By thinking of their canoes as stationary and the island around them as moving, they measure their traveling distance by the 'movement' of the islands. - - - - - - - - - - - - They call this system ETAK.
ETAK - a TomTom-opera
a Wilco-production with
Polak/vanBekkum
en het Nederlands Kamerkoor
The word ETAK is a Polynesian expression,
it means such as 'I am sitting in my boat, standing still,
but the islands around me are moving'.
This perspective-turn-around
also takes place on the screen of your Satellite Navigation system:
which shows your car, standing still in the middle, while the rest of the world is passing underneath as not-so much-interesting Point Of Interest.
I tried to translate this egocentric view into a musical concept,
Most special about SatNav is : There is a voice in your car, telling you what to do.
An intimate voice which is saying to you which way to go.
Most of our daily digital stuff is visual communication,
but SatNav has got sound: a reassuring voice, and we all know that sound and especially voice and music has a very big emotional impact on us.
The audience is sitting still, but the music and the other audio-points-of-interest are moving. What you hear are symphony-orchestra's passing by at 100 km an hour, and barking dogs and churchbells as well.
All sound is moving from the front to the back of the concerthall, with a lot of Doppler-effect. The whole opera is situated on the highway.
Our hearing is very much able to distinguish direction and speed.
The most important function of the hearing is : to warn for danger.
But my SatNav is never warning me!
It pretends car-driving is just as smooth as in a tv-commercial.
And I'm listening to a stupid voice who is telling me the whole time to turn my life to the right? Now. Turn To The Right.
By thinking of their canoes as stationary and the island around them as moving, they measure their traveling distance by the 'movement' of the islands. They call this system etak.
TheETAK Navigator'sroute visualization was adapted by Carolinian (Puluwatan)navigators who imagine their canoes to be stationary underthe stars while a reference island (oretak) moves. Theysuperimpose temporal landmarks on an inverted image of themovement of the etak island as a model of the voyage.
TheETAK Navigator was 'the first Commercially available automobile navigationsystem basedon map matching technology', usedrepresentation procedures that had been tried and tested incartography.
as singing navigators, to use with your TomTom
ETAK preview is presented at TedxDelft - 7 nov 2011
roll-over & listen: 
recordingsession NKK
