The Aboriginal dreaming meets virtual reality

![CDATA[A recent study supports the claim that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest continuous living culture on the planet ( Science, 2011), their being directly descended from the first people to leave Africa up to 75,000 years ago. Aborigines developed a rich culture involving custom, lore, and value systems based on the sustainability of their spiritual connection, belonging, obligation, and responsibility to care for their land, their people, and their environment (Andrews et al., 2006). Knowledge of this fascinating culture is still strong within Aboriginal communities and has adapted to live in two worlds, which in part is due to the recent radical change in lives of Australian Aborigines, the arrival of British colonists in the 18th century, and consequent European domination of the Australian continent. Since then, the relationship between the original Aboriginal population and more recent arrivals changed from initial curiosity, through mutual aversion, to ignorance. In recent years, both parties are trying to improve this unfortunate situation by dealing with consequences of historical actions and better understanding each other’s cultures. Various initiatives aim to explore and preserve the oldest surviving culture in the world and to disseminate it to the broader Australian population. These efforts include developing First Peoples perspectives in mainstream institutions. Other resources on this matter include organisational web pages, multimedia, and digital archives. The Aboriginal connection with the world is hard to capture, since time—particularly the dreaming or dreamtime—is difficult to express in static forms of presentation. This is where interactive workshops and focus groups can have a profound impact on the way content is consumed. Non-interactive multimedia, such as movies and videos, are a viable substitute, but their creation is expensive and, once made, the content becomes static and unchangeable. Carefully crafted web pages can combine both experiences, using multimedia for presentation and also allowing feedback from presenters. Yet web pages usually provide content for already interested parties rather than attracting a new public. The main attraction of today is modern technology, enhanced with artificial intelligence, interactive multimedia, games, and virtual reality (VR). Currently, the VR hardware price has dropped down to $8 for Google Cardboard and $199 for Samsung VR, becoming available to the wide public. Computer games and virtual reality combine the interactive possibilities of workshops with multimedia. It allows us to capture and simulate the transient nature of First Peoples culture, the dreamtime, and to present these from various perspectives, either as an observer or a direct participant. Therefore, in our project, we focus on creating an immersive computer simulation, using a computer games approach and virtual reality, focusing on various aspects of life and events that have occurred throughout the history of aboriginal tribes living in Australia.]]