Fall into autumn with AbTeC

She:kon! The leaves are changing and Mont Royal provides a lovely view out the office window as everyone is busy at work.

The beginning of the new school year came with an Intro to Second Life workshop, delivered by Skawennati, Maize Longboat, and myself.  Held in collaboration with the Concordia Student Union, the workshop had 10 students attending and was held in a computer lab at the University. Over the course of two hours, the group learned the basics of the game and created their avatars. We introduced Second Life by noting that we use it to film machinima. The workshop ended with a question and answer period where participants asked about the history of AbTeC, TimeTraveller™, and about some of the finer details of machinima creation. The group was enthusiastic and great to work with!

Autumn is going to be an exciting time for AbTeC here at Concordia University. There will be an AbTeC retrospective show called Filling in the Blank Spaces at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery running from November 4 to December 2, 2017.

The exhibition-forum will show 20-plus years of programming and production from Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF). Documentation from Skins Workshops, work from Scott Benesiinaabandan, Postcommodity and selections from IIF and other projects will all be presented in the space.

There will also be workshops held at the gallery! Skawennati will lead the workshops with the help of research assistants, including myself and Maize. Intro to Second Life will provide basic knowledge of the game and website that is used for Skawennati’s machinima projects. In the second workshop, Indigenous students will work on character design. Over the last few days, we will offer Intro to Machinima demonstrations at various times. Please stay tuned for more information on our social media.

Activating AbTeC Island has been on hold as the team is busy using the space for filming the current machinima project, but keep an eye out for when we announce the return! Have some fun looking at the rich history of AbTeC and we look forward to working with those who sign up for the workshops!