Diné artist Akilah Martinez calls herself a creative technologist and uses extended reality to incorporate her Indigenous culture and language into her art. She will give an artist talk in Santa Fe on Thursday at the School for Advanced Research and said her passion for video art stemmed from her family.
AKILAH MARTINEZ: I constantly witnessed my grandparents having to watch TV programming that was only offered in English and they were only Diné Bizaad speakers. So I told myself, someday I'm going to create content that they can understand.
I had been asked to be part of a video called “It's Not Free”, and I was the main actress, and speaking Diné Bizaad, and wore kind of like modern Navajo fashion imagery in there. And I showed it to my grandma, who was probably about 96 years old at that time, and she absolutely loved it. She wanted to re-watch it over and over again. And that really was an emotional moment for me, because ever since I was a little girl, I was trying to produce something like that that she can enjoy. But then also, it hit home when I realized that she was about 96 years old, when she first saw her first motion picture in Diné Bizaad.
KUNM: When did the idea of fusing together both traditional language and culture into video art come to be?
MARTINEZ: I would say that a lot of my ideology is kind of really rooted in the glittering world, this concept of the Navajo creation story prophesizing that we will one day as Diné, be surrounded by worlds full of outside influence, including technology. And in that world, it was prophesized that we would eventually lose our language and our culture. And I feel like, as my artist name that I've chosen, Glittering World Girl, (Nohokáá' Disxǫs Ch'kęęh) I just really feel like mixing the two, language and culture futurism with technology or video art, can be really powerful in like, sustaining and revitalizing our language and culture.
KUNM: For those that aren't up to date on all things tech, can you define what augmented reality is and the broader definition of extended reality?
MARTINEZ: So extended reality is an umbrella term for augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality, and so these I specialize in augmented reality, which is where we're able to superimpose digital information on top of the physical reality.
KUNM: What does augmented reality create that other traditional art forms can't?
MARTINEZ: I think that one of the really good ways to approach this, is really letting our imagination go wild with an augmented reality and allowing things that are not physically possible to happen within AR to happen within, like the immersive design. That's another aspect of it is that the design within augmented reality is totally immersive. It could be like your whole 360 environment. What I really want to lean in more towards is like, really, like flexing the imagination and really making the things that are not physically possible happen within augmented reality.
KUNM: With your projects, do you feel that it's challenging this common stereotype that Indigenous people are placed in the past as relics?
MARTINEZ: For sure. I really love this question because with the film industry, that started as a one singular narrative where a group of people had the decision making over creating stereotypes, over creating the narratives for other people and for us Native Americans, that really created that image of the dying Indian, the drunk Indian, the savage, you know? So I feel like those kinds of narratives were really harmful, and it shows that how media has a strong power to dictate how the world perceives a group of people. With the XR industry, no one really owns the storytelling right now. There's a very broad amount of cultures within the XR industry who are developing XR experiences right now, and they're able to own their own storytelling.
KUNM: How are you redesigning the way language and culture is taught or seen through XR?
MARTINEZ: So my approach is that I have connected with several immersion schools throughout the Navajo Nation, just talking to them about, how can we indigenize educational experiences for them and creating these immersive experiences for them through augmented reality as well. And they're all for it. So I kind of think about the next generation, but then I also like to think multi generationally, including the elders, including the storytellers, the language holders, either that's having them be a cultural consultant, a language consultant, or even recording their voices and putting it into this medium, so there's different ways. And then I feel like my project Diné Yéigo, it's really about the very first basics of language, learning how to say hello, how to say some fruits, how to count to 10. And it's really designed really cute, and it's kind of generated, geared towards a younger generation, or just people who are very early on in beginning their journey to language learning the Navajo language.
Martinez’s talk takes place Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in person at the School for Advanced Research, and it will also be streamed live. Find out more and register here.
Support for this coverage comes from the Thornburg Foundation.
