In June 2012, Taiwan was struck by heavy rain then a typhoon in quick succession and the TV news mentioned Typhoon Morakot on a number of occasions. People in this society will find it hard to forget the pain caused by swallowing of a whole village, Xiaolin, by a mudslide in 2009.

Reconstruction is still going on. Many memories of this village are waiting to be retrieved and reorganized. After the disaster, the Institute of Ethnology of Academia Sinica helped review disaster reconstruction policy from the angle of anthropology and also released over 2000 photographs of the Xiaolin Night Ceremony taken by Professor Pan Ying-hai during fieldwork in the village 1998-2000. After being sorted, the photographs were provided to the people of the village and the units involved in reconstruction.

To conduct field research, anthropologist go into the unknown, and by observing, recording, analyzing and comparing, let us have a more complete view of other cultures. The materials collected and notes taken reflect the lifestyles of different ethnic groups and bear their cultural memories

To allow these intangible cultural assets to be more widely known, the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, planned The Taiwanese Aboriginal Digital Archive Exhibition which opened on June 29 on the second floor of the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica; the exhibition has four parts: Anthropologists’ Fieldwork, Ethnography Audio and Video, Interactive Experience and Virtual Museum, giving visitors a chance to see the Taiwan indigenous peoples’ related image records and resources of the Institute.

In the Anthropologists’ Fieldwork area, visitors can see Tao men people pushing a boat to shore in photographs from 1957;these can be compared with photographs from the present time to see how their attire and movements have changed; we can see a big hand print on an old red cloth contract, testimony to the historic transfer of land;at the side, the results of research into Paiwan nose flutes and mouth flutes are also illustrated by cultural relics and films.

In another part of the exhibition area, documentaries about the ritual song and dance of the Amis, Rukai, Saisiat, Bunun, Puyuma ,Tsou and Paiwan tribes collected as part of the Taiwan Ethnology Video and Audio Archive Project are shown. In these film archives, we see a record of the music, attire, belief, ceremonies and life environment of Taiwan’s indigenous people, displaying the diversity of Taiwan’s culture and rich meaning, providing people with the basis on which to research and understand the traditional culture and modern evolution of Taiwan’s various indigenous tribes

In the Interactive Experience and Virtual Museum sections, technology is used to let more people break through the limitations of time and space and encounter and understand cultural relics and their information and meaning.The sorcery implements box of a Paiwan shaman provides a 3D browsing interface; by clicking on the mouse, it can be easily rotated and its pattern and lines viewed from all angles. After viewing it, the user can go to the interactive experience area and enter “Indigenous Elementary School”where their knowledge of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples will be tested, or go to “Precious Stone Square Box Adventure” where they can try to identify various totems and symbols, eliminating precious stones and scoring points, increasing their knowledge and understanding of indigenous culture easily by playing a game.

The people of Xiaolin lost their home in a mudslide but a part of the memories of the villagers has been preserved in the form of digital archives. In pictures, audio and video, the real scenes of the past are recreated.In this exhibition it is like we are following the footsteps of anthropologists deep into the everyday lives of indigenous people and, through their eyes, getting to know different ethnic groups of this land.The exhibition will run until December 15, 2012. Group bookings can be made in advance for every first Saturday of the month.