A visit by an Aboriginal newspaper editor to Museums Victoria inspired a project in contemporary storytelling, helping to connect Australia’s First Peoples with museum collections. By Dr Fran Edmonds, University of Melbourne.
Click here to read the article: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/feather-flowers-and-photographs
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Artist Maree Clarke and Dr Fran Edmonds presenting the LAAA project to the Decolonizing Museums conference at Deakin University, Melbourne, on Nov 14th 2019. We unpacked Maree’s personal possum skin cloaks, two kangaroo teeth necklaces as well as the Kangaroo glass teeth necklace so that people in the audience could touch and feel the artworks. Maree explained the importance of the collective making of these objects and the process of bringing back cultural practices.
Picture of Kylie Jade Clarke from the film.
The film explains Maree Clarke’s art practice and her journey as an activist. Cultural Activist was selected for the Margaret Mead Festival in NY, 18th October 2019. A film by Birriah, Gurreng Gurreng filmmaker Simon Rose.
More about Simon Rose’s work and film collective The Great Aboriginal People https://thegreataboriginalpeople.com.au
The LAAA is currently working with the Research Team at the Virtual Reality Lab at the University of Melbourne. We are researching possibilities to use VR as a way to share Indigenous knowledge. We are involved in an ongoing conversation around Indigenizing technologies. How to fold in new technologies and practices into an Ancestral philosophy of knowledge-making? How to use VR to share culture ?
Maree Clarke trying the VR helmet.
On the first meeting, Friday 4th October, in the Doug McDonell building at the University of Melbourne, Maree Clarke, Mitch Mahoney and members of the VR Research Team started thinking about and experimenting with possibilities using these interactive technologies. These included:
VR that uses depth cameras to recognize bodily gestures and represent them as avatars: https://socialnui.unimelb.edu.au/research/ageing-avatars/; AR that projects your bones and muscles onto the outside of your body while you move: https://socialnui.unimelb.edu.au/research/physio-education/; 3D scanning of objects as well as room-scale immersive projection.
Maree Clarke and Frank Vetere trying AR projections.
The Living Archive of Aboriginal Art (LAAA) project would like to thank the following people for inviting us to tour the VR LAB:
Greg Wadley, member of the LAAA research team from Engineering; Zaher Joukhadar, software engineer ; and senior academic Frank Vetere . For more information visit the site: VR Lab Team https://cis.unimelb.edu.au/interaction-design/
A short film made by Birriah / Gurreng Gurreng filmmaker Simon Rose documents the collaborative process of making a cloak and river reed necklaces in Maree’s backyard.
Image: Stills of film. Maree Clarke, Mitch Mahoney (Maree Clarke’s nephew), Indi Clarke (Maree Clarke’s nephew), and participants/students working on the making of a cloak.
Click to watch the film https://vimeo.com/331367961
