Chinuk Wawa in the Village

WSU Vancouver student Lorraine Botros recently attended a weekly discussion group in Portland, Ore., in which people practice and discuss Chinuk Wawa. Wawa is the jargon that was spoken around Fort Vancouver during the mid-1800s, allowing the more than 35 different ethnic groups living in that village just outside the fort's stockade to communicate. The local discussion group is led by Wawa language expert Evan Gardner. Botros and her CMDC 354.02 team plan to incorporate Wawa into their Fort Vancouver Mobile module under construction.

More information on Chinuk Wawa from the Oregon Encyclopedia

Here are some of the initial pilot clips that Botros, a student in the Creative Media and Digital Culture program's Digital Storytelling class this semester, shared (Thanks, Lorraine!):
House1
House edited
Chluch

And here are some other notes Lorraine shared:

Chinuk Wawa (Chinook Jargon) resources:
From Lorraine: "Evan Gardner provided me with resources to record the Chinuk Wawa phrases. He is willing to work with people to get a more complete recording in the future."
Gardner is the creator of the language game, "Where are your keys?"


A Brief Introduction to the "Where Are Your Keys?" Fluency Game from Willem Larsen on Vimeo.
He can be reached through Whereareyourkeys.org in the Contact Us section.

Another resource:
Eric Bernado, 'I am a Member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde from the Watlala Band of the Cascades of the Chinook peoples. I have a Masters in Education from the University of Oregon and am a semi-fluent speaker of Chinuk Wawa and will be teaching a community language class at Portland Community College starting in January (2011).' Learn Chinook Jargon blog.

More public domain resources for period music

Music from the Romantic period in the public domain, via MusOpen.org:

List

And Civil War big band music from the Library of Congress:

List

Fort Vancouver Mobile - A video overview

Aaron May over the past few weeks has created the video overview of the Fort Vancouver Mobile project that now adorns the top of this site. May, a FVM intern, is a talented senior in Washington State University Vancouver's Creative Media and Digital Culture program, and he will screen the final cut of this video for the CMDC Digital Storytelling class on Dec. 8.
May's mission has been to create a video to help people to understand and visualize the project, even from afar. The distinctions of mobile storytelling are difficult to describe, and, it turns out, tough to show, too. But May's vision, from my viewpoint, makes the material accessible and clear and also shows how much fun a mobile-historical experience can be. Thanks, again, Aaron!
Please let us know what you think about this video, and what questions you still have about the project. We want to answer them, and we want the development of Fort Vancouver Mobile to include input from users or potential users at all levels of creation.

Great news from iDMAa

The Fort Vancouver Mobile project was part of the WSU Vancouver display given honorable mention at the annual International Digital Media Arts Association conference earlier this month in Vancouver, B.C. Typically, iDMAa only gives one award, first place, but the judges were so impressed by the sampling from the Creative Media and Digital Culture program at WSUV, including the FVM project, that they created the honorable mention award as a way to recognize the effort. Thanks again to FVM intern Aaron May for taking the project out into the larger world and helping to bring back the glory.

Public domain music from 1800 to 1860

Found this fabulous reference list of public domain music roughly from the Fort Vancouver period:

http://www.pdmusic.org/1800s.html

While the versions here aren't always great, they do give a sense of what the song sounds like, and enough reference information to find other public domain versions.

Beta testers needed

More in-depth research on the Fort Vancouver Mobile project is planned in the next two weeks. We're looking for a few additional beta testers. If you are interested in history and open-minded about technology, and want to help, please send your contact information to: FortVancouverMobile@gmail.com, with the subject line Beta Tester. Thanks!

Fort Vancouver Mobile video intro

FVM intern Aaron May, from Washington State University Vancouver's Creative Media and Digital Culture program, has spent the past couple of weeks working on a video that helps to explain the project and illustrate it, especially for people not familiar with the fort and what we are doing.

In addition, he is taking a digital display, plus a paper handout, to the iDMAa Conference this weekend in Vancouver, B.C. (see earlier post).

This video will be part of that display, along with other strong projects representing the CMDC program. In the near future, I will get the piece posted in a more permanent and prominent spot on this page.

Thanks, Aaron! And for everyone who helped with this part of the project, including lead actor Brady Berkenmeier, the CMDC 354.02 Digital Storytelling class (providing feedback and serving as extras in the footage), Forrest Burger of RiverBend Productions (providing fort footage from The Village opening), Chief Ranger Greg Shine (an extra in the film and major supporter of the project) and Dr. Dene Grigar, who made May's internship possible.

Example of one of our plotted GPS field maps

One key step in creating a high-quality mobile interactive experience (or airrative, as I have started to call this form, because the immersive story exists entirely in the air) is to walk the physical site, really get to know it and then design a highly detailed, plotted and annotated site map, with GPS coordinates identified for each spot that the creative team might want to use. That way, say, the team wants to embed a video that relates to the Old River Road entrance at this site. It can get out this map, find that spot is identified as Node 24, then look up the accompanying annotations of coordinates and details about what already is being delivered there as well as nearby, for compositional coherence.

Animated logo - mobile version

Here is the latest version of the FVM logo and opening animation of the Fort Vancouver Mobile app, in mp4 format. Still looking for a better compression format that works with Android devices and looks good (not really impressed with the playback quality here). Suggestions? ...


FVM logo animation in mp4 from Brett Oppegaard on Vimeo.

Kanaka Twitta-graph (Twitter and telegraph inspired communication)

Here is the initial exchange at the fort, related to William Kaulehelehe's hiring. What do you think of how this turned out?