emLAB | Arts, Design & Architecture

emLAB: the ethnographic media LAB

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�𳾳��brings together a community of researchers and practitioners working at the intersections of media, technology, ethnography and art.

The Lab specialises in the design of practice-led projects of high sociocultural relevance and impact. Supported by national and international granting agencies, our researchers partner with local, community and cultural industries, merging academic scholarship with critical and creative arts innovation. Beyond the traditional focus on film, emLAB expands the field of visual anthropology to multisensory research-creation, with applied focus areas including First Nations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island, Indigenous, diaspora and migratory aesthetics; art-under-occupation and extractive zones; resurgence and traditions in transformation; global south and new media networks; new ecologies and beyond-human animate life worlds.

Since its foundation in 2008^*, emLAB has fostered reflexive and generative co-creation and participatory initiatives. The Lab supports individual and team-based collaboration across a diversity of exploratory and experiential orientations and approaches. A history of early career and postdoctoral research has seen a series of high-level public art engagement platforms take shape. The program offers a host of resources for scholars, artists and curators, including mentoring and project development support, grant and funding opportunities, technical advice and resources, and access to a growing field of transdisciplinary research and scholarship.

^*The ethnographic Media Lab was first established in 2008 as a suite of field-based documentary equipment and desk-top editing interfaces, under the Visual Anthropology and Visual Culture (visANTH) program, in the (former) National Institute of Experimental Arts (NIEA).

Lead image: Installation view, 'Mamu' (2012) by Curtis Taylor, presented as part of 'It goes both ways: moving images in different times and places' by Lily Hibberd, 2015, commissioned for 'Spaced 2 Future Recall – Perth International Arts Festival' at the Western Australian Museum, Perth. Photo: Lily Hibberd.

Current projects

An Indigenous Languages and Arts (ILA) project, in partnership with Warnayaka Art & Aboriginal Cultural Corporation, Lajamanu, NT, the 91ɫ��Ƭ Big Anxiety Research Centre and emLAB.

This project supports Lajamanu Warlpiri women to record and transcribe Warlpiri women’s Yawulyu. The project builds collaborative capacity for intergenerational knowledge transfer through developing new methods for maintaining Yawulyu through digital resources and workshops to nurture the next generation of ceremony leaders.

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(L-R) Lynette Napangardi Tasman, Agnes Napanangka Donnelly, Myra Nungarrayi Herbert, Jennifer Biddle, and Judy Napangardi Martin check poster draft in Lajamanu, NT, September 2024. Photograph by S. Dowsett.
ARC Linkage Project LP190100552 2020-2027*

This project develops partnership between Lajamanu Warlpiri Indigenous knowledge holders, anthropologists and community arts industry partner Tracks Dance Company. We investigate Milpirri Festival as arts innovation, engaging with community-members in collective responsibility for Indigenous heritage and futurity. The project will generate new knowledge of Milpirri song, dance, art and story through practice-based research with benefits for industry partners and Lajamanu community of increased community participation, outreach and impact.

*Covid-19 extended

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Milpirri Sensorium and Yinapaka, 2024, Lajamanu, NT. Lajamanu Community and Tracks Dance Company. Photograph by D. Preston.