The similarities between a lukasa board, a cultural memory artifact used by the Luba people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a personal computer are amazing. Or you can go further and say that equally amazing are the similarities between a lukasa board and a cell phone. Or if you want to go even further, you can say how amazing the similarities are between a lukasa board and a multi-user collaborative video game.

If you want to see one, go to the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum at Georgia Tech to the “Mapping Place: Africa Beyond Paper” exhibit. 

The concept of the lukasa board fell onto the fertile ground of Georgia Tech's Synaethetics Laboratory, better known as the “Synlab,” which the university established to explore opportunities provided by new media and to support creative practices that bridge the physical and digital words.

A team of Georgia Tech professors and students  began to discuss the potential of implementing some of the traditional uses of the lukasa boards technologically.

Among those involved were Kenneth J. Knoepsel, the professor of engineering and liberal arts; Yves Abrioux, director of the PhD program in humanities at the University of Paris 8, Vincennes-St. Denis and Ali Mazalek, who was director of the Synlab before moving to Ryerson University in Toronto where she is the Canadian research chair in digital media and innovation.

It wasn't long before they had the idea of developing a digital platform with an application enabling the making and telling of stories electronically. Instead of gawking at the lukasa board or at the maps on display, visitors will be able to transmit their own experiences and memories onto the platform reminiscent of how the lukasa boards have been used traditionally.

The exhibition is part of the Africa Atlanta 2014 program that has been organized by Jacqueline Royster, dean of Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and Geneviève Verbeek, consul general of Belgium, the current consul general of Belgium in Atlanta.

You can read the full article at Global Atlanta.com.