Interview with Brett Leavy

Position: Virtual Heritage Jedi and Creative Director 

Organisation: Bilbie Virtual Labs 

One-liner: The force is strong with this one – but the tech is taking us back and into the future!  

STEM is the future. Imagination creates science fiction and makes a hypothesis that can be explored, researched and answered. This is the future of progress.

The Interview

What did you study in school and university to get to where you are now? We know you were a teacher for a while!

Grace, Moranbah SHS

My favourite subjects were geography, history, logic and maths – and still are. At university, I studied these subjects again but worked in media to become a storyteller. I loved playing games, so I combined my interests and called it ‘gamification of cultural knowledge’.

How did you come up with the idea to create Virtual Songlines?

Grace, Moranbah SHS

The idea came from an idea of combining my favourite hobbies with my favourite studies to represent my culture.

Do you think what you learned in your athletics and sports careers have helped you create Bilbie Labs?

STEM Girl Power

I learnt that determination, hard work and concerted effort is rewarded – and that teamwork and collective effort is important.

Where do you believe the future of science and technology is heading and what potential is there? Does science fiction show us the path into the future?

Grace, Kirwan SHS Townsville

STEM is the future. Imagination creates science fiction and makes a hypothesis that can be explored, researched and answered. This is the future of progress.

How do you work with traditional owners across Australia to make their stories digital, and preserve them so we can all hear them?

STEM Girl Power

Working with traditional owners requires concerted listening and responding to needs, their knowledge and doing justice to their connection to their country with respect, understanding and tolerance.

We met you at Cross River Rail during our STEM camp and we got to virtually walk around Maiwar (Brisbane) in 1819 to see the native bushlands and First Nations people. How long did it take to create this virtual world?

STEM Girl Power

Virtual Maiwar took over two years to make – but was built using a toolkit that took over two decades to perfect! We are continuing to hone our skills through research and development all the time because, like all software, it depreciates over time if you don’t preserve it.

How do you use gaming technology to make the actions look real?

STEM Girl Power

We use gaming technology because it is fun. We think about all the actions necessary that could be gamified. Making it real means understanding the limits of real-world scenarios, digitalisation and virtualization of this knowledge. We think the young people of today deserve such attention to realism.

We tend to think of technologies as the end result, but it’s how we can use them in the world. Can you see the potential to use other technologies for cultural heritage and other applications?

STEM Girl Power

We all have a cultural heritage that relates to our identity. At Virtual Songlines we apply our skills, expertise and efforts to the true and accurate rendering of this connection to their country. In this way, cultural heritage for all people across the world can be represented in a serious games format and so virtual heritage has potential everywhere and for any time and space – even the future of interactive entertainment and television.

Bio

Brett Leavy descends from the Kooma people whose traditional country is bordered by St George in the east, Cunnamulla to the west, north by the town of Mitchell and south to the Queensland/NSW border.   

His vocational path began through his mother who, having been forced to leave school in grade four to work on a cattle property, understood the value of education to change her stars. She instilled the value of education within her children and the importance of learning early in their lives. Brett has been a professional athlete (winning the National Under 20s 200m final and competing for a decade at a national level. He was part of the Junior Wallabies Rugby team that beat NZ.

He began his working life as a high school teacher, then later went on to become General Manager of the National Indigenous Radio Service where he oversaw the rise of over 120 community radio stations across Australia. 

Today he devotes his time to developing a digital storytelling software toolkit and using new media technologies to help others represent, showcase and present their knowledge in this immersive and interactive format.  

Brett heads up Australia’s leading First Nations social impact cultural design company – Bilbie Virtual Labs, designing an innovative and connective program known as Virtual Songlines – a suite of immersive, interconnected multi-user virtual heritage simulations that showcase the history and heritage of fifty cities and regional towns across Australia. Brett brings together a dedicated team of historians, designers, developers and programmers to work collaboratively on the delivery of these virtual heritage landscapes; cost-effectively, authentically and comprehensively. He believes gaming and virtual reality (VR) can be an effective tool for the recreation of the heritage and culture of First Nations people everywhere.

Virtual Songlines is being used by Cross River Rail, seeking to acknowledge and honour the cultural heritage of the project’s alignment in inner Brisbane, allowing viewers to walk through the native bushlands that covered the areas that are now the Brisbane CBD.