Virtual marae leads the way
It’s taken hours of recording and laboriously stitching images together, but the result is a digital marae with far-reaching implications for the future of te Ao Ma¯ ori in the tech sector.
At its core, the A¯ tea Spearhead Project provides a way for the more than 80 per cent of those who whakapapa to Te Rau Aroha Marae to visit their sacred home in Bluff.
The digital marae took 18 months to build, involving a multidisciplinary team of researchers and scientists from throughout New Zealand.
The first stages of the project were shown at the marae recently. Visitors could pop on a virtual reality headset, ‘‘click’’ on one of the Wharenui’s ornate panels and watch and listen to a telepresence explanation of the panel from Te Ru¯ naka O Awarua educator Bubba Thompson or manager Dean Whaanga.
A¯ tea project lead Dr He¯mi Whaanga’s (Nga¯ti Kahungunu) idea for a virtual marae came when Te Ru¯ nanga o Te Wha¯ nau chief executive Rikirangi Gage mused how great it would be if he could still share knowledge with his grandchildren in the distant future, during a Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge workshop.
While small Ma¯ori language datasets existed, Whaanga said issues like data sovereignty, copyright, and the fact that handwritten texts needed to be formatted and cleaned, made the data difficult to expand and use.
Millions of phrases needed to be collected before a digital assistant, like Siri for example, would be able to understand and answer questions in te reo Ma¯ ori.
Most of the recording was done on site but building the 3D reconstruction of the marae meant thousands of photos had to be stitched together using software.
The team hope to eventually add a 3D sensory experience, so users will be able to hear and feel the rumbling thunder, for instance, as part of the storytelling.
Once complete, the project will be handed over to iwi to be repurposed and adapted, and at least three other marae have already expressed interest.
University of Canterbury Human Interface Technology Lab director Professor Rob Lindeman said there was a real need for more Ma¯ori – particularly wa¯ hine – in the tech sector.
Projects like A¯ tea could pique the interests in young Ma¯ ori, but it also gave them a safe space to work in where they would not have to explain cultural protocols, he said.
Head of the University of Otago’s Information Science department Professor Holger Regenbrecht agreed.
‘‘In an ideal world, we’ll make ourselves redundant,’’ adding there was a drive to recruit more Ma¯ ori data scientists to continue these developments.
‘‘This is a real partnership project,’’ Regenbrecht said, and experts in tikanga Ma¯ori had been involved in every step of the project.
Whaanga said: ‘‘What we’re doing here is internationally leading research.’’
The A¯ tea team was exceptionally proud of the fact that they had been able to spearhead this research, right here in New Zealand, he said.
‘‘What we’re doing here is internationally leading research.’’ Dean Whaanga Te Ru¯naka O Awarua manager
Raymond Horn is simply gone.
He walked into Invercargill’s Queens Park on February 15 and has not been seen since.
Yesterday police reported that the search was ongoing.
Detective Alun Griffiths said if Horn was in a residential section, it was highly likely police would have been alerted.
Horn, a 68-year-old former truck driver, walked out of his rest home on Mary St some time after 8am on February 15.
He was seen on CCTV and by members of the public in nearby Queens Park, between 10.10am and 2.20pm, and walking past a dairy on the way there.
Horn had exceeded expectations in how far he had walked, Griffiths said during the early stages of the search.
Walmsley House rest home where Horn, who has diagnosed vascular dementia, stayed has since installed cameras.
His family has indicated they believe Horn is dead.
He had a stroke in 2017, could not talk and walked with a shuffle.
Dementia Auckland clinical lead Rhonda Preston-Jones said if a 68-year-old was in a rest home, she would surmise they would have young onset dementia.
But every situation was different and assumptions could not be made, she said.
The term wandering was used when people with dementia became lost, but that was disrespectful, Preston-Jones said.
A person could go seeking something and then forgot their goal.
‘‘Sometimes people go to take themselves out of a situation,’’ she said.
Developments in camera technologies and trackers were keeping people with dementia safer, Preston-Jones said.
But if people did not want to be found, they would not take the tracker.
Someone with dementia who became lost would be highly distressed, but usually if a member of the public saw the person, they would be helpful, Preston-Jones said.
A member of the public had concerns when they saw Horn about 12pm on a bench by the Queens Park rotunda.
Horn was in an agitated state when he was last seen, by the ‘hamster wheel’ playground in the park.
Last week, police appealed to find two people at the park, but they had not been in contact.
LandSAR members from throughout the lower South Island had joined the search in Invercargill as well as volunteers.
The search would now focus on the main travel corridors away from Queens Park, Griffiths said.
CCTV cameras allowed police to plot Horn’s movements for about six hours the day he went missing.
Beyond that, it is a mystery.