Narratives of Creation and Space: Pilgrimage, Aboriginal and Digital

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WARNING: THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS CULTURALLY SENSITIVE MATERIAL FOR
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIGHT ISLANDER PEOPLES. CAUTION SHOULD BE
EXERCISED AS IT MENTIONS PEOPLES NAMES AND CONTAINS CLAN IMAGES FROM THE
NGARINYIN, ARANDA, WALPIRI, WIK AND PITJATJANTJARA PEOPLES.
THE DATE OF THE LAST UPDATE WAS 27TH NOVEMBER 2006
Narratives of Creation and Space:
Pilgrimage, Aboriginal, and Digital.
By James Barrett
I would like to approach digital media via brief examinations of spatial and
narrative discourse networks not often associated with the digital. This approach is meant to
suggest that digital media is a product and a producer of a dynamic realignment of cultural
assumptions globally, such as what is considered to be “narrative”. The cultural fields that I
discuss in relation to digital media are the performance of pilgrimage and some of the story
telling systems of the Australian Aboriginal nations. In relation to pilgrimage the 9th century
Buddhist stupa of Borobudur on the Indonesian island of Java is examined here as an example
of spatial hypermedia that immerses the pilgrim in a story manifest through interaction.
My use of the term ‘digital’ refers here to media systems that rely on digital
technologies. This applies to a huge array of artifacts from the mobile phone in your pocket to
the laptop or PC on your bench. The major features of digital media relevant here is the
effectiveness of the technology at constructing spatial relations in representation and the
demand of the direct involvement of users as co-creators in what is represented. In short, not
only do you press the buttons, you are also on the screen, in the story or creating the scene.
There are pragmatic rules to the uses of digital media asserted by the material structures
(hardware) and programming (software) of the media. The code used in a web page or a
computer game contains rules about how the media can used, such as how it cannot or can be
modified and adapted. Outside these rules of the material artifact there are judicial rules such

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as copyright and the social codes and practice that direct interpretation of media along certain
lines, such as the formation of genre classification.
A story carried by digital media often appears to not function according to the
uses developed under material regimes of western story telling developed particularly since
the Enlightenment. Such forms (a book, theater, an image or a recitation) address or direct a
narrative sequence towards an external reader, viewer or a listener, according to the
conventions of society and culture associated with the particular story. Tragedy, comedy,
romance, and adventure stories have been recorded and told for centuries following such a
unidirectional model of transmission. There are, however, other ways to transmit stories or
information. Within the culture of the Australian Aboriginals when a traditional story is
enacted concerning the ancestors or the spirits it is not “about” them but “of” them. The
agents who take on the roles of the characters in performing the story enmesh with the entities
they represent. The space occupied by the enactment is sacred and those witnesses to that
story are participating in the events unfolding around them (usually following an initiation
process). The bodies of those participating in the story are often inscribed in specific ways
according to established rules based on family relations and age. Songs are sung, dances
performed and images or objects displayed in which all participants have roles in the overall
story being realized. In a similar fashion stories being transmitted today using digital media
depend upon the reader-listener-viewer becoming a part of the story by entering into a
representational space and contributing to the events therein. From taking on the physical
representation of a character (e.g. as an avatar in a computer game) , to recognizing links and
knowing how to avoid dead-ends (including death) the participant drives the story along by
his or her presence and familiarity with digital media. Such a concept of narrative contradicts
much of the traditional semantic author-reader/listener relationship of the Western canon.
The ancient rite of pilgrimage has many similarities to the subjective states
found in digital mediation. The pilgrim sets out along a defined route, often in a group, toward
a physical destination that had already been absorbed into the relevant network of belief. This
was often a result of being represented in a text, as a holy place or the site of a particular event
or story. Along the way there are rituals and performances enacted, specific place visited and
practices to be observed such as wearing certain types of clothes or eating special types of
food. Pilgrimage continues to be practiced today, although it is often truncated by modern
transportation and therefore become more of an ends rather than a means as ancient
pilgrimage often took years to perform. The most famous pilgrimage that is still performed by
millions each year is the Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and El Medina. The

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pilgrimage to Mecca involves a highly complex set of rituals and practices. Specific states of
hygiene, diet and dress are observed during the pilgrimage.
The Performance of the Hajj
Common to pilgrimage, digital media and Aboriginal narratives is that in each
the story is made new each time it is performed. When a person engages with the narrative
field they take on the rules of the story and then enact their own personal experience of it.
Often there is a need for education or training before the story can be performed. In the case
of pilgrimage this is usually via a sacred text or the writings of other pilgrims or religious
teachers. The stories of the Australian Aboriginal peoples are passed on through an oral
tradition based on initiation, family relations and the abilities of the individual to perform and
interact with the stories. While digital media does not have the long history that pilgrimage

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and especially indigenous Australians have, each shares in the basic concepts of co-creation,
mediation, and spatiality. When a person joins with the mediating practice they move through
physical or represented spaces and leave behind, in some sense, the ‘normal’ of daily life.
However, when “media” becomes ubiquitous or pervasive, as it is becoming with digital
technologies and it has been for the Australian Aboriginal peoples for millennia,
transcendence is no longer relevant because the mediated experience is completely woven
into identity and reality. Transcendence (the perceived separate nature of the mediated
experience) is becoming irrelevant in regards to digital “media” because the mediated
experience is reality for millions of people today.
While digital media does not have the long history or degree of cultural reality
that both pilgrimage and indigenous Australian story systems have, each shares in basic
concepts of co-creativity, mediation and spatiality. Imagine a three dimensional map with
audio that changed as you moved about the territory it depicts. As you move into the new
area, the map changes and provides a detailed description of not only the history of the area
but how it is occupied today and what the uses of the area mean to the people who live there.
What you learn and experience while you are in the area can also be added to the map. The
map also shows both what you can and are doing in the area while you are there. In order to
use the map you have to learn the habits and rules of the people who are also represented by
the map, effectively you inhabit the map during the time that you need it. This map is a
metaphor for digital media. At the present time the economically developed world and large
sections of the developing world are going through rapid processes of media realignment. The
new tools for media are being produced and distributed under both commodity regimes and
open/shared or commons systems. This makes for a broader and more horizontal media
environment than has been possible for a long time in many societies. As a major part of this
process, media has “broken out” from the page, the screen or the binding and is now
approaching general states of ubiquity or pervasiveness in daily life for millions of people.
Not only does the reader/user go into a story, but the story now emerges to surround us in our
daily lives.
Between July and October 2004 thousands of people in the United States, most
of them in Los Angeles, participated in a game that became their reality, a world of clues and
interceptions. I Love Bees has been one of the most successful Alternate Reality Games
(AGR) so far devised. Players intercepted calls at payphones, exchanged emails and
assembled clues based around a website about bee keeping that seemed to have been
mysteriously hacked. I Love Bees was a complex promotion for the Halo2 game engine and as

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such could be classified as a successful example of viral marketing.i Such use of existing
social networks avails itself of culture and the mediated structures such as the city, the home
or the office that we consider to be reality. It is often reliant upon digital media as these
ubiquitous tools are the material carrier of so much social networking today.
A Paris Flash Mob in 2005
A non- commercial example of this social networking is the flash mob. A “flash
mob describes a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something
unusual for a brief period of time, and then quickly disperse. They are usually organized with
the help of the Internet or other digital communications networks.”ii The participants are not
allowed to speak to each other before or after the flash mob and they are expected to disperse
immediately following the action. When a flash mob appears those who are not drawn into the
action are likely to be caught up in a reflective few minutes, wondering what the hell is going
on and how it came to be. The mediated space around them (shopping mall, Public Square,
department store or diplomatic embassy) is suddenly re interpreted in terms of being a genred
space. Another way digital media demarcates space in the physical world is with Global
Information Systems (GIS) or Global Positioning Systems (GPS). These technologies work
from satellite tracking devices that grid reference huge areas of territory that can be marked
on a scale comparable to those mapped out in Australian Aboriginal stories. When a digital

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device (G3 mobile phone, palm-held computer etc.) registers a GPS co ordinate information
can be sequenced with that position and delivered to the user. Information can also be sent by
a device in communication with a GIS network. Like the ARG and the Flash mob,
information has taken on the dimensions and contours of space when over laid with a GIS
network.
A simple example of digital media taking on spatial values, being co-creative
and inclusive whilst marking out a territory of information is the Jokkmokk2004 moblogging
project conducted by HUMlab at Umeå University in the north of Swedeniii. The Jokkmokk
Sami winter market is a huge gathering of indigenous peoples of the Arctic north stretching
from Norway to the Kola Peninsula. In February 2004 a team of four web log authors
(bloggers) traveled to the tiny town of Jokkmokk, situated on the Arctic Circle to wireless
mobile live blog the four day event, often in temperatures hovering around minus 30 degrees
Celsius. The blogging project attempted to convey the space that the festival inhabited, by
combining audio visual media with text, live chat, GIS positioning systems and mobile
coverage of the market area. To construct a mediated depiction of the event online in real time
the physical event had to be translated into digital media and presented. This was a
demanding task but comments made by visitors to the blog indicated that an information
space had been conveyed successfully to them. Felix from London stated that “it was great to
be able to feel closer to what looked like a wonderful day”iv. Nils Bj was transported both in
time and space by the moblogging project as he commented that “It’s really interesting
following you up there, almost like being in the neighborhood [sic] - by recalling own
impressions from way back in ‘64.”v The journey to Jokkmokk by the blog team, their
movements during the festival and their return home were all plotted on GIS systems. The
map that resulted created a web of physical locations that accompanied and contextualised the
blog posts (many of which were audio) made under often difficult conditions. Through the
comments, interviews and audio recordings by the blog team the Jokkmokk2004 blog drew
dozens of co-creators into the stories. What was most interesting about the project was that
the majority of hits on the blog came from the festival area itself. It became a parallel or
attached part of the festival as visitors moved from the physical events around them into the
information spaces of the blog and back again. It became not just a story but an actual part of
the live event they were attending.
While the creators of the Jokkmokk blog project were happy with the thousands
that participated in the digital space connected to the Sami Winter market, this is a meagre
population when it comes to present day digital information environments. The Massive

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Multi-player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft (WoW) is currently
hosting a population of seven and a half million participants and, between subscriptions,
merchandise and its own generation of markets in objects, clothes and tools, an enormous
Gross Domestic Product. For those who are dedicated to participating in WoW the current 60
playing levels is not just a pastime, but a life. Important decisions are made and enacted in life
based on the values and relationships of WoW and vice versa. Forms of co-creation,
mediation, spatiality and transcendence of ordinary states of being in WoW do resemble those
found in pilgrimage and Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. In each we find an extremely
immersive socially constructed environment where symbolic systems of meaning are spatially
arranged. This is also found to degrees in flash mobs, ARGs and GIS mediated
representations. But in GIS and to a growing degree in MMORPGs the transcendence of
ordinary states of being is no longer as clear as it has been. Rather, as is the case with the
socially participatory and spatial Dreamtime networks of Aboriginal cultures, the reality that
is lived (“The Real”) is totally permeated by the information represented in the story systems
(“The Virtual”) and vice versa. Within this matrix there is no single figure definable as the
“author” and this has profound influence upon the concepts of self-identity that reside
throughout such works. A useful departure point for co-creative spatial mediation in a general
cultural and historical context is the ancient rite of pilgrimage.
Between 1480 and 1483 a Dominican Friar named Felix Fabri from present day
southern Germany wrote an account of his two pilrgimages to the Jerusalem. Fabri’s detailed
account of his second pilgrimage to Jerusalem (1483) contains long lists of places visited and
practices observed in the performance of pilgrimage. He advises that “what is done by all
respectable pilgrims to Jerusalem, namely, that at whatever towns they stop on the way, they
straightway make inquiries about the churches and the relics of the saints, and visit them.”
(Day 9 — 21st of April 1483) This becomes an almost daily activity for Fabri and his
companions as they encounter some of the vast number of relics and holy sites that were
scattered around southern Europe and the Mediterranean at the time; “The people run thither
from the whole city to hear service, to kiss the relics of the holy martyr, and to drink the water
of St. Peter, which water, after being blessed in the name of God, and touched by the relics of
the holy martyr, is believed to be of value as well for the body as for the soul.” (Day 17 —
29th April 1483). Relics are produced for the pilgrims to adore at almost every stop along the
journey; “After service the brethren showed us some stones, which are believed to be those
wherewith St. Stephen was stoned in Jerusalem.” (Day 44 — 26th May 1483)vi. The effect

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upon the pilgrims of this ongoing immersion in the narratives of the sacred is a heightened
sense of being in another space as they progress along their journey.
A Christian pilgrim from the time of Felix Fabri (circa 1500)
Fabri’s account of the pilgrimage is written in a day-by-day account. The
journey unfolds in real time in a similar sense to a diary. This was intended for his fellow
Dominicans who could not make the journey but were able to share in it through Fabri’s text
as virtual pilgrims. The actual pilgrims clothe themselves in ornaments and objects that are
part of the performance of the pilgrimage; “For pilgrims to the Holy Land are wont to carry
with them to the holy places choice rings of gold or silver, and beads of precious stones for
‘paternosters’ or rosaries, or the rosaries themselves, little gold or silver crosses, or any of the
like precious and easily carried trinkets, which are entrusted to them by their parents or
friends” (Day 19 — 1st May 1483). These object serve a talisman function in that they, like
the text itself, allow some of the transcendental nature of the pilgrimage to be provided for

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those unable to make the dangerous and expensive journey themselves; “whenever they meet
with any relics, or come to any holy place, they take those jewels and touch the relics or the
holy place with them, that they may perchance derive some sanctity from the touch; and thus
they are returned to the friends of the pilgrims dearer and more valuable than before.” (Day 19
— 1st May 1483)vii. The religious objects and relics that are so much a part of the journey and
performance of medieval pilgrimage have similarities with the inscribed bodies of the
performance of Aboriginal stories described below. The body in both contexts is woven into
the media by markings and ornaments, in a similar way to the power gained by the
policeman’s uniform or the narrative engaged with by the actor’s costume. The clothes worn
and the amulets carried have symbolic social or cultural meanings that connect those wearing
them (as well as those who receive the amulets as gifts) to greater networks of meaning.
Fabri and pilgrims like him move in an ulterior space than to that occupied by
those around them not engaged with pilgrimage. Whilst the maintenance of this space for
European pilgrims has declined dramatically since Fabri made his pilgrimage, in other
situations it remains strong. The city of Varanasi (also known as Kashi, Kaasi, Benares, and
Benaras) on the central Ganges plain of Northern India is one of the oldest urban sites on
earth. It was contempory to the teachings of the Buddha and to the Sumerian empire and it is
has been an inhabited site since the 4th and 3rd millennium BCEviii. The present day site is
connected to the sacred for Hindus through a narrative related to the god Shiva and his
consort Sati. Unhappy with the marriage of Sati to Shiva, her father the god Daksha failed to
invite her to the performance of a religious rite. She attended anyway and was so badly treated
by her family at the rite and particularly her father, that in her grief she committed suicide.
When Shiva heard about her death he became furious. He went to the place where the rite was
performed and destroyed the area. Daksha was killed by Shiva’s followers. Shiva then carried
Sati’s body all over the world in a state of wild grief. At the request of all other gods, Vishnu
(“The Preserver” in Hindu mythology) severed Sati’s body into 51 pieces, so that Shiva could
return to his sanity and once again take up his duties. Various parts of Sati’s body and
adornments fell at different places which became known as Shakti Peethasix. Varanasi is
where Sati’s earring fell and today it receives well over 1 million pilgrims each year.
Varanasi is not only a point in the greater network of Shakti Peethas sites of
pilgrimage around the Indian subcontinent. It is itself arranged in a system of temples and
other places of worship and ritual as a huge networked space of transcendence from the
profane. The most famous portion of this system is the 375 bathing ghats (one for each day of
the year) along the Ganges River bank at Varanasi (the juncture of two sacred rivers itself, the

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Assi and the Varuna) where daily religious rituals are observed. There is as well “over 3000
Hindu shrines and a few Buddhist, Jain and Sikh shrines. Later Muslim shrines also became
prominent and now their number has reached over 1350”x. This author joined a group of
pilgrims, known as Kanwarias making a yatra (pilgrimage) from Patna to Varanasi by bus in
August 1996 as part of the Shravan month dedicated to Shiva. All of the pilgrims were
dressed in saffron cloth and many with foreheads painted with the Talika of Shiva as three
horizontal lines. When we neared the city of Varanasi the chanting of “bol bam”, “Har Har
Mahadev” and the singing of Bhajans (phrases of devotion) by the pilgrims became extremely
passionate.
Kanwarias making a yatra (pilgrimage)
The Kanwarias carry on their shoulders a yoke bearing two water containers
with which they return from their pilgrimage containing water from a sacred source (such as
the juncture of the rivers at Varanasi, the goal of the pilgrimage) to ritually wash the Shiva
lingam (phallus) at the center of their local shrines or temples. With every step they take (or

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indeed bus they ride on) they must be conscious of the load they bear as it can never touch the
ground or be spilt. While enacting the pilgrim’s journey the Kanwarias, like Felix Fabri in
1483, are moving along predefined routes, clothed in the ornaments of pilgrimage and
performing set rituals and observances at particular locations. The space they move through
in doing this could be described as being marked, in a similar sense to mapping. The specific
route is dotted by special tents “put up by the various local Kanwar Sanghs, the Rashtriya
SwayamSewak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad [Hindu support and political
organizations]. Here the Kanwarias can rest, eat special food or get medical aid…. It is an
experience to be seen to be believed.”xi The examples of the Kanwarias and Fabri’s
pilgrimage show how vast amounts of space can be made textual through co operation and
shared language, whereby individuals can enter the space, move through it and enact
narratives of which they become part.
Borobudur in central Java is the world’s largest Buddhist stupa
The pilgrimage site of Borobudur in central Java is the world’s largest Buddhist
stupa. Constructed from approximately 55,000 m³ of stone,
The main vertical structure can be divided into 3 groups: base, body and top.
The base is a 123x123 m² square in size and 4 m high of walls. The body is
composed of 5 terraces, each with diminishing heights. The first terrace stands
back 7 m from the edge of the base. The other terraces retreat only 2 m, leaving
a narrow corridor in each stage. The top consists of 3 circular platforms, with
each stage supports a row of perforated stupas, arranged in concentric circles. In
the center, there is one giant stupa, which its dome has elevation of 35 m above
the ground level.xii

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Images relating to the life of the Buddha and his teachings cover 2,500 m² of the wall surface
of Borobudur. Pilgrims transverse the terraced structure and perform acts of devotion at
various stages along their journey upward to the stupa at its zenith. The stupa of Borobudur is
pre-digital hypermedia, a three dimensional virtual world that, like the pilgrimage practices
discussed so far, place an individual in an immersive experience of what they perceive to be
the sacred. Borobudur is a compressed version of the transcendental and participatory
elements of pilgrimage that are found in both Felix Fabri’s journey into sacred reality and that
experienced by the Kanwarias. The reality experienced in each of these examples of
pilgrimage is simultaneously mediated and real for the believing pilgrims.
Both space and time are compressed by the combined form and content of the
structure of Borobudur. An example of this compression can be detected in the diagram
Borobudur’s Narrative Bas-reliefs and their Corresponding Buddhist Texts, where the final
stages of the narrative path for the pilgrim to Borobudur are shown to be the Gandavyuha
sutra. The Gandavyuha Sutra is the last chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra and details the
journey of the youth Sudhana, who undertakes a pilgrimage at the behest of the bodhisattva
Manjushri. Sudhana (Sanskrit: “Good wealth”) can be identified with the “Everyman” of the

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European medieval morality plays and Christian of John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”
(1675). This is an allegorical figure addressing all pilgrims regarding their own ability to
participate with the sacred in their daily lives. It is very possible that the spatial metaphor in
which Sudhana existed in the Gandavyuha was extended to the spatial media surrounding the
pilgrim. The quest of the pilgrim and the autonomous wonder of the treasure island awaits the
pilgrim as:
He is assembling the ship of teaching,
Having learned the route of the ocean of knowledge,
He is a helmsman on the sea of existence,
Leading to the treasure island of peace.
This Buddha-sun will rise in the sky of reality,
A great light and orb of vows with rays of knowledge,
Illuminating the abodes of all beings.xiii
These lines are spoken in the Gandavyuha Sutra by Maitreya, the incarnation of Buddha yet to
come in the future. Archeologists have found sediment around the base of Borobudur that
suggests there was once an artificial lake surrounding it. The pilgrim could not help see the
parallel between there own physical situation and the texts which surrounded them. In the
conclusion of the Gandavyuha sutra and at the fourth gallery terrace of Borobudur;
Sudhana’s fifty-first spiritual teacher sends the young man onward to visit the
Buddha Vairocana’s tower of inexhaustible adornments. Prostrating before the
tower’s closed door, Sudhana projects himself into the presence of
innumerable Buddhas who are located throughout space and time, bowing
down before each of their thrones.xiv
The projection of the pilgrim into the presence of innumerable Buddhas within Vairocana’s
tower reflects the spatial arrangement of Borobudur. There were originally 504 life-size
Buddha statues, each inside their own stone lattice stupa spread about the greater stupa. In this
arrangement of space the pilgrims are inserted physically into the story which surrounds them.
It is in this sense that Borobudur functions as hypermedia.

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Buddhist Pilgrims at Borobudur in “the presence of innumerable Buddhas”
Borobudur was built between 750 and 850 CE and, like the cathedrals of
Europe, it must have been an imposing physical experience to enter the space for those
pilgrims who were used to single story timber houses of their villages and open landscape.
The scale of Borobudur is rendered cosmological not only by the narratives represented but
by the space itself. The three levels of the monument are said to represent Kamadhatu (the
world of desire), Ruphadhatu (the world of forms), and Arupadhatu (the world of
formlessness). Both the Gandavyuha and the structure of Borobudur posit the aim of all
pilgrims as being to reach the Arupadhatu, the ceasing of rebirth an the zenith of the stupa at
Borobudur. Along the way, through numerous incarnations, existence is depicted as
consisting “of innumerable mutually-penetrating relationships in which all events and all
living beings interact in an infinite number of ways as well as a universe that—when peeled
back to its core—continues to contain the totality of everything that was, is and ever will
be.”xv Such an understanding of reality, as an interdependent replicating network, is similar in
many ways to the network affordances of digital media and the cosmologies held and
practiced by the hundreds of different societies that are collectively termed “the Australian
Aboriginals” in English.

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A vast number of languages and cultures made up Aboriginal Australia prior to
colonization.
Most contacts between the diverse Aboriginal tribes of the Australian continent
and those groups which traveled to the land mass in the 18th and 19th centuries appear to have
based on misunderstanding. Inga Clendinnen in her book, Dancing with Strangers: The True
History of the Meeting of the British First Fleet and the Aboriginal Australians, 1788 (2003),
describes how in the first three years (1788-1791) of the settlement at Port Jackson (today
Sydney) what the European arrivals believed to be the word for “Good” was actually the word
for “No” in the local Dharug language of the Eora peoplexvi. The problems arising from this
can be imagined. In a similar sense to Clendinnen’s example the gaps in understanding by
colonials of such central Aboriginal cultural practices as narrative were huge, and usually
much to the detriment of the Aboriginal peoples. Acknowledging my own outsider status to
Aboriginal stories I wish here to limit my exploration to co-creation, mediation, spatiality and
transcendence in the collective knowledge called Dreamtime. These aspects of the language
based reality have correspondences to digital media in contempory culture. The stories told in

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Dreamtime systems move beyond the transcendental practices of pilgrimage as they refer to
and require creation in terms of the raw materials of overall identity for the “holders” of the
stories. Such a dynamic is difficult to reconcile with what is generally considered narrative in
the western tradition.
To even speak about narrative in the context of Australian Aboriginal story
systems is to misrepresent the roles of story in cultural contexts. The distinction between
fiction and non-fiction cannot be successfully applied to Aboriginal story systems. The
language based knowledge systems that are termed in English ‘Dreamtime’ were given the
name by the British anthropologist Baldwin Spencer in 1896 in relation to what he
understood of the Aranda people of the Central Australian desert (Silverman 2001). The term
persists today and is now used by Aboriginal people themselves to describe how the
“actualized transiency in the present, and the perduring life of the world is carried by
ephemeral life-forms. All living things are held to have an interest in the life of living things
with whom they are connected because their own life is dependant upon them. Care requires
presence not absence….those who destroy their country destroy themselves.”xvii Over the
enormous landmass of Australia very different Dreamtime law systems developed and I am
speaking generally when I discuss aspects of them here. In every system however, the
individual is bound within complex networks of relationships and responsibilities to the land
area from which they come, context dependant family relations, the histories of both of these
and the “actualized transiency in the present” of each. How these relationships develop
through a person’s life is expressed in visual, spatial, linguistic and sonic arts. It is these arts
that assist my general exploration of Aboriginal language based media.
Australian Aboriginal story systems begin with the body. To tell any sort of
story (or convey information) the perceptual and social regimes governing the body define the
nature of embodiment within the story. A character is ‘built’ in a story depending upon the
social regulations that are applicable and the cognitive understanding of the community for
which the story is both intended for and comes from. The Aboriginal concept of embodiment
is one of continual regeneration when the forces at work are in harmony and when these
forces are disturbed the consequences are dire. The emergence of identity is marked by the
drawing out of life from the Dreamtime, which surrounds everyone and everything. In the
case of the birth of a child this can begin with a dream that the father may have. Here it is
important to note that dream and Dreamtime are not the same thing; the Dreamtime is going
on all the time, a dream is what you have when you are asleep, but like everything else to
dream has the potential to be insightful. In many Aboriginal groups the spirits of yet-to-be-

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born children reside in water. Specific water bodies have stories that connect them to larger
networks of Dreamtime stories. Many of these stories are sacred and are therefore secret to be
known only by the initiated. According to the Ngarinyin people of the western Kimberley
region in Australia's north-west “the spirit children, anguma, which are about the size of a
finger, are attached to the long green weed, jala, which grows in the water holes.”xviii After
the father has dreamed of the child he will “often carry the spirit-child wrapped up in his own
hair for up to a couple of years”xix Of course the Aboriginal people understood the process of
conception (something Western anthropologists doubted right up to the mid-20th century) but
they believe, like Buddhists, that sentient life does not only reside in flesh. The clan position
of the parents and their blood relationship to each other determines the stories the child-to-be
will have access to and be a holder of. This in turn determines what range of ‘country’ the
child will be bound to and responsible for.
In the central desert when the mother feels the first kick of the unborn child
within her she notes the place in the country she is when it occurs. The Law and Dreamtime
stories related the area and the relationship of the parents to these will contribute to
determining the stories/knowledge the child will share in. As well conception is believed to be
able to be procured from interaction with sacred objects connected to ancestral spirits of
fertility. If a conception is achieved in relation to the use of sacred places and objects, then the
spirits associated with them are important for the child during their life. Even in the case of a
normal pregnancy the spirits associated with the child determine the cultural identity of the
child. Such a process is illustrates in the story of the yellow goanna (a large sand lizard) child:
A man dreamed one night of the power of the essence of a species of yellow
goanna, while hunting the next day he was invisibly assisted by this power and
he captured a large goanna. As he approached his camp his wife saw that he had
someone with him, but the mysterious companion vanished before he arrived.
The meat that the man brought back was really a gift from the spirit power of
the animal and his wife was made ill by eating it. The day after, the wife noticed
the same mysterious stranger standing on a rock. He held a small bullroarer
[whirling sound-making instrument] which he threw at her and she felt a small
pain as it struck her above the hip. The woman’s husband together with his
father-in-law deduced from these experiences that she was to conceive a yellow
goanna child.xx
This story refers to the very beginnings of life and that the person-to-be is assured a position
in the community or the group. The movement between the dream, the land and the body of

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the woman (specifically her hip) indicates that the relations between each member of the
group are not only mediated by language but by the body as well.
For the Gulf of Carpentaria Aboriginal clans of the north east of Australia
certain parts of the body are assigned to family members. When stories are performed the
family member’s relationship to the story is indicated by specific gestures in the dance. This
classifying of the body extends into the rules for social interaction in communities where
traditional law is intact. There are very strict rules about which family members an Aboriginal
person can interact with based on who is that person in relational networks. In the Wik clan of
Western Cape York in the pre-colonial period the bodies of the deceased were placed out in a
tree, in a cave or on a grave platform. After the flesh had decomposed the bones were
gathered again by the relatives and wrapped carefully. They were then carried on the heads of
the closest relatives for up to several years as they moved in the seasonal pattern, and the
spirit of the deceased was said to communicate with them. Today, as a child grows in an
Aboriginal community where traditional law is still practiced there are initiations and
teachings given by elders in the way tasks are performed; where food is to be found, and the
stories that accompany the country in which they live. It can take up to 40 years to become a
senior song man who knows the stories (oral, musical, visual, and spatial), the laws and
histories connected to a clan, the spirits and to their country.
To illustrate how the identity of an Aboriginal individual can be not be separated
from the stories they are given/keep and the country from which they come, it is worth
looking at the Warlukurlangu (fire dreaming) story from the Warlpiri jukurrpa (Dreaming)
as told by Uni Nampijinpa. The telling of this story by Uni Nampijinpa is performed with
great skill and emotion but here I will just give a summary. In this ancient story a father
deceives his two grown sons into believing he is blind so they go out each day from their
camp and hunt meat for him. The hunt is difficult and they move about the country in growing
desperation to keep the old man supplied with meat. Meanwhile the old man watches the sons
go out each day and when they are far enough gone he takes his own spear and goes hunting
as well. Often when the old man was at the camp alone he would hear “the one that talks” a
baby kangaroo, one of his totem animals that lived on “the south side towards a place called
Kirrkirrmanu”. The two sons killed the scared animal of the old man and took the meat back
to him. He did not realize it was the meat of the totem animal and ate it. That night the old
man “went out into the open. The old man sat down. Then he listened for it. Still nothing”.
After listening for two nights he realized the sons had killed the sacred kangaroo and he
became so angry he “cut a stick. He began to concentrate his thoughts in the manner of a

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sorcerer, to harm them. He sent fire to await them, like you might light with a firestick, when
they returned from hunting.” As the sons returned from the hunt they saw fire everywhere.
“The two who had been born in that place, in their own home, kept putting it out and putting it
out but it burnt on and on”. They fled a long way and the story passed out of the Warlpiri
country to the Pitjatjantjara people. They continue the story with the sons trying to return but
“they staggered along in agony, trying not to brush against the places they had been burnt.
They returned. They came past Pakajumanu. There they stopped exhausted. That place
belongs to men. That is a sacred place.”xxi This story is performed as a dance, told as a story
in song and is the subject for visual arts the images of which serve the dual purpose of both
map and story for those who are initiated into interpreting the codes. The dance includes
elaborate body paint and decorations and the use of sacred objects.
Judy Nampijinpa Granites, Peggy Nampijinpa Brown, Dolly Nampijinpa Granites, Molly
Nampijinpa Langdon and Lucky Nampijinpa Martin: Warlukurlangu: What Happened at
the Place of Fire.
The Warlukurlangu story contains patrilineal laws concerning the duties and
behaviour of sons towards fathers and vice versa. What Happened at the Place of Fire speaks

20
as well of the rules concerning hunting and maintaining sustainable levels of food by
regulations. The story contains complex descriptions of clan boundaries and important places
as well as directions for movement synchronised with the seasons. For the initiated clan
member the story What Happened at the Place of Fire renders the depicted area a marked
territory in the same sense as a mapped region, but with an added dynamism not possible in a
static paper map. The fact that the story runs over into another people’s country refers to that
the Dreaming tracks follow lines of geographical features described in the creation stories,
and in doing so co ordinates relations between groups. One group, such as the Warlpiri keeps
a certain part of a story that relates to their interactions with the parts of country which they
manage. The Pitjatjantjara are the keepers for another part of the story that relates to their
country. Although in the Warlukurlangu story the sons returned to their own country to finish
the story, in other Dreamtime stories the dreaming tracks can connect up dozens of different
groups over thousands of kilometers. The primary narrative force that drives the story along
in Warlukurlangu is not the progression of time, or the interaction of characters with each
other, rather it is the movement by (unnamed) characters through space. The simultaneous
space in the story and in the “real” (around Warlukurlangu and Kirrkirrmanu) is filled with
invisible forces, entities and magic, which must be acknowledged and negotiated if balance is
to be maintained in “reality”. These forces weave together with the male’s role (in the case of
Warlukurlangu) in the clan group and their responsibilities to their society.
Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr (b.1936) is a senior member of the Wik Clan, an
Elder of the Winchanam people, a senior song man and the keeper of the Flying Fox
Dreaming for Chegem, his home country, on the Small Archer River of Western Cape York.
The flying fox story is a law story connected to a specific place and therefore similar to What
Happened at the Place of Fire, even down to the detail of involving two brothers and
punishment for a breaking of the law. Both these stories and the Yellow Goanna Story
describe a metamorphic form of embodiment that is in constant flux. The Flying Fox Story is
secret sacred and is represented as a spoken story, song, dance, body paint and wood carved
sculpture, all of which was taught to Arthur by his father. Arthur began performing Flying
Fox Story in 1962, the first time with his father. Pambegan Jr. is not the author of the story
and makes no claims to be such. Of his work as an artist and keeper or holder of the Flying
Fox Story Arthur says that
My father showed me and my brother. But you must never stop. I am going
to pass it on to my son, and my son will pass it on to his children for the

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future. We can never stop because this is our life—keeping us alive. […]
They are our clan designs, not to give away, not to die awayxxii
Whilst there are rules about how the flying fox story is to be presented in its various forms
Pambegan has introduced one of his own perspectives to the clan designs. He stated in a 2002
documentary that the installation Flying Fox Story Place he made that same year (Pictured) is
“double the size of the original” that his father taught him. This supports the idea that while
the basic structure (the design) of an inherited Dreamtime story is to be preserved by its
generations of keepers, there is some room for interpretation and adaptation by individuals in
regards to the context the design is performed or presented in. New Dreamings do as well
emerge occasionally and when they do there is often debate about whether they are consistent
with the other stories with which they must be integrated. This web of stories carries people,
places and animals along through the generations in a living information nexus.
Flying Fox Story Place (2002) Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr. Carved milkwood with
synthetic polymer paint and natural pigments 16 components, 250 cm x 900 cm (installed)

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Aboriginal Dreamtime networks emanate out from the body in space, time,
language and forms, already beginning to coalesce when the individual is in utero. From the
few brief examples given here we gain some idea of manifestations of co-creation, mediation,
and spatiality in the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. The body is a site for mediation
between the world/s and cognition. The pregnant mother of the Yellow Goanna Dreaming
story begins inscribing meaning on the child-to-be at the same moment she understands she is
pregnant. In the rituals of the Wik people the body is recognized as being “attached” to other
family members through story systems and in turn belonging to areas of country that are
described in the stories. These stories are “mutlimedial” representations in sonic, plastic,
graphic and vocal forms. These various media forms often occur simultaneously in prescribed
ceremonies that taken place in defined and regulated space and time. In terms of literacy the
complex interconnected systems of meaning found in Dreamtime inscription can take
symbolic form as a geometrical design, a three dimensional object, a song or the interpretation
of a natural feature. The representations of the story are not fixed in time in the same way as
writing or a pre-digital image is, instead they are living entities that belong to the country and
the people who live there. As Arthur Pambegan stated “We can never stop because this is our
life—keeping us alive.” The story is the reality of daily life and this is the story that is lived.
With this in mind the final category I imposed upon this brief exploration, that of
transcendence of ordinary states of being, is largely disqualified under traditional Aboriginal
story systems as they do not transcend daily life, rather they nurture it and make it both real
and mythical. In the words of Deborah Bird Rose the Dreamtime is “actualized transiency in
the present, and the perduring life of the world is carried by ephemeral life-forms.”xxiii The
context implied by transiency in the present is a dynamic, living language based media that
functions to maintain reality.
Returning to the concept of embodiment it is worthwhile looking at how it is
implied under digital media systems as compared to pilgrimage and the Dreamtime stories. In
the digital media discussed here embodiment of self is distributed in terms of physical
presence, for example; “I” am both here at the computer keyboard and participating in a guild
raid in WoW. Like the reality most of us live in, digital media systems are procedural in that
they observe real-time sequences. Finally, digital media carries symbolic systems of meaning
that go far beyond the written and spoken language forms of previous media. Physical
gestures, spatial arrangements, dialogue in real time and remixing are locatable in pilgrimage,
Aboriginal story traditions and digital media. The movement by characters through space is
the motivation to co-creative narratives rather than the passing of time. Just as identity and

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reality have been formed and develop in the flux of pilgrimage and the Dreamtime, so is
digital media producing ontology. This is not a single or linear progression, but demands
complex networks of dialogues and appropriations where human agency and communication
push the tools in particular ways. How individuals produce culture, organise themselves into
networks and negotiate the rules associated with these systems is important for understanding
who we are. By learning from alternate and marginal cultural models we can construct
broader and more complex dialogues around digital media which go on to become new
allegories for the world.
Notes
i “Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to
produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the
spread of a computer virus.” Wikipedia Viral marketing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing Accessed
16 October 2006.
ii Wikipedia Flash Mob http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob Accessed 16 October 2006
iii Multiple Authors, Moblogging Jokkmokk 2004, Umeå: HUMlab Umeå University
http://blog.humlab.umu.se/jokkmokk2004/
iv Multiple Authors, Moblogging Jokkmokk 2004, Felix, London
http://blog.humlab.umu.se/jokkmokk2004/2004/02/07/after-the-concert/#comments Accessed October 16th 2006.
v Multiple Authors, Moblogging Jokkmokk 2004 Nils Bj
http://blog.humlab.umu.se/jokkmokk2004/2004/02/06/streaming-issues/#comments (Accessed 16th October
2006.
vi Felix Fabri (1480 & 1483-84): The Book of the Wanderings of Felix Fabri (Circa 1480-1483 A.D.) trans.
Aubrey Stewart. 2 vols. London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 1896 [At Travelling to Jerusalem/U Sth
Colorado] http://chass.colostate-pueblo.edu/history/seminar/fabri.htm accessed 2 October 2006
vii Ibid.
viii Singh, Rana P.B, Varanasi as Heritage City (India) on the scale the UNESCO World Heritage List: From
Contestation to Conservation. Swedish South Asian Studies Network.
http://www.sasnet.lu.se/EASASpapers/46RanaSingh.pdf accessed 4 October 2006
ix Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti_Peethas Accessed 3 October 2006
x Singh. Accessed 4 October 2006.
xi The Hindu, Wednesday, Jul 14, 2004, http://www.hindu.com/2004/07/14/stories/2004071409790300.htm
accessed 5 October 2006
xii Wikipedia, Borobudur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur Accessed 5 October 2006.

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xiii The Gandavyuha - Part II The Entrance Into The Clear Realm of Reality,
http://www.borobudur.tv/gandavyuha_2.htm Accessed 23 October 2006.
xiv The Gandavyuha - Part II Accessed 6 October 2006.
xv The Gandavyuha. Accessed 6 October 2006.
xvi Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers: The True History of the Meeting of the British First Fleet and the
Aboriginal Australians, 1788 (Edinburgh: Cannongate, 2005) 66.
xvii Deborah Bird Rose, “Sacred Sites, Ancestral Clearing and Environmental Ethics” in Emplaced Myth: Space
Narrative and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press 2001) 106.
xviii Anthony Redmond “Places that Move” in Emplaced Myth: Space Narrative and Knowledge in Aboriginal
Australia and Papua New Guinea (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press 2001) 123.
xix Ibid.
xx Kenneth Maddock, “World Creative Powers” in Charlesworth, Morphy, Bell and Maddock (Eds.) Religion in
Aboriginal Australia, Quoted in Robert Lawlor, Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal
Dreamtime (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1991) 161-62.
xxi Uni Nampijinpa, “Warlukurlangu: What Happened at the Place of Fire” in Yimikirli, Warlpiri Dreaming and
Histories Collected and Translated by Peggy Rockman Napaljarri and Lee Cataldi (Manchester: Harper Collins,
1994) 24-35.
xxii ‘“Not to give away, not to die away”: an interview with Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr’, Interview with Peter
Denham, in Story Place: Indigenous Art of Cape York and the Rainforest, (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery,
2003) 67.
xxiii Bird 106.