Taien Ng-Chan is a writer and media artist whose research explores locative media art and futurist imaginings of everyday life through immersive cinema. She teaches in Cinema and Media Arts at York University. (Full bio: https://soyfishmedia.com/index.html)

Parkway Forest Time-Machines is a community project that introduces settler and Indigenous youth participants to immersive media production and world-building techniques, with which to create new narrative spaces. The concept of place-based storytelling, manifested through two media time-machines, is unique in its interlinked use of geo-located mobile media and site-specific interactive dome installation.

Toronto’s Parkway Forest community centre provides an evocative site for this project featuring under-represented voices of diverse youth. In August 2022, our team will hold a participatory arts project tailored for the site of Parkway Forest that aims to put immersive media tools (eg. 360 video, photogrammetry) in the hands of youth from the neighbourhood and Indigenous youth from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, brought together to create stories about past, present and future imaginaries through two “time-machine” devices.

The first time-machine will be a map application that shows where augmented reality stories are located and viewable on a smartphone while walking through the park. The use of such site-specific media extends the layers of meaning that make up places. The second time-machine will be an immersive 3metre projection dome installation (presented at the community centre and then at the reserve) that weaves together an interactive time-travel experience, which spectators can control through their body movements (using Kinect sensors).

The maps, stories and media from the workshops will be combined and exhibited through the “time-machines” that allow time-travel through these multiple views of a single place, and push the creative applications of Extended Reality (XR) and community engagement. Partners include Toasterlab and Peripheral Visions Lab, with assistance from Emmanuel Albano and Christina Dovolis. (10 minutes)