Oral Histories

The Oral Histories project is linked to the oldest form of investigation dating before written word, and to one of the most modern, developed due to the invention of the recorder in the 1940’s. Inscribed within oral tradition, its goal is to collect stories [thanks to sound recording] which relate women’s relations to technology through their personal experiences. This project seeks to preserve a living heritage whilst contextualising it within media such as radio and the Web.

Two groups of interviewers – one composed of adolescents and the other of women of different ages [19-60] – produced a series of radio documentaries on the elderly and their relation to technology. Seeking out their points of view, their daily usage and their apprenticeship of it throughout time, the project proposes a collective reflection on the emergence and integration of technological media and tools in our lives – from washing machines to computers, notwithstanding radio, television, transportation means and, why not, electricity.

Furthermore, Oral Histories creates an intergenerational dialogue. It aims to allow the ederly a public voice, and finally, within an educational perspective, it intends to favour the appropriation of new technologies, as well as the reflection upon these technologies.

Project Website and audio files: http://projets.studioxx.org/projets/histoiresOrales_vsn1/

The project was presented in the 7th edition of HTMlles Festival: Peripheries + Proximities in 2005:
http://www.htmlles.net/07/en/

From the 18th to the 31st of October 2006, a group of artist, this project and other works from the 7th edition of the HTMlles Festival travelled to Serbia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
http://www.htmlles.net/export2/

Chantal Dumas, sound and radiophonic artist, has realised more than 25 audio works exploring the possibilities of narration with sound. The quality and originality of her work has earned her international prizes and airplay on public radio both abroad and in Canada. Her new radiophonic creation DANSE will be diffused in May on DeutschlandRadio [Berlin]. She currently lives in Montréal where she works as an independent artist.

Valerie Walker is a digitally rooted, fibres, analogue, trans-media artist with an active textile practice focusing on Natural Indigo dyeing and traditional shibori-zomé, katazomé techniques studied in Japan. Since 2000, she has been exploring web-based QuickTime Virtual Reality environments of her Shibori textiles via panoramic environments and freely rotating objects. With a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University Of California at Berkeley, Valerie jumps into her MFA at NSCAD Fall 2005.

Project Participants: Students at the Sophie-Barrat High School [Montreal] : Sara Benalem, Maude Bergeron Lambert, Justine Cloutier, Emilie Desrosiers, Alissar Jaber, Laurianne Ladouceur, Gwenaelle L’Heureux Devinat, Christine Tran.

And: Christine Brault [interdisciplinary artist], Therèse Chabot [artist and professor at Concordia University], Suzanne Marcil [artist], Erica Taddeo and Esther Viragh, [students in Cinema/Communications at Dawson College], Ly Tiane [biochemist et computer scientist], Diane Trepanière [artist] and Fathiya Wais [anthropologist].

The elderly interviewed who kindly shared their technological stories: Annette Buchanan, Imelda Chiasson, Jacqueline Dubreuil, Donalda Lafontaine, Louise Edith Hebert [Memes dechaînees], Rose Jette, Marguerite Lescop and Francine and Nicole Rober.