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Lets dance /Hi//Ka//Kusi with non-player character Ju/'Hoansi women in Virtual Reality

Published: 30 January 2024 Publication History

Abstract

We present a Virtual Reality (VR) implementation of a traditional Ju/’Hoansi dance called /Hi//ka//kusi. It is a dance of celebration of rain, food, and prosperity, complemented by a song of laughter, which is mostly performed by the women in the community. They are dancing in a circle while throwing a !nara melon (or other objects) to the woman dancing just behind them. Upon request by the Donkerbos community members to create a virtual reality application of the dance, we video-recorded a group of women demonstrating the dance. The videos were used to map people’s figures, poses, and movements into 3d graphics and animations. The application runs in a low-poly environment on an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset and uses the in-built, inside-out tracking cameras for the throwing and catching interaction. The VR user becomes part of an immersive experience, catching and throwing while dancing among the non-player character (NPC) Ju/’Hoansi women. The Donkerbos community has, since the development of the prototype, confirmed the VR experience. They agreed that it represents their culture well and only requested for minor changes. Generally, we maintain that the creation of such cultural experiences is promising in regard to safeguarding cultural heritage practices.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (Melon Game (3).mp4)
Demo Video

References

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AfriCHI '23: Proceedings of the 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference
November 2023
343 pages
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 January 2024

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Author Tags

  1. Namibia
  2. Virtual Reality
  3. dancing
  4. intangible cultural heritage

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  • Demonstration
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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AfriCHI 2023
AfriCHI 2023: 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference
November 27 - December 1, 2023
East London, South Africa

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