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Performing Aboriginal Knowledge Traditions with Virtual Reality Technology

Malcom Pumpa    

The digital representation of Aboriginal knowledge traditions is increasingly important for both Aboriginal people and a diverse range of scientific disciplines. Most representations do not present a holistic view of Aboriginal knowledge. This study examines the requirements of methodology that will inform the design, construction and implementation of two iterations of Digital Songlines, a virtual simulated world for representing Aboriginal knowledge. The decision to use Actor Network Theory is justified in terms of its ability to address ontological, epistemological and technical aspects of the project. Implications for a wide range of projects involved with Aboriginal knowledge traditions are discussed.

Transcript

Interviewer: I’d like to welcome Malcolm Pumpa, welcome Malcolm

Malcolm Pumpa: Hi how are you

Interviewer: Malcolm can you please share with us what your Research is about in a broad sense?

Malcolm Pumpa: Okay my Research in a broad sense is about the interaction of two knowledge traditions, Aboriginal Knowledge Tradition and what I tend to call the Global Scientific Knowledge Tradition and in this interaction the main aim of the account which I’m trying to produce is how Aboriginal Knowledge Traditions can be holistically and authentically represented using digital technology.  A particular form of digital technology that we’re using is a virtual reality so we are…..is a documentation of the process of constructing a virtual world for the representation of Aboriginal Knowledge Traditions but more than representation, it’s the emphasis on the performance of Aboriginal knowledge traditions because Aboriginal knowledge is a performative tradition so we are trying to build a digital virtual world that allows the performance of these traditions in an authentic and holistic manner.

Interviewer: And what do you expect to find out from your Research?

Malcolm Pumpa: There’s probably 2 main outcomes of the research, the first one is the process of constructing a cultural performance so the virtual world is being seen in this study as a new kind of cultural performance for the 21st century, a new kind of Aboriginal cultural performance for the 21st century using modern day technology such as virtual reality so that’s probably the first outcome is how can we…….how can we make this performance authentic and holistic across a cultural interface from Aboriginal knowledge to digital knowledge. 

The second and equally important outcome of the study is I hope an assemblage of methods that will give future projects similar to this……will give them some guidance or some clues as to how to negotiate the controversies that inevitably arise across this cultural interface and how to make instead of probably trying to solve these controversies which proves extremely difficult, how to make connections between the important actors in the whole process both human and non human actors, how to make the connections so that we can in fact work around the controversies to produce a product or produce a performance that supports and enables Aboriginal knowledge traditions.

Interviewer: What do you think will be the significance of your Research?

Malcolm Pumpa: Aboriginal knowledge……..Indigenous knowledge generally but this project deals with Aboriginal knowledge specifically is very important knowledge and is coming in recent years has come to be seen to be able to play a very important part across a wide range of disciplines from eco system management  to wild life to health to the pharmaceutical industry so global techno science is very interested in Indigenous and Aboriginal knowledge.  Therefore there’s a wide range of fields which want to tap into effective and holistic ways of performing and representing this knowledge, some of the fields that are very interested in this knowledge are of course firstly the Aboriginal groups themselves probably the most important thing for the community archiving of their own knowledge for various reasons so for a variety of development purposes such as land rights claims, resource management and publishing ventures.  There’s also a whole range of what are called public participation GIS projects which focus on community mapping and can be applied to a wide range of developing countries and Indigenous peoples which contribute to projects involving participatory land management, natural resource management, conflict resolution and communication and a rapidly expanding field which is applicable is the field of virtual cultural heritage and large global organisations such as UNESCO are involved in representing cultural heritage areas and practices that are either no longer accessible or are in danger of becoming inaccessible.  Education is also another large area specifically for Aboriginal studies programs and also in the broader social science curriculums at all educational levels, digital games….the field of serious digital games and role playing games is increasingly interested in cross cultural experiences and how to represent and perform these and finally the field of information visualisation is intensely interested in the whole idea of landscape metaphors to visualise a vast range of scientific information, the use of 3D landscape metaphors provides a very flexible /?/ cognitive strategy which can visualise large data arrays so there’s a whole range of fields which this could have applicability.

Interviewer: Thank you very much for your time today Malcolm

Malcolm Pumpa: Thank you very much Emma, pleasure