Interactions - March/April 2012

historical accounts from a Native viewpoint and for tracing lines forward from the actual present into a fantastical future. In other words, rather than remediating existing mythology as we are doing with Skins, Fragnito is creating a new mythology, a new set of stories to illustrate the values of an imagined future Native culture.

Creating anew gives rise to a set of design responsibilities different than those of remediation. Whereas in Skins we needed to be careful about telling tales that community members might consider unsuitable

those kinds of calls... Modern-day storytellers, not specifically traditional storytellers, can adapt the stories in such a way that while they retain their underlying meanings, they are dressed in modified clothing” [ 6].

Our work at Ab TeC attempts to find a balance between Delisle’s desire to see his stories told through video games and Benesiinaabandan’s caution about the perils of simply treating those stories as content, a resource to be plundered when other inspiration fails. By moving along twin paths—the careful partnering with local communities to reimagine our stories in the Skins workshops, and the use of modern media technology to envision a new future for our communities in the Time Traveller™ series—we hope that each will reinforce, inspire, and enrich the other. And perhaps, five, 10, or 20 years down the road, this approach will have changed the world… at least a little bit.

for disseminating outside the com-
munity, or in remediating stories
in a way that some might consider
inappropriate, the Time Traveller™
series paints a picture that con-
sciously seeks to perturb accepted
history and disturb settler culture
notions of the modern Native. The
community for which Fragnito is
designing her stories is the entire
Aboriginal population of Turtle
Island, whose distinct nations,
despite vast differences in particu-
lar cultural details, all had a similar
experience of violent colonization
and are still looking for ways to
ameliorate the cultural disjunctions
and disruptions that followed.

ENDNOTES:

1. Machinima = machine cinema, or the use of virtual environments to “film” movies.

2. Montreal has four major universities, and there is substantial grant money to be had if one is working with Aboriginal communities.

3. Post-hoc it looks like a strategy; at the time, it was simply trying to find any local optimal.

4. Turtle Island = a term for North America used by the Haudenosaunee and other indigenous cultures. 5. Skins 1.0 interview, June 6, 2009.

6. Skins 2.0 interview, July 23, 2011.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Edward Lewis is a digital-
media poet, artist, and software
designer. He founded Obx
Laboratory for Experimental
Media ( www.obxlabs.net), where
he directs projects devising new
forms of digital text, developing systems for cre-
ative use of mobile technology, and using virtual
environments to assist Aboriginal communities in
communicating cultural histories. He is currently an
associate professor of computation arts at
Concordia University, Montreal.