Earth Diver
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning & Mary Bunch
“Water, Niibii, is life… These microbial worlds, teeming with living protozoa, plankton, bacteria and algae, are mnidoo. Spirit, potency, potential, process, energy - mnidoo expresses that which is simultaneously happening and about to take place as emergent possibility.” -Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning
A diverse group of people dance in front of a projection of Resonace - a microscopic water world featuring planets made of colourful microscopic organisms. This image is from the 2023 Symposium Co-Dreaming: Improvisation toward Liberatory Worlding at Michigan State University.
Project Description
Led by Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, “Earth Diver” creates and curates virtual worlds in relation Anishinaabe land and territory. This project instantiates an interpretation of mnidoo-worlding (Manning 2017) through media arts worldmaking, in dialogue with co-Investigator Mary Bunch. Drawing from Anishinaabe creation stories , the project enters a conversation with western ontology in relation to technics of vision. Europeans have a different understanding of reality compared to the Anishinaabe, but microscopes - and now digital technology – transform the way the west thinks about essence, identity, and existence. Colonial hierarchies of knowledge prevented meaningful conversation between western optics and Indigenous relational ontologies. We return to this missed encounter, to conceptualize a relation between virtuality, in its sense as potentiality, and the Ojibwe concept of mnidoo. Upon entering a VR/ or projection space, a universe contained within a drop of water, participants glide through liquid star-filled constellations, fly around planets, and penetrate microscopic worlds, where reality expands infinitesimally. We have created three works in this series: 1. a beta virtual reality work in Mozilla Hubs, Emerging from the Water; ii. Gathering - a dome projection that incorporates student work as ‘story planets,’ iii. Resonance, a projection and virtual reality installation whose spherical videos feature our original microscopy with water samples from the St, Lawrence river.
EMERGING FROM THE WATER, 5 min. video
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch with Mona Stonefish', Mariel Belanger, Hodari Newtown, Lydia Johnson and Shelby Payocyoc.
GATHERING
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch with Mona Stonefish, Mariel Belanger, Hodari Newtown, Lydia Johnson.
This immersive world blurs the boundaries between creation and curation. Viewers explore a microscopic universe, contained in a drop of water. This universe contains six ‘storyplanets’ created from images of microscopic water organisms, and two story planets comprised of stories created by collaborating artists: a Syilx version of the Turtle Island creation story by Mariel Belanger (Syilx) and the ‘Water is Alive’ rap by Hodari Newtown, in collaboration with Cree hydrobiologist Lydia Johnson and Anishinaabe Elder Mona Stonefish. Gathering is Dome Projection that recreates Emerging from the Water: Beta in UnReal Game Engine. Cinematography and Interaction design by Christina Dovalis.
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InDigital Exhibition at ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, Toronto, October 17-29, 2023.
Bioscape Time Machine: Interactive cinema in the Dome Exhibition. Film and Media Studies Association of Canada, Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, York University, Toronto, May 29, 2023.AGYU and Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Oct 1-2, 2022.
RESONANCE
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch
A cast of Micro-organisms is drawn from the marshy shores of the St. Lawrence river, their performances captured with a video camera set in a compound microscope. Eight abstract, colourful video stories featuring these microscopic lifeforms, each with their own soundscape, are rendered spherical and placed like animated planets within a watery universe, created in Unreal Engine. The work abstractly gestures toward sacred Anishinaabe and creation stories. Unreal worldbuilding by Galit Ariel and Jorge de Olivieras. Unreal cinematography by Galit Ariel. Interaction design by Christina Dovalis.
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Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. March 15-24, 2024.
Projection with live dancers. Co-Dreaming: Improvisation toward Liberatory Worlding, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI. September 12, 2023.
More than Human, Onsite Gallery, Toronto, Feb 1- April 30, 2023.
InDigital Exhibition at ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, Toronto, October 17-29, 2023.
[Add Official selection logo from Imaginenative]
Bioscape Time Machine: Interactive cinema in the Dome Exhibition. Film and Media Studies Association of Canada, Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, York University, Toronto, May 29, 2023.
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Thank you to our partners, funders and sponsors: Native Women in the arts (NWIA), MITACS, VISTA, CREF, SSHRC, Queens, York, Media Arts Futures, and the Bodies in Translation Project.
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Manning, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii and Mary Bunch. “Decolonial Re-worlding: Potential Ecologies of the Virtual.” In Fielding, Helen and Mariana Ortega. Life in Art, Phenomenology, Aesthetics, and Identity. Indiana University Press. In Press 2024
Bunch, Mary and Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning. “Thinking Across Worlds: Pluriversal Potentiality.” PUBLIC Journal, Issue 68: Special Issue on Making Worlds in the Pluriverse. Eds. Patricio Davila, Ganaele Langlois, Renata Leitao, 2023, 9-17.
