Angel David Nieves and Merle Collins, 2006-07 Fellows Presentations

"Soweto '76, A Living Digital Archive"

by Angel David Nieves The aim of Soweto '76 is to develop an interactive immersive edutainment application and multimedia interface that allows users to experience a historically recreated urban environment with the support of primary and secondary archival materials. With the creation of a historically accurate environment as a platform, users will be able to assume the role of a character from the time period, and experience their reactions to actual events from their particular vantage point. It is hoped that users of Soweto '76 will act as virtual witnesses to the events of June 16, 1976–events that catalyzed the massive student uprisings against the apartheid regime. Using existing oral histories, testimonies, photographs, video footage, material objects, and sound recordings in the collections of the Hector Pieterson Museum, the work seeks to redress the uneven portrayal of the lives of Black township residents in the mainstream or "official" historical record. Soweto '76 seeks to first address the absence of accounts from those students involved in the Uprisings (1) by making these multimedia texts accessible online and (2) by providing digital tools to facilitate a comparative analysis of the competing interpretations of key events. The site undertakes the challenges of collating the experiences (or "collating the narratives") and interpretive vantage points of the various historical and contemporary actors. The vantage point of the user changes as the various forms of multimedia data are accessed on the site. These "collated narratives" will include both spatial and temporal representations of the events occurring on 16 June.

"In the Footsteps of the Old Heads: Saraka and Nation in the Caribbean"

by Merle Collins This project is an exploration of African survivals and re-creations in the Caribbean island of Grenada. Conceptualized as a multi-media project, the project aims to produce a video-recording of aspects of a harvest celebration known as the saraka, and, through research and interviews, to trace the origins of the saraka and its observation by those who feel a duty to continue it because they have inherited it from their ancestors, those whom they refer to as the "old heads". The project aims to use current cellphone technology to disseminate information regarding various elements of the saraka as one component of its interface.