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"Inuit Idol" contest hits Igloolik

Nunavut Independent TV Network brings drum dance contest live to the Web

SARA MINOGUE

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
The NITV crew in their editing suite. From left right: Caroline Kunnuk (host), Natar Ungalaaq (executive producer), Chris Awa (technician), Aaron Kunuk (technician). (PHOTO COURTESY OF NITV)

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This weekend will mark the first time in history that the winner of an Inuit drum-dance contest is declared online.

Nunavut Independent Television Network (NITV), Igloolik's local community television station, is launching its new web site with a cash-prize "Inuit Idol" contest held during Igloolik's Easter festivities on April 15.

Last night, 12 contestants competed in front of three judges in the Igloolik elementary school. Video clips of the performances were posted on http://nitv.nu, where visitors could vote for their favorites.

Zacharias Kunuk, of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner fame, came up with the idea after watching "Canadian Idol."

Six finalists will perform again tonight in a qaggiq built to fit 50 to 60 people. The event will air throughout Igloolik on NITV's cable channel 12, and to the rest of Nunavut through a live video stream on the web. There's $3,800 in prize money up for grabs.

The contest is actually a low bandwidth experiment, says Katarina Soukup on behalf of NITV. The station currently has Internet access through Ardicom's "IP Stream" service, which provides them with a stable, but relatively slow 64K connection.

But after the Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation and SSI Micro get Igloolik upgraded to a wireless broadband service, perhaps as soon as July, they'll have a faster connection for streaming video. Most Nunavut communities are expected to have the service by 2005.

When that happens, NITV plans to continue developing its web site with video-on-demand and an archive of programming from the last 15 years.

"The wireless service has a range of about 20 miles," Soukup says. "One of our goals is to set up a remote media lab out on the land and present programming live from the floe edge."

Three years ago, Soukup and Kunuk actually did that with the Nunatinnit Nomadic Media Lab.

Over five days in August, the group documented daily life at the Kunuk family's summer outpost in Tasiujaq. The result was a series of webcasts, made up of one-minute audio and video segments that were compressed into files small enough to stream over dial-up connections.

The technology for this version of "Inuit Idol" is not much different right now, but the advent of wirelss broadband across Nunavut will make any web programming bigger, better and faster.

For starters, NITV hopes to run "Inuit Idol" on an annual basis.

"Eventually we'd also like to be able to exchange programming with other local stations in other communities," Soukup said.

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