Mukurtu Interview on BBC….take a listen
My interview with Gareth Mitchell of the BBC’s Digital Planet went online today you can listen to the podcast here, it’s the third interview beginning 19 minutes in. Take a listen! digitalp_20080129-1300.mp3
I think it’s a great interview. I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out, one never know what can happen in the editing room. But I think they captured the heart of the issue and the layers of significance of the archive. I appreciated Bill Thompson’s commentary at the end as well. Bill rightly linked the responsibility and trust with which Warumungu protocols function with the same sorts of idea from a DRM standpoint. These are not opposite systems. I made the point, and Bill echoed it in his comments, that this system can give us a way to think about “control” and “access” in ways that don’t have to mean an abuse of power or “locked down” culture. Bill also wrote a piece for the BBC on DRM and used the Mukurtu archive as an example of effective DRM. Also we’ve added a “press” page to the Mukurtu website with a release about the project and related new items.
Update: looks like the online version of the Digital Planet show did a story too. They added in some of the interview that wasn’t on the radio show.
About The Author
Kim Christen
I am an Assistant Professor at Washington State University. I use this blog to keep myself writing. I blog about Australian Aboriginal politics, Indigenous issues, Indigenous new media, cultural politics, and other issues that come up. I made the icon above at Portrait Icon Maker
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Author his web sitehttp://www.kimberlychristen.com
The interview came across very well. This work of yours (and theirs) has many implications. DRM seems more elastic than commonly understood.
I assume that you’ve seen the following tools we developed in 2002-2004 with the Smithsonian NMAI and the associated publications:
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~eresearch/projects/ikm/
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~eresearch/papers/2003/IKM_software.pdf
The software is available on sourceforge at tikm.sourceforge.net
Jane,
Yes I had seen that, I cited it in a review of Ara Irititja I did for Museum Anthropology in 2006 (under my publications tab above). There seems to be a lot going on in this the area now, including NT libraries and others around Australia as well.
Hi Kim,
Great work! We’re doing another project on indigenous archives (with Beth Povinelli) for the current issue of Vectors. Such crucial issues to explore.
Best,
Tara