Priya Bandodkar

Decolonizing the Past: Reimagining the Future is a live presentation with three recent graduates from the OCAD Digital Futures Program. The three pieces discussed explore the use of virtual reality to reimagine various themes to look at cultural and historic issues. Virtual Reality is applied to reimagine diasporic discourse, history and memory, and futurism narratives. Our Home and Haunted by Nadine Valcin is a 10-minute linear virtual reality experience, using photogrammetry and point clouds, that examines the colonial histories embedded in the names of a number of Toronto spaces. Activating Indofuturism by Priya Bandodkar envisions a largely unexplored futurism discipline for India, Indofuturism as a means for Indian people and their descendants to respond to their postcolonial world, and to present-day societal challenges in India by applying various contemporary digital media technologies. Future through Memory: Virtual Storytelling in Toronto’s Chinatowns by Lilian Leung explores a community-based approach through interactive documentary and virtual reality techniques to recreate and reimagine a Chinatown of the future and memory. The three presenters will discuss their work in a conversation moderated by Immony Men, an assistant professor at OCAD University and co-director of the Public Visualization Lab.