Thalu
Virtual Reality
Abstract
The world of Thalu is brought to life through Virtual Reality (VR), in otherworldly surroundings guided by the concept art of cult favourite and graphic artist, Stuart Campbell. The VR experience is a dazzling series of linked worlds filled with fantastical, high contrast, neon-lit Australian landscapes and wildlife.
‘Thalu’ in the Ngarluma language means, ‘totem’. However, the English word cannot fully describe the layers of meaning that “thalu†conveys to the Ngarluma people. The ‘thalu’ in Mowarin’s virtual reality experience is a spiritual doorway that connects two realms and transports the participant into the Spirit World, where they will meet Jirri Jirri, their guide. Jirri Jirri will show audiences the spirits of the elements, land, flora, and fauna, and teach them about how these spirits and environments are connected to humankind.
Launching on the HTC Vive, Thalu: The Buried VR is a uniquely Indigenous Australian experience that showcases the powerful storytelling of the Ngarluma people of Western Australia.
The journal is published and distributed as an open access eBook with physical copies available Print-on-Demand (PoD). The book is released under the Budapest Open Access model, published under Creative Commons attribution license:
By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
(from the “Budapest Open Access Initiative” model documentation)
