Participatory Creation of Immersive First Peoples' Spaces in Australia

In this presentation we introduce work that members of our research group have been conducting with Australian First Peoples communities, creating 3D immersive environments that tell their stories. We briefly describe three case studies and discuss their common challenges and benefits. The first is an online outreach tool commissioned by the Badanami Centre (see Anning 2010 for context) and led by Kate Richards, called “Field of Dreams (FoD). It uses 360 video and WebGL to afford potential students from First Peoples backgrounds a culturally-specific, fun and accessible platform for understanding our university (WSU)’s offerings and culture. The second case study is led by Dr Louise Crabtree with Vanessa Davis and Denise Foster, and is based around the ‘town camps’ (Heppell & Wigley 2017) near Alice Springs. This team has for several years been developing strategies for engaging young people from the camps in technology and media. A number of paradigms have been explored for this media production work, including training the young people in producing 3D models based on their local region for use in immersive storytelling. The third case study, Generations of Knowledge, is led by Dr Anton Bogdanovych and Dr Tomas Trescak, together with the Elders on Campus at WSUb , creating a ‘speculative reconstruction’ in immersive 3D of the land the university is now situated on, as it was before the European invasion. In all three cases, challenges include issues of data sovereignty (c.f. Kukutai & Taylor 2016) and ensuring community participation in and intellectual ownership of all levels of the project. In the Alice Springs project there are further practical considerations such as hardware robust enough for remote locations, upskilling young people who might not have much technology experience, and identifying funding sources that are flexible enough to work within the necessary parameters.