Due to its highly performative and participatory nature, works of African orature can be challenging to document or recreate in legacy media formats such as text or video. Prior studies that explore emerging technologies within the context of interactive storytelling and animation have emphasized application in education, training and healthcare and tend to employ Western-centric models of narratology. Not much has been done to determine how new and emerging tools can be applied to reflect the unique elements of African orature. The research explored numerous approaches for the digital mediation of African Orature to address this problem. This example (prototype) entails a 3D animated character who interacts with an audience via the three semiotic channels present in live storytelling session: the visual, verbal and non-verbal channels which facilitate the multimodal exchange (verbal and non-verbal) between the audience and the storyteller.
“Sigana: Tales of Lawino” explores the digital mediation of works of African Orature. This first storytelling session contains three short tales, interspersed with proverbs and riddles. The VR experience simulates immersion in a live and interactive storytelling session. As these example stories are drawn from the Luo community of Kenya, they are situated in and around an authentic re-creation of a traditional Luo homestead.
Lawino, our storyteller, along with a small supporting cast acknowledge your presence and dynamically interact with you in the storytelling session. Furthermore, as you watch the unfolding story, you are able to participate as an audience member and interact with your immediate environment in a manner similar to a live storytelling session. Such interactions will take the form of cultural rituals around storytelling as well as appropriate activities enabled by the affordances of VR. Active participation, or lack thereof, will not hinder the progression of the story, although the other characters in the scene will encourage you to play along and respond to your actions.
We aim at creating dynamic and immersive storytelling experiences with virtual humans that mimic human storytellers in Virtual Reality, to conserve oral traditions of storytelling. In addition to digitizing these stories using new and emerging technologies, we further seek to build a body of motion capture recordings of nonverbal interactions including conversational gestures and dance, as well as digital assets based on actual historical physical artefacts.
A live storytelling session where two storytellers tell a story about storytelling. Whew... In practical terms, we will discuss and share the challenges and opportunities that technology has presented in regard to interactive, dynamic storytelling, via way of an allegory where a woman is tasked by the spirits to create a replacement for herself.
With the twin focuses of our session being African storytelling traditions and interactive technology we decided that a fun, engaging way to show this (rather than just tell) is to recreate something similar to an actual storytelling session. To do this we will have two presenters on stage. One will be wearing a simple motion capture setup that controls a virtual avatar displayed either beside or above/behind the other presenter. Together, they will tell a tale about a storyteller who seeks guidance from the spirits while on a quest to replace herself with a simulacrum of a virtual storyteller. Interspersed through the narrative the two presenters will actively acknowledge and converse directly with the audience by asking them questions, seeking their input, encouraging them to speak with each other, etc. The intention is to demonstrate by example the concepts being discussed, while also using extensive visuals to avoid confusing or boring the audience with overtly technical or complicated detail. Depending on the extent and vigor of the discussion, after the story is concluded an open forum can fill any remaining time.
Recent screening at Freiburger Filmforum in Nairobi
Zamani Yajayo from the Swahili words zamani (the past) and yajayo (that which is to come); is a series of animated interviews that explores Kenyans imagination of the country in fifty years. It is an attempt to stir thoughtful speculation on an array of ideas, cultural trends, societal norms, political perspectives, social commentary and individual philosophies from the perspective of everyday Kenyans with the intent of retrospection in years to come. Each story is derived from an interview and visualized in its own distinct style with the hope that aesthetics can further an audience’s understanding of the issues raised in the narrative.
Melisa Achoko Allela is an Interactive Media Lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya, Department of Design and Creative Media where is she is also enrolled as a PhD student. She also dabbles as an illustrator, animator, researcher and eLearning specialist. Her creative work explores the convergence of experimental animation and emerging technologies in storytelling. Her current focus is on how such technologies can be used to digitize works of African Orature and therefore contribute to the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage.