Please immerse with the stories which you find behind the interactive buttons (the raindrops). Please note, that some stories need the scrolling function for full access to the content. [ This interactive image is a work-in-progress, more stories are added frequently. It is a pilot project. ]

Missing the Mountains or Being the Children of the Sea (or Not)

A Multi-Method Arts-Based Investigation

[ A Draft for a Multi-Layered Story (A Work-In-Progress) 21.5.2018 ]

I am interested in investigating how sense of belonging manifest among the people originating from the Faroe Islands whom migrate outside of the Faroe Islands to study or to work. Many return to the home land and many do not, many travel back and forth, between the Faroe Islands and Denmark. The investigation is conducted together with a group of people who have experiences living in, or visiting Denmark, past or present.

The investigation is devised as a collaborative, multi-method arts-based research project together with a group of people as co-researchers. The aim of the thesis is to explore how to tell a multi-layered story which entangle multiple perspectives on the theme through a collaborative process of storytelling and how this can be done in an ethical way. This arts-based research investigation incorporate a bricolage of methods and theories as we are investigating through storytelling how the co-researchers experience living in between two (or more) different Nordic realms. An undertone in the investigation is to explore how stories are told and how the stories told define a world-view. Through this exploration there is an attempt towards an imaginary of a story told differently – through disrupting different thoughts and interpretations on what "representation" is and how it works.

The multi-layered and multi-perspective story emerging from this collaborative investigation is presented through interactive digital storytelling – as a non-linear story, which is not made into a fixed narrative with a beginning and an end.

To immerse with the different stories and to meet the co-researchers, please, start exploring the stories of senses of belonging.

It should be noted that this digital storytelling project is a work-in-progress and that micro-stories and new entanglements are added frequently into this interactive image. This interactive image is part of my Master's Thesis for my NoVA studies which I handed in May 14, 2018. Foremost, it is a free entity which is growing and expanding. At the moment I am having a final course in Aalto University which I hope will expand and make this digital interactive storytelling to re-shape, re-form and entangle new micro-stories into this assemblage of multiple perspectives. The course is "New Platforms for Photography" where we explore different ways to expand visual storytelling. More soon.

Text by artist-researcher Eija Mäkivuoti, 21.5.2018