I have chosen to review three forms of digital literature related to the history and culture of Melbourne in order to explore electronic texts that connect learners through multimedia interventions into the city space. Each of the texts reviewed engages audiences in a different way, creating a new topography of cultural heritage over Melbourne’s existing historical foundations.
Multimedia and immersive texts can increase audience engagement with locally situated content. Engaging audiences with audio content that is carefully considered, curated and connected to iconic avenues and laneways full of hidden histories, Museums Victoria’s Walking Through History app has established a standard of accessibility and excellence across the Gallery, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector internationally. Allowing both visitors and long-time locals insight into the development and diversity of the city, here audio technology gives voice to stories that are still alive on the streets of our city. When audiences listen, histories are heard and cultural appreciation is advanced. When focussed on reconciliation with communities whose histories have been silenced, digital literature has the power to preserve and protect the practices and principles established by Aboriginal ancestors.
Digital storytelling opens accessibility to invaluable cultural knowledge and practices of those who have been marginalised from the narratives preserved in much of the printed histories of the colonial era. As a tool facilitating Post-Colonial discourse, Digital Storytelling like that of Maree Clarke’s Ancestral Memories both preserves and propagates proper understanding of the principles and practices at the heart of a shared history. In patterning and producing recreations of key cultural materials, audiences become active participants enacting reconciliatory community relationships through enriched understanding of traditional owners and custodians of the land in Naarm. While reflecting and reconciling the relationships of the past and present, digital technologies and their integration within the GLAM sector also connect and create new networks of cultural knowledge at home within globalised futures. Embedding cutting edge immersive exhibitions within civic spaces and embracing emerging new media forms ensures that our community remains a global leader in the promotion and preservation of culture and literature.
Augmented Reality texts allow increasing accessibility to global cultural discourse, situating international exhibitions and debates within familiar civic spaces. The Royal Botanic Gardens of Melbourne’s current AR exhibition, Seeing the Invisible, utilises cutting edge technology to connect community to international cultural discourse reimagining the potentiality of public space in the 21st Century. Immersive technologies like AR exhibitions have the capability to continue to create and communicate new cultural discourse that reflect the global diversity and complexity of world cities.
Clearly, within Naarm there are already established efforts of excellence that are exemplary of the integration of digital storytelling and electronic literature to enrich and enliven a diverse and dynamic discourse at the centre of its celebrated cultural community. However, there is still great potential to continue to advance the digital transformation of the cultural narratives underpinning our unique and multicultural society. One such area of future experimentation and development would be to work towards greater collaboration and integration between cultural institutions through digital platforms, networking knowledge in new boundary spanning relationships. Additionally, there could also be research informed approaches to ensuring equity of representation and communication of diverse and multicultural narrative related to shared experience of civic spaces. Another advancement that could be incorporated would be a greater inclusion of numeracy and data in the assistance of digital storytelling, reinforcing digital literacy that is reflective of the changing informational needs and ways we share knowledge today.
As such, the digital interventions into cultural narratives reviewed reinforce and reimagine Melbourne’s identity as a “City of Literature” in the transformative digital literary environs of the 21st Century. Existing electronic literature that is engaging should continue to be promoted to preserve a participatory relationship to culture and technology that is a core asset in our most liveable city and used to reinforce cross curricular priorities of ICT, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and Sustainability in the Australian Curriculum. Equally, creators and authors engaging with culture in Naarm would be well positioned to continue to innovate and experiment with more immersive technologies which allow new members of the community to make their mark, even if in an augmented way, to a reality that is as rich and fascinating as it was to our first peoples
Personally, the text which I would most likely use in my own professional practice would be Maree Clarke’s Ancestral Memories. The multimodal as well as participatory aspects of this particular piece of digital literature allow for many points of access and collaboration, spanning the digital and more immediate realities, centering ancestral memory at the heart of cultural understanding. As part of my individual commitment towards reconciliation and promotion of Aboriginal culture in Australia adhering to protocols which identify and promote champions in First Nations communities who are using digital technology to continue and revitalise culture.