Digital Storytelling Colloquium presentation, hosted by the IDRH

"Indigenous Narratives and Language in New Technology"

Joseph Erb, University of Missouri

Recording available on YouTube 

Joseph Erb will discuss the ever expanding use of the Cherokee language in film, animation, computer video games and how narratives and culture affect the purpose of these media.  

Bio:

Joseph Erb is a digital media artist working in 2D and 3D animation as well as other materials, and he teaches courses in digital storytelling and animation. He holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and before coming to MU served as the Digital Media and Language Technology Specialist for the Cherokee Nation. He created the first computer-animated film and the first planetarium show in a Native American language, and has led major projects—working closely with technicians and executives at Apple and later Google, Facebook and Microsoft—to embed the Cherokee syllabary on the iPhone, iPad, and social media sites as well as Gmail and the search engine Google. He liases regularly with programmers, systems engineers and executives at these companies, as well as a wide range of other organizations including tribal nations, the National Park Service, and the Unicode Consortium.

The IDRH Digital Storytelling Colloquium is a series of virtual events focused on the ethics, politics, and techniques of digital storytelling. Stretched over the length of the academic year, the events will feature exemplary projects from across the world and across the KU campus, model digital storytelling practices, and introduce participants to a range of digital storytelling tools. Some meetings will be webinar-style presentations; others will be Zoom-style collaborative meetings. Across all events, the vision of the colloquium is to build a community of inquiry and an incubator for ideas.