Cultural Considerations
NUI Galway
Pandemic, Culture, Media, and Crisis on the Canadian Prairies: Staging Kevin Kerr’s Unity (1918) in COVID Times View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Moira Day
Ironically, the live performance strength to create community by bringing large groups of people into proximity has also made playhouses traditionally vulnerable to being closed as sites of physical as well as moral and social peril to the community. Given advances in medicine since the last wave of the Black Death, fear of pestilence factored little into our original decision to stage Kevin Kerr’s drama about the 1918 influenza epidemic as part of our 2020-21 season. However, by spring 2021 this had significantly changed, as we tried to rehearse, produce and perform a play about an older global epidemic in Saskatchewan in the middle of another global pandemic that had – again - closed all the theatres – and many points beyond. Using our 2021 production of Unity (1918) as the nexus point, this paper aims at exploring three questions: (1) How do we continue defining and creating theatre under conditions that seemingly deny its very existence? (2) How has the rapid evolution of electronic media since the late 19th century both helped and hindered the ability of theatre and theatre artists in Saskatoon to meet the challenge of different pandemic eras? (3) How did our production of Unity (1918) demonstrate some of the adaptations and hybridizations with media that local theatre artists and programs have used to continue to perform theatre in a COVID season and to bring Kerr’s 1918 Saskatchewan vividly to life for audiences isolated from it in time, and from each other and the performers in space?
Impact of Digital Information and Communication Technology on Oral Tradition of Mongolian Nomadic Lifestyle View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ariunzaya Norovsuren, Bat Oyun Sukhbold, Unursaikhan Tugj, Mendkhuu Ganbaatar, Jay Marlon Carr
All forms of human communication are rapidly transitioning to digital. Due to the development of modern digital technology, the process of information transfer is accelerating and expanding. In this age of universal digitalization, we are fascinated by the evolution of nomadic cultural expression in this age, being one of the world's dozens of “dying” cultures. Being some of the world's first known types of civilization, nomads have a unique perspective that has endured to this day. The flow of news within the nomadic community is carried throughout the entire province through the oral recounts of the nomadic missionary (Badarchin) who travels frequently listening and spreading stories. This has always been the nomadic way of communicating news and current affairs. The purpose of this study is to explore how today's digital technology is influencing this way of life. Human information communication preference varies depending on cultural characteristics. Nomadic information communication culture is unique to what we are used to in a modern era of advanced technology. In the presence of all the new forms of communication. They have a rich history and tradition in preserving information using stories. We are interested in whether nomads are maintaining their traditional forms of communication in the face of the strong influx of modern digital communication technologies. In this study, we focus on the impact of digital information and communication technologies on the oral tradition culture of Mongolian nomads, known as the last home of nomads.
