IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 39

from a Ma¯ori storytelling perspective, beyond an initial
" wow " effect of new technology.
The
storytellers' " ghost-like "
voxelized
representation
are both beneficial and challenging.
While this representation makes it apparent to the
users that virtual characters are acting here (ethical
consideration), it also sparks spiritual questions
on body ownership and representation, the relationship
between dead and living people, aspects
of spiritual harm, and the provision of safe spaces.
These and other similar concerns were encountered
while presenting our system to kauma¯tua-
some of whom are language and tikanga experts.
For instance, a balance has to be found between
true and truthful representation of a person (storyteller
and telepresence participant) and (artificially
achieved) completeness of such a representation.
For example, should the presented 3-D body be
" hollow " or filled with arbitrary voxels. Currently,
we are opting for a " what is captured is what you
get " approach without " auto-completion " or AI
methods for generative interpolation.
Similarly, as requested by some of our Ma¯ori
partners, should we animate recorded storytellers
to give users the ability to interact with the simulated
storyteller? And, if so, which behaviors should
be applied and presented? What is a truthful representation
of that person? What if the person is no
longer alive? We started this process by simply animating
an idling storyteller (not paying attention to
anything in particular, not speaking) in a way that
when a user comes into closer proximity to the storyteller,
the storyteller's virtual attention is directed
toward the user by looking and gaze-following
them. This very simple artificial behavior already
depicts a certain " scariness, " akin to an uncanny
valley effect (see [6]). Much care must be taken
with this approach. We plan to experiment with
other techniques of applying behavior to virtual
people in the environment, for example, responses
to an outstretched hand, pointing and deictic references,
and text-to-speech-to-animation approaches.
Whether we will extend this to fully scripted and
interactive behavior will be determined by continuous
evaluation and consultation with our Ma¯ori
expert partners.
Reflections and conclusions
After more than three years of working intensively
together on A¯ tea Presence, we realize that this
March 2022
is a unique project in many regards. It was neither
approached as exclusively giving back full control
and sovereignty over technology to our Ma¯ori partners
nor to implement " another Western " science
and technology project for our non-Ma¯ori partners.
It developed around partnership, participation, and
protection, even if most of the project members did
not have a real understanding of what this would
practically entail. Rather, those concepts revealed
themselves to most of us over time.
In hindsight, one might argue that we should
have collected (more) data on user feedback and
evaluations-unfortunately, we are unable to provide
those. We can only report anecdotally, as we
did above, on our lessons learned and of knowledge
and understanding expanded. Only recently, we
started to gather data in more formal ways by conducting
semi-structured interviews and to thematically
analyze them [8], [9].
To find ways to work together, we, for instance,
conducted a number of hui (gatherings and workshops)
ranging from very informally exchanging
ideas to giving presentations to each other. One
example of the latter is a hui on the concepts of
space and time to which we also invited academics
from physics and surveying to share their (world)
views on those concepts. Those hui have not been
conducted with any formal academic achievements
in mind, no formal notes were taken, let alone
reports or publications prepared. While this can be
seen as a shortcoming, it also gave us the freedom to
openly approach and explore ideas.
Central to forming partnership appeared to be
active participation, requiring willingness, effort,
and energy to, for instance, build our artifacts:
Ma¯ori partners actively participated in the technological
and content creation and non-Ma¯ori
partners participated in tikanga activities. An
illustrating example of the " effectiveness " of this
approach might be the aforementioned Waitangi
Day demonstration where the non-Ma¯ori
partners
were on the welcoming side for the manuhiri
(guests), instead of going through the usual
process of a po¯whiri and where Ma¯ori partners
demonstrated and participated in the presentation
of technology to the invited public.
In a sense, we see ourselves contributing to the
decolonization of methodology and technology
(see [14]) by respecting different views on theory,
methodology, and chosen methods to do research,
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022

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