Yalinguth

Background: Authors such as Frauke Behrendt and Francesca Veronesi have discussed the use of mobile applications in the creation of a sense of place and historicity. Through the mobilization of locative technologies, previously theoretical aspects of knowledge production, storage, and articulation can be practically and materially explored in ways that have been typically inaccessible. Locative technologies like GIS, or GPS or Augmented Reality, have transformed metaphors of place and its relation to knowledge. Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk (2019) has argued that Indigenous knowledge practices that foreground embodiment, place, meaning and connection have been largely resistant to Western models of knowledge which seek to expunge the “messy” aspects of specificity, in-place-ness, and uniqueness that are “baked in” to indigenous ways of knowing. Whitefella archival strategies of capture, storage, access, permission, and entitlement all serve to both distance and transform indigenous knowledge into non-representative simulacra. Contribution: Yalinguth is a large-scale locative media project that uses spatial audio, AR and movement to create a permanent installation of indigenous voices in Melbourne inner city Fitzroy. It makes a contribution by creating appropriate and useful ontologies of knowledge and historical preservation. Yalinguth brings together a huge range of stories of place, history, politics, life, love in a sonic re-inhabiting of Gertrude Street and surrounds. The wealth of important and significant indigenous stories enliven and repatriate space with the warmth and embodiment of “being there". Significance: Significantly, the project brings together existing indigenous communities throughout the creation and support of this unique project. Future work for the Yaliguth project offers proprietary software and a potential framework to re-introduce indigenous knowledge practices through the combination of grass roots community building and high-tech locative and gaming media.