Michael Kisombo
Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery

Introduction

The National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) has been involved in the group training course in Museum Management Technology conducted by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and as such has contributed largely to developing museums in the world. Through this contribution by Minpaku, the Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery has come to know Minpaku, after sending three of her staff for the said program. These officers are Mr. Paul Wanga, a technician within the Natural History museum, Mr. Owaka of the JK McCarthy museum located in the Eastern Highlands Province and the writer who was the principal education officer with the Papua New Guinea (PNG) National Museum and Art Gallery from August 1999 till January 2000. The museology course offered was clustered around the core functions of the museum from acquisition, research and documentation, conservation to exhibition and education.

The writer was attached to Minpaku during his practical training and has a great interest in the field of multimedia. Through his perseverance and ambition, he has successfully negotiated for some video equipment through Minpaku from Toppan Printing Co. Ltd. who donated the equipment to the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery. Apparently, the two museums have established a sister relationships to work in collaboration in certain joint research projects. The first one was the Toppan project in which the museums were presented with the video equipment and were tasked to document daily life events. The PNG National Museum and Art Gallery records these events and they are sent to Minpaku for editing. These events can then be produced in the form of video and distributed throughout PNG and Japan. The second joint research project is the Tsunami joint research project. The purpose of this essay is to consider the sister relationship of the two museums, and will focus mainly on the joint research projects in which the writer is involved.

The Toppan project

Many museums around the world are using various forms of multimedia to disseminate ethnographic information to societies around the world. Consistent with this notion, the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery has been privileged with a kind donation from Toppan Printing Co. Ltd in Japan, to work in collaboration with Minpaku to document such information and disseminate it to the public via various forms of multimedia. The writer has been involved in the project by shooting approximately 34 tapes of footage that were brought back to Minpaku in October 2001. These tapes are now being edited into various forms of multimedia and will be used throughout PNG and Japan and at various schools in the two countries. Whilst at Minpaku, the writer spent a week observing and directing one of the tapes at the studios where he did his practical work during the last month of his museology training. The staff of the Audio Visual section, under the supervision of Mr. Hitoshi Tagami, was very cooperative.

The utility value of this project is focused towards secondary and primary schools in PNG. While we think of various forms of multimedia, many schools in PNG have had video players donated to them, and as such, we hope to have our information in the form of VHS tapes. Information in the form of CD-ROM will be utilized in some primary and secondary schools after assessing the availability of this equipment. Other forms like DVD and website will also be made available eventually. The writer is working on the second phase of the project by taking further footage that will be edited next summer.

The Tsunami joint project

In November 2001, the writer was invited to accompany Associate Professor Isao Hayashi of Minpaku and Dr. Norio Maki of the Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Research Centre (EDM) of Japan to Sandaun province to investigate how the flows of tsunami affected people. This research was to find out how the people were coping after a huge wave that claimed more than 2,200 lives, destroyed food gardens and washed away all the households of the survivors of the Sissano lagoon people on Friday 17 July 1998. The writer's principal task was to record and interview the people on how they were currently progressing with their daily lives at their new location under the auspice of the counterpart researchers. As soon as the colleagues from Japan arrived in Port Moresby, we had a brief session at the museum with the Director and other senior staff. The writer then prepared the video accessories ready for the trip into the lagoon. Firstly, the writer reviewed the filming techniques taught to him by Mr. Tagami and his staff at Minpaku. For instance, zooming techniques, wide and close shots and the careful selection of scenes for editing. It was agreed that the scenes taken will be brought back to Minpaku for editing, and later will be used to promote awareness of natural disasters for the people of PNG and other areas. We set off for Sandaun province and into the lagoon the following day. Whilst in the disaster-affected area, we traveled by a dinghy to every village around the lagoon; Arop 1 and 2, Olbrum, Rowoi, and Wipon. Every time we visited an area, the writer had to take shots during the interviews and the activities of the villagers. The video camera was so compact and produced some very high quality images and sound. Each night the writer would check the recordings in order to make sure they had been recorded successfully. The results of the shots were so impressive. The video techniques taught me whilst training at Minpaku was well executed. Moreover, each time a mistake was made, it reminded the writer of how Mr. Tagami would really press on hard during a week's intensive training using some of those sophisticated video equipment at Minpaku. Zooming in and out was not a problem to me except that simple mistakes had incurred. This would be corrected as more filming are done with the Toppan project.