The themes of language, value and communicating across difference is so rich in Vanuatu - practically and philosophically.
Part of this collaboration is a creative collaboration exploring sacred materiality.
Some of these riches are documented in the Traditional Money Banks Project from the early-mid 2000s. The Traditional Money Banks Project was designed to establish and promote customary practices that would allow people who are involved in the production of various forms of traditional wealth to continue producing such wealth while those who are primarily involved in the cash economy can have access to the traditional valuables needed for ceremonial activities. Through this project, sufficient data on traditional money banking mechanisms and local communities demanding maintenance and revitalization of their traditional money systems was collected. Local populations were actively involved in the project; traditional money bank systems were established in many islands in Vanuatu, providing them with infrastructure materials necessary to establish traditional money banks. The project also resulted in the Vanuatu Government declaring “the Year of Traditional Economy 2007” (and then again in 2008)so as to ensure the importance of traditional economy for self-reliance and sustainable development.
Multiple forms of alternative money have existed across this archipelego that has the greatest diversity of language on earth. Shell money and the potential to have alternative economies based on meaningful exchange is explored through making. In fact British theatre director Ken Campbell felt this potential and campaigned for Bislama - the pidgin language of Vanuatu - to become the lingua franca for global citizens after taking a Shakespearean production of Macbeth to the islands.
One way to prototype / test through performance / explore plans for value and networks is to make a sacred object and inscribe it with value and release it. Tracey Benson's carved runes show how the material can inscribe communication and value. And Shelley Darling's Water Filter delivery and network of Water stewards reveals how a network can grow that supports ceremony with water.
Loading a precious cargo of media - immersive film and immersive audio on a raspberry pi - and embedding it in a natural object, a shell or a sea-worn coconut shell, combining craft and weaving of the pandanus mat to involve the media. A floating object that can make a voyage is especially interesting as we can send it out on the currents, like a message in a bottle and track the currents by GPS where it ends up. Creating an object embedded with meaning and culture and beauty to explore the value that rises from the waters, the connective flows, creativity, value, women’s work and love is a place to start. The object can combine design, craft, song, 360, poetry and instructions for holding ritual with the moon.
References
A creative project on a memory stick - see this project - http://hughestom.com/portfolio/optophono-long-for-this-world/
Useful links:
Optophono as a potential publisher for a physical object that has digital embedding: https://vimeo.com/100442300
Physical computing https://dynamicland.org/
Embedding cultural media in physical objects “People in IT” who ran Fiji Pi, running three Rasberry Jams in rural Fiji, working in village centres with no internet and little electricity are interested.