On Time Travel

A sci-fi worldbuilding session held at and presented by YYZ Artists’ Outlet in Toronto, on Saturday May 27th, 2017 1 – 4PM.

Jasmin Winter is a graduate student pursuing the Master's in Development Practice program at the University of Winnipeg. Her research has investigated self-determining models of technological development in different communities, more recently including Indigenous engagements with and within the virtual landscapes of video games and virtual reality. To complete her program, Jasmin is joining the Initiative for Indigenous Futures team in Montreal for a summer field placement.

Rayna Slobodian is an M.Ed. Candidate at York University and also holds an Honours B.A. in Anthropology. She has been published in Acta Astronautica for her research on the ethics of space colonization and she was also published in York’s journal Contingent Horizons for her ethnographic work on star parties and amateur astronomers. Rayna is also a volunteer for the Toronto Homeless Memorial Network. Her areas of study include Outer Space Culture, Classism and Stigma, Death Studies and Social Psychology. She is also a contributor at The Geek Anthropologist.

AbTeC is a network of academics, artists and technologists whose goal is to define and share conceptual and practical tools that will allow us to create new, Aboriginally-determined territories within the web-pages, online games, and virtual environments that we call cyberspace. Our multi-faceted effort will include a storytelling series, an ongoing gamesnight, a modding workshop, Machinima, and performance art.

Our main objective is to identify and implement methods by which Aboriginal people can use new media technologies to complement our cultures. In other words, how can we use the exciting new tools now available on the personal computer to empower Native people, especially our youth, to both preserve and produce our knowledge, culture and language in this highly technological society? AbTeC's roots lie with a project called CyberPowWow, a pioneering on-line gallery and chat space for contemporary Aboriginal art. It was through CyberPowWow that we realized that, even on the Internet, Native people need a self-determined place to call home.

Live Notes from Rayna Slobodian's presentation

- outer space to the self - macro to micro
- mars colonization! how we talk about moving off of earth and to another planet
- this future imagining ignores the negative values of humanity itself
- see the Mars One website
- looking to the future while ignoring the past
- the practical risks of moving to mars (biological risks let alone the psychological ones)
- The rush to leave earth!! WUT?!
- the language of: "colonize or we will stagnate and die" --> fear as a motivation for the future
- representations of the future and mars- everyone looks the same
- how Mars One prepares for this colonization (an awareness of diversity but only sort of)
- a giving up of what we have on this planet - escaping this to start anew
- utopias - there is a very Puritan sense about it (following the colonization of North America)
- what will we bring with us when we go?
- humans have a tendency to 'fuck things up!'
- the selling of the 'dream' - how ideas of the future might be marketed in creative ways (without repeating problems of the past)
- the colonial expansionist narrative (with re: to resources etc)
- pop culture: movies, video games, tv - how we imagine traveling across time
- space tech: "3D for MD" - 3D printing for the future - the tech could be useful now as well (ex: for rural communities)
- the self: anti-aging wrinkle cream - "immortalists" - fear of death dominates (the language around anti-aging creams etc - they use science as a tool to give us the sense of being true; target our fears of aging and getting old)

questions from Rayna's presentation:
- could we understand a future time? (if we time traveled to the future would we be able to understand it?)
- what effect will future time have on me, or on my identity?
- why do we look to the future in outer space?
- What would our society look like in the future?
- Would future worlds be "better" than our own, or would they just change form?

discussion:
- maybe architectural spaces will be familiar (consider those who return to society after incarceration)
- capitalism & colonialism - how might time travel/space travel function outside of capitalism? and colonialism? (this is what is appealing about sci fi and speculative fictions)
- the space for indigenous perspectives

questions from Jasmin's presentation:
- what do 'anniversaries' tell us about our worldviews of time and space? (ex: Canada's 150)

some key points:
- virtual reality as solution for imagining the future/time travel
- storytelling and speculative fiction as tool for imagining different types of futures/time travel (creation stories)

Live Notes from Jasmin Winter's presentation

- Words Before All Else
- Machinima - as tool
- IIF - imagining selves and Indigenous peoples in futures
- the interconnectiveness of the past/present/future - challenge western assumptions of time
- Loretta Todd's "About the Future"
- addressing colonial media (sense of timelessness - resists ability to imagine the future)
- storytelling as resistance! collective memory - traditional oral storytelling (always told retellings of past and ideas for the future)
- survivance and thrivance!
- reclaiming identity as creators not just users of new media
- strange that we resort to linearity of time when our clocks are circular!!
- Time Traveller (TM) series
- time traveller as a 'fly on the wall' - an interesting solution to visiting the past
- worldbuilding - transcends time and space (relationships to place and Indigenous land)
- place and virtual landscapes - user driven (as a tool for creating this world) - second life as another world (incidentally - SL has a massive GDP)
- what access to VR landscapes/environments means for Indigenous perspectives - new media provides space for this
- VR allows for multiple Indigenous perspectives
- the danger of seeing ANY place as terra nullius
- "she falls for ages" - Skawenatti - new work - reimagines spiritual world ("sky world")
- new creation stories - as way to have agency in the future
- tools to help imagine the future (new futures)
- what do 'anniversaries' tell us about our worldviews of time and space?
- the responsibility of supporting Indigenous futures!

How Far Into The Future Do We Want To Go?

Ideas as to how to Time Travel

Temperature

Smell

Ritual/Repetition

Sleep

Oral Culture/Storytelling

Intergenerational Knowledge & Experience as expressed through the body [trauma]

Memories as they relate to written language

Participants:
Rayna Slobodian
Jasmin Winter
Leila Timmins
SoJin Chun
Colin Harry
Jennifer Pilles
Madeliene Kattman
Cynthia L
Sarah Jane Gorlitz
Serena Lee
Christina Battle

are we developing an inability to remember because we're documenting so much?

how/when can we step outside of our linear timeline?

*by resisting capitalism!

*when we're falling asleep

Instead of going into the past to change the present perhaps we should focus on going to the future to change the present.

Workshop Documentation
Photo credit: Sarah Jane Gorlitz