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 will teach 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 will lend their considerable expertise as storytelling consultants. As such, they will help ensure the authenticity of cultural elements, ensure that the language is correct, and provide moral support to the young producers. Additionally, we are creating a pool of mentors from the professionals who will be teaching the workshop. These mentors will be committed to guiding the youth 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. In the process, the youths gain instruction and mentoring in storytelling, narrative development, 3D modeling, visual design and computer programming. This project intends to empower Native youth to be more than just consumers of these new technologies. It will show them how to be creators and builders themselves, able to participate in determining the future of cyberspace.
Skins will be prototyped at Kahnawake Survival School in September 2008. Once completed there, we will refine the workshop according to feedback from the participants and create a Workbook so that other communities can offer the workshop to their youth. Visit the Skins blog at skins.abtec.org.
One Pager here.
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.
With this project we hope to learn several things:• How apt is Second Life for the Skins workshop. How quickly can new users learn to use it? To mod it? To use it as a supple storytelling medium?
• Are the skills learned to mod in Second Life useful outside of Second Life, such as in the game industry?
• Are machinima movies a possible outcome of the Skins workshop, separate from the virtual worlds themselves?
Visit timetravellertm.com.
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, 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.
