How new is the San Diego-based Our Worlds mobile technology platform? So new, its first app hasn’t had its official rollout yet. So state-of-the-art, it uses extended reality, artificial intelligence and geolocation to turn your phone into a 360-degree art gallery, a time machine and a teleporter.
But for all of Our Worlds’ high-tech features, the vision for its debut project is timeless. For founder and executive producer Kilma Lattin, the Our Worlds app was created to give Native Americans the chance to be seen for who they are now and who they will be.
“I would like the world to know that Native Americans are alive and well in the 21st century,” said Lattin, a Native American futurist who grew up in La Jolla and on the Pala Indian Reservation.
“We don’t live in history books. Our culture is not static. We can move beyond the drums and the beads and the turquoise, and we can use all available means and technologies to move our culture and our civilization into the 21st and the 22nd century.”
In the beta version of the app, which anyone can at https://ourworlds.io/beta, Our Worlds transports Kumeyaay artist Johnny Bear Contreras’ “Seeing” sculpture from Poway City Hall to your living room. It lets you see the faces and hear the names of the Choctaw Code Talkers who served in World War I. It brings the paintings of “Without Reservations” cartoonist and Kewa Pueblo artist Ricardo Caté into your world, transforming any space into a virtual gallery.
And with the help of geolocation, visitors to such significant spaces as the Native American Veterans Memorial at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., or La Jolla Shores — which was an integral part of Kumeyaay life and culture — can dive into immersive experiences that bring them into a whole new landscape.
“It’s like your com to the native world,” Our Worlds co-founder and chief technology officer Catherine Eng said of the app, which should get an official launch within the next few weeks. “It helps you move through space so that you are able to discover Native American language, culture and history. No matter where you go, you can uncover stories.”
Sometime around dusk on Thanksgiving, Our Worlds app s can take their phones to La Jolla Shores to uncover several stories involving Kumeyaay tule boats. Kumeyaay Community College Director Stanley Rodriguez worked with Our Worlds to create the visual storytelling project. The experience will run at least through Sunday, if not longer.
“The buzzword that everyone is talking about is ‘metaverse,’” Lattin said. “We are building a portal to primary-source narratives that people can experience as they go about their daily lives. Culture comes alive in a new way when you use emerging technologies.”
And when Comic-Con Special Edition 2021 kicks off on Nov. 26, the Our Worlds metaverse will expand to include an immersive experience from Cody Martinez, chairman and chief of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation. On Nov. 27, the platform will use augmented reality to let viewers see Caté’s paintings throughout the Convention Center. They can even buy paintings through the app.
This is all in advance of Saturday’s Comic-Con on “Native American Comics and Culture with Extended Reality and 360 World Building,” which runs from 11 a.m. to noon in Room 9. The ists, including artists Caté and Contreras and Lattin, will talk about the importance of Native American creators using emerging technologies to advance Native American comic arts and storytelling.
“People at Comic-Con, their imaginations are wide open, and they’re accepting of possibilities,” said Contreras, who has been on multiple Comic-Con s. “And when your imagination is open, it’s easier to accept truths as not being in the pages of history books, but as being in a living, breathing culture.”
With the Our Worlds app, which will be adding new content all the time, Lattin and Eng want to preserve and advance Native American culture through the stories and experiences of tribal elders. They also want to tap into the Native American stories that are being told now, with the hope that they can help shape a different kind of future.
“Natives haven’t had a voice on TV, on the radio, in social media or in magazines. Whether it’s ‘Dances with Wolves’ with Kevin Costner being the hero or natives being played by Hispanics or painted-up White people, we have never spoken for ourselves. Someone is always speaking for us,” said the New Mexico-based Caté.
“But we are coming into this era where we’re finally doing that for ourselves. You have ‘Reservation Dogs’ on Hulu, and here you have me, a full-blooded Native American and I’m drawing cartoons from the Native American perspective. I get to educate people through humor. With Kilma’s help, we can get more of this out there.”
The Comic-Con Special Edition “Native American Comics and Culture with Extended Reality and 360 World Building” will be held on Saturday, Nov. 27, at 11 a.m. in Room 9 of the San Diego Convention Center. Go to comiccon.org for information.
