Bienvenido, thank you for taking time to review my work,

Photo Above: Radio Healer, Malinali using Wiimote Spinning Scrubber. Photo by Lee Hyeoma taken at Pueblo Grande Museum, Phoenix, AZ, 2010.

My current intent as an arts practitioner is to execute the following three goals:  1.) To improve my work through a study of digital media learning, new literacies, and cultural practices, 2.) to engage in collaborative work through a practice of reciprocity and co-intentionality, and 3.) to express ideas as well as perspectives grounded by my experiential knowledge and cultural background.  My motivation to execute these layers is governed by my desire to improve my ability to dialogue, collaborate, and develop best practices for the exercise of indigenous cultural and rhetorical sovereignty through the expression of electronic technology.

There is a considerable body of research addressing human computer interaction within closed-loop interactive environments. Within this domain, I am interested in designing immersive interactive experiences for the communication and collaboration of multiple people co-located in a mediated space. To achieve culturally responsive models for this kind of interaction, I am collaborating with communities, artists, and researchers to develop digital places capable of mediating re-imagined indigneous ceremonies that allow indigenous peoples to define and claim their digital commons.

Through my work I wish to apply knowledge that responds to localized community needs determined by communities themselves.  I seek to aquire and generate knowledge through community instruction so I may grow in my ability to utilize the languages of art, culture, and technology for the innovation of ideas that extend indigenous cultural practices. By this, I do not seek global/universal solutions to community problems. Instead, I am interested in contributing to culturally responsive local solutions that promote indigenous self-determinism.

I have great hope that through the execution of the aforementioned layers of interest, I will spend my life learning and teaching as a responsible and accountable member of my community.  By working with and identifying processes that I am passionate about, I hope to approach forms of expression with a greater sense of humility, and wisdom concerned with, or affecting relationships, connections, and being.

Sincerely,

Cristóbal Martínez / Christopher Martinez