Enhancing Cultural Connections

Culture Foundry is a studio that creates interactive indigenous language learning platforms that reconnect learners with their culture by igniting a love for language. Using Rapport’s technology, Culture Foundry has been able to enrich their learning experience, creating AI avatars with fully localized facial animation and cultural nuances.

Protecting Languages 

Culture Foundry aims to create “tools to preserve and restore language,” particularly among indigenous populations in North America. 

For example; Ojibwe is the “heritage language of more than 200,000 Ojibwe people who reside in the United States and Canada…it is not a single standardized language, but a chain of linked local varieties, grouped into nearly a dozen dialects.” 

“Speakers of Ojibwe consider their language to be precise, descriptive, and visual, and feel that it is among the greatest treasures of their cultural heritage.” (Source).

Despite its importance, Ojibwe is becoming an endangered language as fewer and fewer are now speaking it. One of the problems is finding the right teaching resources. 

Language and Cultural Nuances

Rapport’s technology has a unique advantage when it comes to multi-lingual animation, it can be used to animate in any language, even fictional ones. Unlike most solutions, Rapport uses an anatomically correct model of the entire vocal tract - including the tongue - to achieve truly accurate lip-sync. It even detects emotional content in the voice, to give virtual beings the appropriate, nuanced facial expressions.

Georgia Clarke, Head of Data and Linguistics and Speech Graphics, says that “language and cultural-specific nuances are too often overlooked in animation, which has long focused on a select few widely-spoken languages.”

“However, we are seeing the need for more and more languages across various apps and platforms, and animators must be able to adapt to this challenge.”

A Cutting-Edge Tool

As mentioned above Ojibwe is made up of dozens of dialects which would be impossible to capture with traditional facial animation tools. However, Rapport’s platform allows Culture Foundry to think beyond traditional approaches and consider language, dialect, or even speaker-specific nuances and their corresponding muscle movements.

Chris French, Creative Director at the Culture Foundry said: “We had the need for an interactive language learning tool. While seemingly simple, it became quite complex to achieve…we began discussions, which soon turned into collaboration, with the result being an incredible and cutting edge learning tool.” 

Conclusion

By combining advanced AI features with a commitment to cultural revitalization, Culture Foundry has created a platform that not only teaches languages but also fosters a genuine love for the culture it represents. The success of this partnership underscores the potential of technology in preserving and promoting cultural heritage through immersive and emotionally intelligent learning experiences.