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by Agunbiade Modupe Roseline

Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria

With the trend of technological development, language use has become diversified.  Infiltration in communication is achieved through the use of modern technology and this is generally referred to as Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). This (emergence of technology) has increased the individual’s participation in the digital space as a desirable platform for social relationship.

Nigeria, a multilingual nation, has a rich diversity that has continued to attract scholarly attention.  This has been approached from varying multidisciplinary perspectives. The reason for this could be linked to the importance of language in conducting the social, economic and political affairs in the country. For example, in addition to subconsciously acquiring the first language (L1), students learn and use the second language (L2) or third Language (L3) consciously. Others acquire these through contact or enrolment in formal education. A common variety of the English language, Nigeria Pidgin English, is accorded the status of Nigeria’s Lingual Franca in the informal discourse domain (Akinnaso 1991). Far-reaching studies have been done explaining the linguistic phenomenon in verbal communication.  Extensive researches have been carried out in the area of code alternation in a formal setting, where there are rules regarding the choice of code.  However, how language is used in an informal digital environment where there is no restriction to language choice and less rule-governed environment is yet to be clearly researched. This study aims at elucidating how the multilingual nature of Nigeria finds its expression among University students’ interactions in a digital environment. It also envisions identifying the prominent issues discussed in the digital space among a group of students. Consideration of the relationship between language and identity and inspirations for code alternation in the online group chat will also be made.

The corpus for the study was generated from WhatsApp group chats between September 2015 and February 2016 across four departments in the School of Sciences, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria. The researcher made physical contact with students in the School of Sciences, FUTA and requested access to their departmental online group chats.  At the initial, the students were skeptical and reluctant to release their online chat to an outsider. However, after some persuasion and assurance that the data would be anonymized for research work, an agreement was reached. These online interactions will form a major part of the output of this study.  In this, a mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) approach is being employed. Digital humanities tools such as Voyant and Sketch Engine are being deployed to foreground prominent linguistic issues and keywords utilized in the group threads.

The preliminary findings of the study indicated that code alternation between English, Yoruba and pidgin were tremendously used in the online chat. There are indications that a variety of factors are responsible for the wide range of code alternation in the students’ communication in a synchronous computer-mediated environment. It was also expected that this study will reveal prominent issues discussed in the online chat and how it has endeared the students across various ethnic and cultural boundaries to subconsciously and unitedly build an online community. Thus, the study intends presenting robust information on the roles of the digital media to social relationship among different ages and cadres in the Nigeria society in particular, and Africa at large.

]]> Digital Humanities – African Perspectives (Workshop video) http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/09/workshop-video/ Tue, 09 Jul 2019 09:15:13 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73270

]]> Complexities of fabricated contents on digital media: A perspective from Nigeria http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/08/interactional-contents/ Mon, 08 Jul 2019 23:49:31 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73259

Chrisland University, Abeokuta, Nigeria

Email: jayoakinola@gmail.com

One major advantage of social media as an offshoot of the digital media is its rapid and instantaneous spread of information among users on various platforms. It is common knowledge that while a lot of information is made available on the platforms, attendant abuse through a preponderance of fabricated contents is interfering with the digital space. It has been observed that misinformation on social media has reached an alarming state, damaging societies and democratic institutions (Allcott, 2018; Flynn et al. 2017; Lazer et al. 2018). Although there have been some efforts at reversing this trend and the attendant complexities, yet these efforts appear limited. Hence, there is a need by scholars to continue this important discussion towards ameliorating users’ involvement in the broadcast of phoney online content.

Among the existing works, copious signifiers for the identification of bogus online content have also been attempted. Most of these voices in academia have focused on the (ab)use of content production for digital media, especially the social platforms. Oftentimes, many of them have dwelt mainly on the stylistics perspectives thus leaving out the discourse and the participatory aspect of such for knowledge (mis)reproduction (see Rashkin, Choi, et al, 2017; Reimink, 2018) . In other words, the interchange of phoney content has not been giving appropriate attention as it should in the social sphere. A few existing attempts on this topic interestingly belong to various blogging websites and other unconventional media. As a result, there is a serious need for robust scholarly contributions from “the gowns”, especially digital humanities researcher towards curbing misinformation in  “the towns”.

This study, in line with the deconstructive criticism and pragmatics school of thought, and a corpus of over 50,000 words collected from WhatsApp and Facebook,  serves as a modest contribution for information on various means of identifying how people socially interact and the complexities of the (un)conscious spread of fabricated contents. For the preliminary results presented, Voyant and AntCon digital tools were utilised to foreground the linguistic identifiers of fabricated contents being passed across from a social media platform user to another.

The study acknowledges the fact that identifying fake contents in online interaction is a complex endeavour. However, some clues are provided for identifying fabricated online contents, as well as how they are shaped. It is discovered that political, religious and economic (finance, veiled advertisement) discourses form the major themes in the Nigerian social media interaction. Politics and religion are two predominant and recurring themes among the fabricated viral contents among the users being studied. Name-dropping of imaginary but (non-) existing government agency or establishment, religious leaders, places and individuals was the major linguistic validating strategies employed. Pragmatic acts utilised include persuading, appealing, warning, abusing, referring, and veiling.

All these contribute mainly to the continued influencing of opinions of social media users in Africa, especially Nigeria, and help to corroborate the contents as valid thus propelling their spread. The spread of phoney online content remains one of the major complexities of the digital space in the twenty-first century Nigeria as a developing nation. The study will potentially provide a way of correctly recognising and interpreting misinforming online contents.  Through this, social media users can distinguish reality from fiction, and save self and society from the spread of fear, anxiety, panic and other emotional stress.

 

]]> Digital Emotion http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/08/digital-emotion/ Mon, 08 Jul 2019 01:05:49 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73236 Ode to Touch

a digitally rendered poem

by A. James Akinola

]]> Team spirit in digital media and Africa: Networking for digital media research project in Africa http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/07/team-spirit/ Sun, 07 Jul 2019 21:21:09 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73221 Working with people on large research projects can be draining, time consuming and sometimes outright frustrating. But what is also true about working on these kind of projects is that as a researcher, one has so much to offer other team members and in most cases, a lot more to take from the collaboration. I am currently on a team project working on: The Role of Digital Media in Socio-Political Engagements in Africa. I have collaborators from Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.

This digital media research project seeks to understand how the use of social media is transforming socio-political relations in Africa. I came to this project from a bit more quantitative perspective. My previous work on social media research is content analysis, online survey data, etc. I have published a small book on social media use by transnational organisations, focusing on the African Union in comparison to the European Union. And therefore, I have some relevant experience to bring to the topic of understanding how digital media use is transforming socio-political engagements in Africa.

In the area of data harvesting, I have some skills that will be quite useful in gathering the data and cleaning it for analysis. There are so many tools out there for collecting data from social media channels and because of the multiple options, sometimes one is overwhelmed with which one to use. While most of these tools are good but they are mostly ideal for certain things over others, keeping in mind that these tools are not primarily developed for academic research. As such, it is important to know that a tool can only do so much. Thus the need to find different tools for different niche insights.

Moreover, on the issue of data analysis I am confident that I have useful insights to offer the team, especially in terms of finding patterns and or the lack of it. The Gambia is part of the sample countries and my background, work and experience in the Gambia will be quite useful. I also have had the rare experience of working on internet freedom projects that looks at the Sub Saharan Africa region. My knowledge of internet freedom issues across the continent will be quite useful for this project. Similarly, my experience working a journalist will be quite useful in the writing and reporting of this project findings. I have good media connections that will enable me to help disseminate the results to a large audience around the continent.

Despite all the contributions that I can offer to the team, I also look forward to learning from my team members. I look forward to hearing more about in-country specifics from other experts and practitioners. Since my work has focused mostly on political relations, it could be interesting to understand social relations too. Africa is more communal than other parts of the world, particularly the West. And social media’s primary function is to create communities and one would expect that this is quite simple and straightforward in Africa but how so? Consequently, I look forward to learning more from my colleagues. Some of the team members have also done quite extensive experience on social media use in Africa, it will be interesting to learn from them. The team also includes linguists who bring unique experience and expertise into the team project.

So, I really look forward to working on this project.

]]> Ode to Touch http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/07/ode-to-touch/ Sun, 07 Jul 2019 21:15:35 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73185

Ode to touch

by Ayodele James Akinola

You really touched me
Oh! You truly touched me
By your words and acts
And your kind hearted hearts
From home and across the seas
My soul is glad as it sees
And witnesses how beautiful
The world so plenty and full
With handsomely beautiful creatures
From diverse worldviews and cultures
United at the altar of love
Of Digital Humanities’ alcove

And at Noordwijk beachsides
Same as the love which never hides
Openly embracing from motherland
Felt close enough even in the Dutchland

All these I feel and feel and know
And never will forget never nor now
That humanity lives truly, everywhere
Here, found I it, and so everywhere

Oh! What a world so beautiful!
Blessed with many yet so peaceful
A people that know how to touch
With knowledge, that can vouch
That a life was truly touched
Yesterday
And Today,
And the morrow
Of the next morrow

(July 4, 2019, Lorentz Center,  Leiden University, The Netherlands)

]]> Is New Media Transforming Political Cultures in Africa?: A Synoptic Case Study of Nigeria http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/07/new-media-nigeria/ Sun, 07 Jul 2019 21:15:12 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73195 Is New Media Transforming Political Cultures in Africa?: A Synoptic Case Study of Nigeria

  Tunde Ope-Davies (Opeibi)

 University of Lagos Digital Humanities

Since the outbreak of the Arab Spring in the Saharan region of Africa, new media technologies have assumed a new status in Africa and across the world. The use of these digital media platforms is believed to have implications for society, culture, politics and other areas of social ecosystems. The success of Nigeria’s 2012 fuel subsidy protest was, for instance, largely attributed to the use of social media by the civil society organisations and private citizens.

Between 2011 and 2019 in Nigeria, our studies have shown that political actors and stakeholders are increasingly using a range of new media technologies to create interactive space for political engagement. Online searches conducted on key topics that are trending show that the WebSphere has become political engagement space in Nigeria. For instance, some web-based platforms and social networking sites such as blogs, portals of national newspapers, political websites, Facebook and Twitter now provide publicly accessible information on democratic practice and civic engagement in Nigeria (Opeibi, 2016, 2019).

Using web-based applications and corpus analytical tools (e.g. Sketch Engine, Keyhole, AntConc3.4) and media monitoring methods, we are able to digitally-track and harvest important political issues that enjoy popular discussions in online political space. The information that is extracted gives us an idea of the way the issues are constructed and portrayed and the attitude of the stakeholders to the subject. One such issue that has remained in the public domain as well as in the public sphere in the last fifteen years has been the quest for good governance in Nigeria. Successive administrations at the three major administrative levels (federal, state and local) since 1999 have struggled to convince the average Nigerian citizens of their genuine desire to provide what they perceive as good governance (Opeibi, 2015).

Apart from different Twitter hashtags that have developed around key political issues in Nigeria (e.g., #OccupyNigeria, #NigeriaDecides, #BokoHaram, #BringBackOurGirls), the 2015 political campaigns generated some elections-induced hashtags. These included, #APCDecides, #GEJ, #GMB, #Change, #GEJSAMBOCARRYGO, #Forward, #Countdown2Change, #IvoteBuhari, #BuhariOsinbajo, #NigeriaDecides2019, #NextLevel2019 etc. In a similar vein, the 2019 general elections witnessed a significant increase in the use of new media technologies and web2.0 for political campaigns, political mobilization, crowdsourcing, fundraising and civic engagement. Twitter was particularly heavily used by political candidates compared with previous elections. The use of multimedia political websites that provide the space for videos, audio, texts, pictures and real-time interactive conversation enhance the synchronous computer-mediated communication strategies utilised for intense online political engagement.

 

Figure A: Political Website of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2019 Elections

 

Fig. B:  Political website of the Youth Progressives Party (YPP) during the 2019 general elections in Nigeria.

While some scholars have criticized the claims that social media can improve political participation, our study has shown that regardless of the shortcomings of digital politics, the new technologies are gradually transforming political cultures in Nigeria. Our studies have shown that within the last three electoral cycles, new media usage has increased significantly.

S/N  Year of Election  Types of New Media Used
1     2011  Mobile Telephone SMS, Limited use of Facebook
2.     2015   Facebook, Political Websites, Twitter
3.      2019 Enhanced Digital Features on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Multimedia Political Websites, Instagram, YouTube, limited Use of Telegram,

 

Experts, scholars and international election observers all agree that 2019 general elections were particularly impacted by technologies at every level. The use of digital technologies is now promoting participatory democracy, credible electoral process and accountability. Government activities, the conducts of elected officials are now transmitted into online public space via social media platforms. Indiscretion and scandals are discussed online and culpable officials are called to account for any acts of indiscretion. It may be argued therefore that new media technologies have created a whole new process of engagement in private and public spaces. Within the context of democratic practice, the new technologies have demonstrated the potential to transform political cultures and create a new public space that will continue to bridge the existing communication gaps between citizens and their leaders.

References

Opeibi, T.( 2019). Opeibi, Tunde. (2019). “The Twittersphere as Political Engagement Space: A Study of Social Media Usage in Election Campaigns in Nigeria.” Digital Studies/Le champ numérique 9(1): 6, pp. 1–32. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.292

Opeibi, Tunde (2018b). Gaining Political Capital through Social Media: A Study of Akinwunmi Ambode’s Twitter Campaigns During 2015 Elections in Nigeria. Opeibi, T., and Schmied, J. (eds) (2018). From Virtual Sphere to Physical Space: Exploring Language Use in NigerianDemocracy, REAL Studies Vol 13. Gottingen: Cuvillier Verlag, pp 1-30

Opeibi, T., and Schmied, J. (eds) (2018). From Virtual Sphere to Physical Space: Exploring Language Use in Nigerian Democracy, REAL Studies Vol 13. Gottingen: Cuvillier Verlag,  206pp

Opeibi, Tunde (2016). Digital Media and Civic Engagement in Nigeria: A Corpus-Based Discourse Study of President Goodluck  Ebele Jonathan’s Facebook Page. Taiwo R., and Opeibi, T. (eds.) (2016). Discourse of Digital Civic Engagement: Perspectives from the Developing World. New York: Nova Science Publishers Inc. 1-34

Opeibi, Tunde (2015). New Media and the Transformation of Political Cultures in Nigeria: An exploration of a corpus-based discourse approach. REAL Studies 9.202-231

]]> Sankofa – Reclamation of the Michael Mosoeu Moerane Musical Heritage http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/05/moerane/ Fri, 05 Jul 2019 14:24:31 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73156 This research is being conducted by Ignatia Madalane at Stellenbosch University.

The Moerane Critical Edition Project is a team research project spearheaded by Christine Lucia, that aims to source, collect and publish an online edition of music scores written by (South African) composer Michael Mosoeu Moerane (1904-1980). While Digital Critical Editions are increasingly common in the west they remain a developing area in South Africa, especially in the musical context. The Moerane Critical Edition is only the second of its kind in Southern Africa (probably Africa), preceded by the Joshua Mohapeloa Critical Edition (Lucia 2016). Both are cultural reclamation projects that aim to preserve for both scholarly purposes and performance, entire repertoires of neglected African composers. For both composers, a publishers imprint, African Composers Edition, and a website, https://criticaleditions.co.za ,  had to be specially constructed in order to present this music and its contexts, and to respect the intellectual property invested in it, in a South African climate of rampant cultural exploitation.

Moerane is a critical figure in black South African notated music (as distinct from jazz, popular and traditional music). He was the first black composer to graduate with a B.Mus from Rhodes University (a College of Unisa) in 1941, with an orchestral ‘Composition Exercise’ Fatše la Heso (Sesotho-‘My Country’) written under the supervision of Frederic Hartmann. Moerane composed over 50 works, 10 of which, written in tonic solfa notation, are common in the South African choral music tradition, while the rest existed until now only in manuscript. The full extent of Moerane’s versatility and proficiency as a composer for choir especially, has remained hidden and Moerane is hardly known even by other South African composers, although songs such as Ruri (Sesotho-‘Truly’), Sylvia, Della, and Matlala are often prescribed for black choral competitions in South Africa’s (still) bifurcated society. The Critical Edition will be available on a dedicated website https://criticaleditions.co.za for easy access, together with contextual documents and critical commentaries.

 

Staff notation (left) for Alina by Moerane compared to tonic solfa notation (right) for the same song.

 

My participation in this project (2017-2020) is not so much helping to create the edition itself but using Moerane’s oeuvre to interrogate the notion of ‘genre’. His music is difficult to classify because it embodies other musical genres (from South African and elsewhere) which are themselves mixtures of genres, and belongs to a long tradition of composing that comes out of the colonial mission. It is not a ‘world music’, it is hardly recorded at all, most of it is not transcribed, let alone published. I am therefore tasked with exploring this notion of genre and how it is constructed in this context. My findings will therefore be useful for my colleagues working on the music analysis part of Moerane’s Critical Edition Project.

As we embark on the journey of creating and developing the Moerane Digital Critical Edition, we can use the Mohapeloa Critical Edition as a reference point: we will be able to reflect on what worked and what did not, especially in terms of what makes a good digital online edition. If we can produce something better/different with the Moerane edition we can expand this area of digital humanities in South Africa and  encourage similar projects. This paper will therefore be a critical analysis of the Mohapeloa Critical Edition (African Composers Edition, 2016) with a view to improving on its shortcomings in the Moerane Critical Edition. This project also offers a unique opportunity to reconsider issues of representation, accessibility, silence/silenced cultural heritage, and identity within the African context.

]]> A Vanishing Collection in Southern Africa: Digitising the Collection of the Owl House http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/05/owl-house/ Fri, 05 Jul 2019 13:55:58 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73087 This research was undertaken by Sarah Schäfer for her MPhil in Digital Curation at the University of Cape Town. 

 

Somewhere in the arid landscape of the South African Karoo is a tiny village named Nieu Bethesda. Here lived Helen Martins, whose was only recognised posthumously as an artist, and who is today known as an Outsider Artist. After the deaths of her parents (in approximately the mid-1940s), Martins, living once again in the house in which she grew up, began transforming the home to reflect a magical, mythical place that existed in her imagination. Over two decades she transformed it entirely, creating what she named and is still called the Owl House. The Owl House exists today as a museum – close to exactly as she left it 40 years ago. It is extremely isolated, and travelling there is not easy – it involves many hundreds of kilometres of deserted roads through the semi-desert. Decades ago, it was even more inaccessible. For this reason, my research focused on this small museum in South Africa, the Owl House, as a case study in the context of digital cultural heritage.    

From The Long Bedroom Collection
Wide image from The Long Bedroom Collection, the digital platform created for this research.

The Owl House is inextricably connected to its milieu: Nieu Bethesda, the Karoo and South Africa. Helen Martins was a product of her environment – a woman in a conservative, patriarchial, and parochial society, living in a tiny, isolated, arid town. Martins was silenced geographically through her isolation and disconnection from the world, and she was also silenced by her social ostracization in her community. Her art at the time that she was creating it, was not recognised. The Owl House was her attempt to create a world that overcomes the tedious obstacles of everyday life. Today, over forty years after the death of Martins, the Owl House exists as she left it, but in a state of deterioration. When a museum collection, such as the Owl House, is inextricable from its site, digitising it and digitally curating it holds new problems, challenges and possibilities.

By digitising this collection, a voice is given to the artist again. Firstly, by preserving her work. Secondly, by making it accessible. Moreover, the intention of digitising a collection/museum like this one is not to simply replace the original. For a space as immersive and experiential as the Owl House, merely attempting to create a digital simulation would be a poor representation. Digital objects have different meaning to their physical/analogue counterparts, depending on how they are digitised and digitally curated. In fact, different layers of information, that cannot be easily annotated to physical artefacts, are possible with a digital format. 

My research, through interviews with participants who engaged with a digitally curated collection, showed that people appreciate different layers of information, and they also appreciate multimedia being used where it is relevant. An example of this is a pair of shoes, which several participants were drawn to because of the biographical details that were included about an accidental toe amputation. Participants found the details quite bizarre, which made the artefact stand out. 

Contextual image of pair of shoes in the Owl House.
Different metadata about the pair of shoes that was available to visitors to the online platform.
Shoes photographed as artefacts.

One participant recollected how, during her visit to the Owl House, she did not pay particular attention to most of the objects, and “brushed them away as…junk that had kind of been left”. After engaging with the digital collection, however, she noted that, “the more you know about these kinds of objects, the richer the experience feels”. Participants also enjoyed the video and sound of the wind chimes and appreciated how each item was given several digital forms, which tell a story and offers context. One commented that The Long Bedroom Collection provides a “much more detailed glance” of the space than a real-life visit to the room. “[It’s] not immersive [in terms of involving] all the senses, but it’s almost more immersive in terms of interacting with all the elements, or a lot more of the elements in the space”. 

Windchime
Windchime, captured as an artefact.
Windchime, photographed in context.

The Owl House, although unique, is one of many small collections in South Africa and in Africa, that would benefit enormously from being represented digitally. Through digital media, voices can be heard, instead of gathering dust somewhere in the desert. 

]]> Dialogues on Detention – Community co-production in visualizing silenced histories using 3D reconstructions  http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/2019/07/05/detention-camps/ Fri, 05 Jul 2019 13:18:47 +0000 http://lorentz.bridginghumanities.com/?p=73126 The case of Kenya’s colonial detention camps.

“ The night before my mother left, she gave me a small amount of money and told me to keep it .. I was still a child, about 10 years old at the time… It felt strange, like she knew something was going to happen. … Many years later when I was in secondary school, I saw a strange woman who had been standing by the school fence, starring into the school…I couldn’t believe my eyes:, it was her …It had been almost 7 years” .

1952 was the year my great grandmother left her home in Kijabe, Kenya and did not return for 7 years. 1952 was also the year that the British colonial government declared a state of emergency in Kenya in an attempt to contain the Mau Mau freedom movement.

Historians estimate that more than 100 detention camps and emergency villages were set up and operated by the British Colonial Government during the emergency period which lasted until 1960. This network of camps – often referred to as the ‘pipeline’ – was used to detain more than 100,000 Kenyans with the aim of extracting confessions of allegiance to the Mau Mau independence movement. 


Figure 1: Map showing location of known detention camps around Kenya

Today, this history of detention remains one of the most brutal and least understood periods of Kenya’s history. After independence, many of the detention camps were either destroyed or turned into schools and prisons. Official archives on the camps were also purposefully destroyed or migrated to the UK. To locate, access and retrieve information on the camps, requires extensive and laborious research.  As a result, the vast majority of people in Kenya do not know where the camps were, what they looked like or – for younger generations – that they even existed. 

Figure 2: Cell structure used to hold detainees in a former camp in Central Kenya – This building is now part of Mweru secondary school and is currently being used as a classroom

 

What does it mean that we do not know about these camps? That we do not talk about the hundreds of thousands of people who were detained within them? That we cannot even point to their locations today? That very few of those who lived through this period are alive to tell their story ? 

The documentation and preservation of this silenced history is not only important for me personally, but it is also crucial today more than ever at a community and national level. This research explores the suitability of digital technologies, specifically digital reconstructions, in creating awareness and participation with the history of Mau Mau camps in Kenya. 

Due to their highly technical nature, outputs such as 3D reconstructions have traditionally left very little room for non-specialist participation. Taking into consideration the suppressed nature of this particular subject and the lack of public knowledge on the history of the camps, the research seeks to tap into the rich and rapidly disappearing networks of oral histories as a key resource to create digital reconstructions of the camps and map their locations around the country.  

It proposes to use digital reconstructions as an opportunity to start a conversation that aims to be dynamic and fluid (as opposed to ‘ending’ a conversation by presenting our reconstructions as true, authentic and final). 

I believe that in themselves digital reconstructions paint an incomplete picture if they are not contextualised by the tangible and intangible histories they are inextricably linked to. Instead of seeing the community as consumers of the final digital output, it envisions them as being active participants in the decision-making process towards visualising this aspect of colonial history. 

Figure 3: Interviewing Mau Mau veteran – Wambugu Nyingi who has held in a total of 11 camps around the country between 1952 and 1959

The first conversation I had with my grandfather about the detention camps was in 2017. I had grown up in Kenya all my life and didn’t even know such camps existed. When I asked my grandfather whether his mother ever spoke of her experience in the camps he said “she never spoke about what happened to her when she was away, till this day, we still don’t know.”

Figure 4: Draft – 3D Reconstruction of detention cells in Mweru Works Camplent

 

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