“‘What have you left behind?’: stories of nomads by nomads” presented by Mota

Symposium:

• ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2009:  

• Positioning local and global transactions

• ‘What have you left behind?’: stories of nomads by nomads

• Mariana Araujo Mota

Venue(s):

• Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland

• Abstract

  ‘What have you left behind?’ is an interactive media Masters project that focuses on individuals rather than their nationalities, with the aim to break the concept of cultural national borders and to show that we all could be considered as nomads for we are in constant movement and leave things behind.

  This is a collaborative project with the audience generating the content which was applied to different kinds of media, both digital and analogue: real notebooks were sent to different parts of the world to collect testimonies from people; a blog documented the whole process of development and made the communication between the participants and myself possible; and the final website collects testimonies and presents a conclusive ‘nomads map’. Such constant exchange, between the physical and the virtual, has been an important aspect of this project. Real notebooks, the blog, and the website with a tactile aesthetic (based on paper and a hand-made layout) reinforces this aspect.

  This paper aims to describe the process and outcomes and to discuss the authorial decisions made along the way, in order to consider ways of representing ideas about identity and belonging in a globalised and digital world.

• [View Full Paper/Presentation]

Category:

• Paper