UCL MAL is a student-led research network aimed at developing innovative methods for anthropological practice. We experiment with diverse tools and mediums for gathering data and presenting research, including sound, film, VR/360 video, AI, performance, exhibitions and installations, and explore how they can contribute towards alternative forms of anthropological thinking. If anthropology is to remain relevant today we must develop new forms of practice which can dialogue with more diverse audiences, collaborate with colleagues across disciplines, and disrupt existing models of thought.

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This project aims to document the material processes and technical knowledge through which Guarani &  Kaiowá ceremonial houses are constructed and the ritual practices that these structures enable. A wide range of recording techniques will be used in the process of documentation. All the recordings will be delivered to the British Museum's Endangered Material Knowledges Program

This project aims to create an interactive map showing the incidence and geographical distribution of violence against women in Guarani and Kaiowá indigenous communities in Brazil. This partnership with Guarani and Kaiowá indigenous communities seeks to support indigenous women’s strategies to combat gender inequalities by providing a digital infrastructure which allows gender-based violence to be monitored and made visible.

In this project, UCL MAL will produce collaboratively with the Guarani & Kaiowá indigenous women, a Virtual Museum supported on the Mozilla Hubs platform. This Virtual Museum project seeks to address concerns raised by indigenous communities regarding community access to heritage management by creating a digital infrastructure through which local communities can preserve, curate, and display their material and immaterial cultural heritage.

This project is a collaborative knowledge-exchange between UCL MAL and the Kuñangue Aty Guasu: the Guarani & Kaiowá indigenous women’s council meeting, which this year will take place online In tandem, we are finalising preparations for MAL’s Multimedia Encounters conference, and the translation of this event into an online format invites us to reflect on the parallels between the knowledge practices of indigenous communities and those of anthropologists.

This exhibition attends to the relationship between anthropological thought and computer intelligence. Algorithms and the anthropological mind both operate recursively, dismembering knowledge as we know it, re-calculating and birthing alternative manifestations of ethnographic data. Our exhibition seeks to probe and push this formal equivalence, exploring its limits and creating new ground for future multimedia encounters. It aims to dissect and examine our own systems of value, to re-think how knowledge is produced, and to create spaces for re-imagining what it means to be (more than) human in a 21st Century mediascape. 

The conference draws together anthropologists, artists, sound designers, coders, VR/AR producers among other experimental practitioners to initiate a global conversation on experimental research formats and multimedia knowledge. Conference panels offered stimulating debates with over 30 speakers. This selection of radical academic thinkers and cutting-edge practitioners invite us to think critically about multimedia forms of research, questioning divisions between art and science and pushing the boundaries of knowledge.