TIMeR Audiowalk: Stories of Land, River and Sky

BACKGROUND: This interdisciplinary research merges Indigenous studies, audio-visual media and pervasive game design. In “Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing” (2011), Bell and Dourish expand understandings of pervasive media to recognise the role of culture in shaping space, including Indigenous ways of knowing the world. However, scholarship in games has yet to address the dangers inherent in recolonising digital space and few postcolonial scholars have explored how social relations reproduce spatial hierarchies. Our research connects N’arweet Carolyn Briggs Boonwurrung knowledge with urban play and audiovisual storytelling, situating players within a hybrid experience of place. CONTRIBUTION: In uncovering alternate and pre-settlement cartographies of place, “TiMER audiowalk” brings new questions of locality and subject-position into play through locative, games and audiovisual technologies. As a custodial authority on Boonwurrung places, N’Arweet Aunty Carolyn’s contribution grounds this project in the knowledge systems necessary to invite participants to engage with Indigenous stories of land, river and sky. Guntarik negotiated this cultural knowledge, recontextualising it within the audio recordings. Davies played a curatorial role and conducted field research to identify suitable locations. Innocent designed the game and mobile app connecting knowledge and place. Collectively, their research demonstrates enduring and expansive understandings of place within Indigenous culture and the virtual projections of space delivered on mobile interfaces in pervasive game design.  SIGNIFICANCE: The national and international potential of the project outcomes contain the specific target of reconciliation and relationship building. The work was launched as part of an industry facing forum (Engaging for Impact 2019 at RMIT), which brought together local and international leaders across industry, research and innovation. The project was Highly Commended in the Benefitting Society category of the 2020 Green Gown Awards.