Virtual Songlines: using new technology to recreate a vanished past

But first a follow-on of sorts from our program last week on the use of virtual reality for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.

Our first guest today is a fellow named Brett Leavy, and he also has a fascination with using virtual worlds for a higher social purpose.

Virtual Songlines video: Your journey begins on the southernmost meander of the Brisbane River, starting in an old and tall gum forest. Its trees grow right to the river's edge. Fulfil the tasks, follow the role and responsibilities of a traditional custodial.

Brett Leavy: Virtual Songlines is the knowledge, the culture, the arts, the language, the law and customs of Indigenous people. Basically that's actually the definition of Songlines. Virtual Songlines is a recreation of that using new media technologies, computer technologies.

Antony Funnell: Since 1997, Brett has been working on perfecting what's now become his Virtual Songlines software. It's an immersive audio-visual environment that shows the viewer an image of Australia prior to European settlement. With a smile, Brett calls himself a time-traveller.

Now, the central idea of Virtual Songlines is to use modern virtual reality technology not just to illustrate the past, but to recreate it. And the representation he presents is one that mimics an online game, where a player is given the avatar of an Indigenous Australian and is then able to move that avatar through a virtual space that replicates the Australia of the past.

And at various points along the journey, a player is then given tasks to do, like hunting a kangaroo or gathering firewood, for example.

But the most impressive thing about Virtual Songlines is its historic, topographic and cultural detail.

Virtual Songlines video: Follow the northern path, it will take you to a place we call [Karilbah 3:02], it's a pocket of rainforest palms, staghorns, elkhorns, orchids, creepers and the dangling vines. You'll visit it later, you'll be asked to go there to collect things like twine, fibre, bark, eggs, native plums…

Antony Funnell: How accurate is the information that the player has when they are using their avatar and they are moving through that space?

Brett Leavy: Well, we try to make it as authentic as possible, so as accurate as we can possibly make it with what we know of what it was like then. So if we've got any historical detail about soil maps, that gives us a chance to then place the vegetation exactly where we feel it was at the time. We know from vegetation studies what various vegetation types were like, and then we can reproduce those into this space where they were. That's one part of it.

Next, we know what the meanders of the rivers were and where the placement of those rivers were, we can replace those where they were filled in or taken over, including the swamps and the other locations, and then furthermore we can then put the animals in as we know they would have been in those areas. Maybe now they are not here but at the time they were frequenting all these spaces. For example, Kangaroo Point was called Kangaroo Point because there was a lot of kangaroos there when they first sailed up that river, and they were there for quite a while until such time as that place became farms supporting early settlement.

Antony Funnell: And importantly with what you've got here, with Virtual Songlines, the person playing the game not only gets an idea of what a part of Australia would have looked like before European settlement, but it's very much location-based, isn't it. The part of Australia they experience is the part of Australia that they are standing in as they are playing the game.

Brett Leavy: That's it, and that's exactly what I'd like to try to achieve. I've tried to work with a lot of key cultural heritage organisations, cultural organisations, and if we can get an iteration of this at their spaces, then that's a very good start to respect the deep connection of Indigenous people to that place.

I'll say it like this; many times we go to an event and we see a welcome to country, respecting the past, the traditional owners of the past, the elders of the past and present, and then of course a meeting goes on. I think a better way would be to actually show people what it was like at that space, at that time, as it was, and that would showcase that deep connection I think far better than a few accolades.

Antony Funnell: What does this kind of approach give somebody? What sort of extra knowledge does it give them about Indigenous culture and also what the environment was like before European settlement in Australia that museums or books or other forms of media don't give them at the moment?

Brett Leavy: Well, I'd say it's simply being that most of the stuff you are seeing is passive. You're an observer, you're probably reading, you're watching an old image, you're trying to picture what it's like to be there. It's like my old grandfather saying to me, 'When you want to go back to country, close your eyes and it'll take you there.' And if you've been there, that's important. So what we are saying here is we know there's concrete covering cultural sites, this is your chance to actually see that, to be in it and to move through it and have it surrounding you front and back. It's just the next medium I believe. I mean, interactive virtual environments is tantamount or comparable to a book, to a film, to an image. But we are just trying to bring this stuff to life.

Antony Funnell: As should be obvious, making a virtual environment that tries to as accurately as possible replicate the past terrain and vegetation of a specific geographic site is time consuming indeed.

Brett Leavy has already managed to recreate a large section of inner Sydney which he calls Virtual Warrane, and a large portion of inner Brisbane which he calls Virtual Meanjin. The idea from here is to get cultural institutions and organisations all across Australia to commission a Virtual Songlines experience for their own geographic area.

One of those who's shown initial interest is the Brisbane City Council. Emily Murphy is the coordinator for a council program called Gathering, which seeks to provide a weekly public display of Indigenous art and culture in the city's busy pedestrian shopping mall.

Emily Murphy: For me, when I saw the Virtual Warrane, which is the name for Sydney Harbour, so this was a prototype two years ago, when he showed me that then I was absolutely enamoured and got goosebumps around the idea of being able to step back in time, and to be able to see the flora and the fauna and the sites of the area of Sydney, and now here, Meanjin, of the area of Brisbane City as it was pre-white-settlement, to be able to see the integrity around the sites and the trails and the flora and fauna and the animals he has kind of created with his mapping through a whole mass of research, and quite frankly an incredible injection of passion.

Antony Funnell: And what do you think people get out of it? I mean, it's interesting, it's very well put together. What do you think they take away from it?

Emily Murphy: For me and from watching people who have interacted with the program, it is that kind of amazement of walking on country that is now bricks and mortar but was then incredible scrubland or mangrove, whatever the topography was then. I have seen aunts and uncles, elders, sit down and be able to navigate their way through country and them crying. And I guess the way that they have been able to interact with the program and get this sense of self and space and place, it really is grounding.

I have seen children be able to then sit with their grandparents and learn language around what these particular flora and fauna were or what these acts were and artefacts were, and that cultural sharing that is something that is very, very modern but also translates to something that is very, very ancient.

Virtual Songlines video: Look, listen and learn knowledge passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial. This latest iteration uses advanced computer software and hardware technologies to provide a more realistic immersive heritage experience.

Brett Leavy: I've shown this to thousands of Indigenous people to get their feedback. Family are chuffed as anything and saying why don't I do our country. Non-Indigenous people want to verify its truth and its information and I suppose deconstruct it. Indigenous people I think see a deeper connection and spirituality, and it triggers a lot of conversations. Everybody sees it differently. I want people to be there really, to give them a chance to explore the historically accurate places and basically empathise with what was like to be an Aboriginal person living in this space before there was any settlement encroaching upon that.

Antony Funnell: Brett Leavy from the company Ochre Bilby, and his Virtual Songlines immersive heritage environment.

This is Future Tense, I'm Antony Funnell, new ideas, new approaches, new technologies, the edge of change.