Cultural heritage in the age of real time media: developing the Living Avatars Network

Abstract

Cultural heritage in Singapore is a contested zone in which various interests, starting with tourism marketing campaigns and ending with identity building of a multicultural society, compete over the function and the definition of the collective and personal past. How to preserve memories and experiences in a city that is changing rapidly and how to reflect upon the changes? How to negotiate between the disappearing and forgotten past and the omnipresent future in Singapore? With a team of five students we conducted a series of design experiments and probes to discover novel ways for motivating people to take a heritage walk which can engage both locals and nonlocals into experiencing Singapore and its ethnic and cultural diversity. In our working prototype “Living Avatars Network” we evaluated a design idea of a real-time interface for outsourcing experiences as an incentive for a special type of walk which connects not only the past with the present but also serves as a platform for intercultural and intergenerational dialogue. Singapore is an ideal place to test such interactions between the emerging technologies and the disappearing traditions. In our project we designed a novel form of “practicing” and reliving cultural heritage in the age of ubiquitous and real time technologies that bring very different temporalities into play.