Skolt Sami Nomadic Dictionary
Anna Tolkacheva, Steve Nest
*Skolt Sámi Nomadic Dictionary* is a Virtual Reality experience that introduces the viewer to the Skolt Sámi language and culture. The project assembles visual and sonic materials from the village located in Neiden, Sør-Varanger, a cultural heritage site of continued Skolt Sámi settlements and cultural practices. The audiences are welcomed into the village through 360-degree documentaries, photo-panoramas, and 3D scans of nature and built structures. Together, they compose a virtual space connecting the language, material culture, and places.
Biography
Anna Tolkacheva is a France-based media artist, programmer, and researcher exploring practices of nomadism across physical and virtual realities. She creates multimedia art installations and projects that incorporate a range of techniques, including video, VR/AR, interactive objects, code art, and text. Having a degree in Computer Science and professional experience in Computational Linguistics in Russia, Spain, and the Netherlands, she explores new ways of creating and accessing text through new media, non-standard interfaces, and controllers. Most of her artworks can be attributed to the emerging field of media poetry. Anna’s artworks have been featured in numerous exhibitions, screenings, and festivals worldwide.
https://www.instagram.com/augmentednomad/
Steve Nest is an Austrian writer and filmmaker, based in Vienna. His practice can be grasped as a continuous artistic research, ranging from cinema and theatre to written word, as well as architecture. Increased interest for media theory and digital technologies crystallized into a series of projects that intend to not only put the camera-eye to the test, but aim to recalibrate our very own perception and modes of looking. Being in a constant exchange with interdisciplinary collaborators as part of dband – collective for spatial narratives and audiovisual choreography, Steve was fortunate enough to tackle theatrical implementation of virtual production and to reflect upon both technical and conceptual tropes of contemporary cinema in a form of theoretical essays as well as artistic work.