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Paper short abstract:

As Martu filmmaker Curtis Taylor says, 'We are dreaming too, like the old people. We are dreaming with new technology.' Anangu-initiated exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters-Kungkarangalpa/Minyipuru with immersive experiences in the world's first high-resolution traveling Dome theatre.

Paper long abstract:

The 7m Dome theatre is animated by photogrammetry which projects 360-degree vision of ancient renderings in Walinynga (Cave Hill) in the APY Lands, the only Seven Sisters rock art of its kind. All who lie beneath the Dome are transported and immersed in its intricate 3400-year old images. Paintings, voice and animations track the sisters across the western and central deserts. Snakes slither, appear and disappear; boulders come to life and the eyes of the Sister's relentless pursuer blink in ever-watchfulness, while the quirky tjanpi Sisters twirl and swirl in playful readiness.

The exhibition responded to an urgent plea echoed by David Miller (2010), that 'the songlines have all been broken up' and Anangu needed 'help to put them back together.' How communities use museums rather than how museums use communities defined the curatorial approach, resulting in a curatorium which bought together knowledge holders from Indigenous and western spheres. Cultural, curatorial and anthro/archaeological knowledges were seen as equally relevant.

Apart from the preservation of sites along the Seven Sisters songlines, the trans-generational relaying of knowledge was of acute concern to elders, resulting in an archive for the next generation. New technologies make culture cool. As Mary Louise Pratt says, 'the colonised might not control what emanates from the dominant culture' but they can fashion it to their own purposes and shape it through their encounters. And they did!

Co-presented by Inawinytji Williamson, senior law woman and a custodian of the Seven Sisters songlines.