“Why world-building? Because it allows us to dream at the scale of our longing. But perhaps, more importantly, worldbuilding invokes a speculative practice. Through this…we take our…longings and weave community agreements that allow us to perform a future that hasn’t happened yet but must. Right now.” –Ayana Zaire Cotton
“How do we speak our visionary worlds into being? Naming our experiences, especially when the words do not yet exist, can be a powerful act of world-building.” –Polina Lobanova
The above quotes formed the departure point for our final public history talk of the year, titled “Digital Tools for World-Building.” As we think about the violent collapse of the current worlds that we are living in, we find ourselves in a place where we as human beings and as cultural practitioners are being tasked with the compelling and necessary work of dreaming and thinking and creating the kinds of worlds that we want to exist in. Our guest for this sixth edition was Femi Johnson, a filmmaker, digital heritage specialist, and philosopher passionate about integrating African culture into the fabric of emerging technologies.
The session began with Femi discussing how language is an inherent part of world-building. Presenting three examples, the Vai script of Liberia, Meroitic script, and a diagram breaking down the evolution of Afro-Asiatic languages found in the Horn of Africa, he shared how understanding written script and its relationship to technologies forms a basis of his work at the MOWAA digital lab. He shared how there is still much to be done regarding the incorporation of African script in machine learning but that this is a pathway that should be undertaken as we seek to create and develop tools to translate our pasts into the futures that we would like to see. Language does indeed shape our realities and the worlds that we are calling in for ourselves a statement echoed in bell hook’s essay on the power of language in which she states: “When I need to say words that do more than simply mirror or address the dominant reality, I speak…we make our words a counter-hegemonic speech, liberating ourselves in language.”
“I don’t like to frame history through a colonial lens because that’s not what Africa is.” –Femi Johnson
Whilst speaking about the projects he is working on at MOWAA Femi was deliberate about emphasising how important it is to be deliberate about how we talk about African history. He took us through the focus areas they at MOWAA centre on when planning to digitise a heritage project. Considering the context of the project was a key element in this process. This consists of looking at the sustainability of the work, considering the thoughts and opinions of the stakeholders and community members this project would be taking place within, thinking through the intended impact the project would have on subsequent generations, and figuring out what kinds of technology would be best suited to actualising the project.
“How are digital tools transforming how practitioners and audiences document?” –Femi Johnson
Femi walked us through how they, as the MOWAA digitisation team, used photogrammetry in the The Plaque Corpus a digitisation project which sought to create a cohesive story surrounding the history of the Benin kingdom as enshrined in their bronze plaques. Within this project they visited different institutions, digitised the plaques, and recreated the ancient audience hall in which they were housed. They then held an event in which they invited schools and collaborated with artists to host interactive sessions inviting their community to engage with the information that they were able to gather as well as generate new knowledge surrounding the bronze plaques. By sharing what went into making this project a reality, he answered his question in that we saw that digital tools – when used with care, with intention, and with the goal of creating a community-centred approach to making history alive and deeply personal – have the power to transform the ways in we see ourselves, our pasts, our presents, and the ways in which we want to see ourselves in the future.
Watch the Full Conversation here:
Find the full conversation here, complete with some brilliant questions that were asked by members of our community.
Here are some relevant links as well as some projects (shared in this talk by Femi) that are centred on African histories and incorporate both digital tools with a world-building view:
Similar projects:
