This article contains excerpts from a story originally published in YFile.
Seven York University researchers have received new infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for a wide range of projects, including two faculty members from the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design.
Learn more about the researchers and their work below.
Professor Anna Hudson, Department of Visual Art & Art History
Project: Curating Reconciliation through XR Immersive Technologies
Amount: $83,308
Anna Hudson’s research-creation project utilizes the latest in virtual reality (VR) and other extended reality (XR) technologies to promote Indigenous storytelling and facilitate community building and knowledge sharing. The project aims to foster equity, diversity and inclusion, and involves three immersive experiences: Indigenous-designed VR galleries; a smartphone app that allows users to explore Indigenous histories and perspectives; and an interactive archive kiosk that challenges colonial narratives about First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.
Taien Ng-Chan, Department of Cinema & Media Arts
Project: Marginal MediaWorks
Amount: $100,000
Taien Ng-Chan plans to leverage XR technologies – such as augmented and virtual reality – to help foster greater inclusivity in the arts and media industries. The sectors currently lack representation from intersectional, marginalized groups, including by race, gender, sexual orientation and disability. Partnering with community arts organizations and artist-run centres, the project will allow for community building, research creation, and the equitable development and exchange of knowledge. Incorporating a decolonial mode of governance, Ng-Chan and her team aim to boost the capacity of partnering organizations that are struggling to adapt to emerging technologies. The goal is to better address the needs of their members as well as to promote increased diversity among people working in the creative sector.
Check out the full list of recipients in YFile.