.
Visit cyberpowwow.net.
