This talk will present the origins and ongoing mahi of Vailahi Vailahi's ‘Aahiga o Muna’ (House of Words), a postgraduate research project completed in 2024, addressing the climate emergency facing Tuvalu and a wide range of similarly situated Pacific islands.
Tuvalu, including the island of Nanumea, faces the existential threat of rising sea levels, which endangers both physical landscapes and cultural heritage. In 2022 Tuvaluan Minister Simon Kofe announced that Tuvalu will become the First Digital Nation: that it would digitally recreate its land, archive its rich history and culture, and move all governmental functions into a digital space.
Vailahi traveled to his ancestral land on the atoll of Nanumea, to capture and create digital material such as 3D scans, drone footage, and photogrammetry, in addition to conducting interviews with elders in order to gain deeper insight into the traditional significance of the sites and the oral histories and traditions associated with Nanumea.
Our presentation further contextualizes this mahi in terms of the impact a single person may have on cultural preservation using contemporary digital methods, while contrasting this with the complexity that the proposed Tuvaluan 'metaverse' projects represents.
Walter Langelaar is an artist/academic whose work in media arts and computational design questions our digitally networked cultures and infrastructure through artistic critique in varying dimensions, such as sculpture, installation, online performance and critical intervention.
Walter chairs the Aotearoa Digital Arts (ADA) Network, and is the coordinator of the Data.Mine research lab, as well as curator/producer for pr10r.art gallery.
Vailahi Vailahi is a postgraduate design student of Tuvaluan heritage seeking to address the urgent need to preserve culturally significant sites, in context of current climate emergencies, through high-tech digital methods such as photogrammetry, 3D laser scanning and VR technologies, along with the traditions and histories the sites represent.