Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality
Mary Bunch, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Caitlin Fisher
Emerging from the Water
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch
Emerging from the Water is a Series of three Virtual Reality and Dome Projection works that instantiates the theory of mnidoo worlding, a phenomenological extrapolation of relational ontologies shared by many Indigenous peoples of the Americas. That is, existence is comprised of an entanglement of animate, dynamic potencies, known as manidou or mnidoo in Anishinaabemowin. In this non- linear story, viewers explore a microscopic universe, contained in a drop of water.
Emerging from the Water: Beta
Donning a vr headset, participants pass through a threshold of flying salmon, created by Shelby Payocyoc to find themselves in a watery universe with eight ‘story planets’ comprised microscopic water organisms. Both an artwork and a digital gallery, two spheres are ‘story planets’ created by collaborating artists. The first is a Syilx version of the Turtle Island creation story by Mariel Belanger (Syilx). The second is the ‘Water is Alive’ rap by Jamaican-Canadian hip hip artist Hodari Newtown, a collaboration with Cree hydrobiologist Lydia Johnson, featuring a poem in Anishinaabemowin, written and performed by Elder Mona Stonefish. Created in Mozilla Hubs, this networked virtual reality work was the first sketch for this series, created for the exhibition Re[new]All 2021: A Sensorium exhibition for The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), curated by Melanie Wilmink, Ian Garrett and Joel Ong.
Gathering
This dome projection re-works and develops the stories created in Emerging from the Water in UnReal Engine and Touch Designer for increased production values and new interface. Once again featuring a world within a drop of water created by Manning and Bunch, as well as Belanger’s Syilx creation story, and the “Water is Alive Rap” Newtown, Johnson, and Stonefish, “an additional story by Mary Bunch titled “Jacques Cartier’s Ballast” is added, and a new soundscape is introduced. UnReal build by Michaela Pnacekova, Unreal Cinematography and Projection Mapping with TouchDesigner by Christina Dovalis.
Resonance
Ecstatic Ethics
This monograph in progress articulates a shift in contemporary queer movements from individualized, neoliberal forms of freedom, to what Dr. Bunch terms ‘ecstatic freedom,’ an emancipatory concept based on an ethics of relationality and solidarity, that is founded in critical disability, queer and decolonial frameworks.
Co-Habite Wakefield
Co-created by Mary Bunch, lee williams boudakian, Lia Tarachansky, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Co-Habite Wakefield, this collaborative, multi-platform documentary features a unique VR visualization methodology as well as 360 and 2D camera vision to follow a grassroots collective as they envision and create an intergenerational, affordable and sustainable co-housing cooperative in Wakefield Quebec.