Brett Leavy Australian
Overview
Brett Leavy is a digital artist, immersive heritage specialist, and descendant of the Kooma people of South East Queensland. For over three decades, he has pioneered the concept of "Digital Aboriginality," using emerging technologies to reconstruct the pre-colonial landscapes of First Nations Australia. As the founder of Bilbie XR Labs and the creator of Virtual Songlines, Leavy describes his work as a "virtual time machine" — a digital twin of the past that allows users to walk in the footsteps of ancestors.
Leavy’s practice is defined by his commitment to Indigenous Data Sovereignty. He customises an offline open-source configuration of Generative AI software, carefully orchestrated together, to ethically, accurately and authentically recreate First Nations histories, cultures, and lifestyles within a temporal spatial encapsulation. By restricting these powerful image and video generation tools through lore and custom guardrails, his "Lore-Governed" geographical information systems framework ensures that all synthesised heritage areas and objects remain culturally accurate and community-owned, avoiding the extractive nature of commercial cloud-based AI.
Leavy’s practice is defined by his commitment to Indigenous Data Sovereignty. He customises an offline open-source configuration of Generative AI software, carefully orchestrated together, to ethically, accurately and authentically recreate First Nations histories, cultures, and lifestyles within a temporal spatial encapsulation. By restricting these powerful image and video generation tools through lore and custom guardrails, his "Lore-Governed" geographical information systems framework ensures that all synthesised heritage areas and objects remain culturally accurate and community-owned, avoiding the extractive nature of commercial cloud-based AI.
His work, which he terms Spatially Temporal Interactive Cultural Heritage Experiences (STICHE), has been featured in major institutions including the Sydney Opera House, National Maritime Museum, and the Daejeon Museum of Art in South Korea. Currently a PhD candidate at QUT, Leavy continues to advance the "Helix Protocol," a method for embedding cultural authority into the very code of the metaverse.