Being in a place

Perhaps surprisingly given the camera resolution, a strong sense of being in a place was communicated through LAN. If anything the medium quality of the camera contributed to the experience. Figure 6 shows three views of a team member sitting down (Figure 6 (left), the avatar team moving through the hawker centre (centre) and other people (right).

FIGURE 6: Views of the hawker stall and hawker centre roof (left), walking through the hawker centre (centre) and particular people (right)

Thus the sense of ‘being there’ offered through LAN was not static. There was a sense of an ongoing experience (see below), movement and change communicated through the camera being still or ‘shaky’. LAN also highlighted aspects of a place that are more unusual but important for getting a sense of a place – a hawker stall sign, the roof (Figure 6 (left)), and the walls (Figure 6 (centre)). LAN also offered views on anonymous others populating a place, walking through it and having their lunch (Figure 6 (right)). There was also a sense of capturing the mundane reality of a place through these views, a reality that is often glossed when trying to promote a place as a heritage site. Food and hawker centres are an important part of life in Singapore – they are not just visited by tourists but also lived by residents. LAN captured the different kinds of food available in a hawker centre (Figure 7), the soundscape and colours of the place as well as the particular food choices of the avatar team (Figure 7 (left)) and a sense of engaging in lunch together (Figure 7 (right)). The latter was particularly evident when the camera moved and panned from one seated person to the next.

FIGURE 7: The visitor’s lunch (left) and a team member eating (right)

The multi-faceted sense of ‘being in a place’ that LAN supports also seems important for both ethnography and heritage.

Key trajectories and interactions

The team’s experience in the hawker centre, captured through LAN resembled a journey or trajectory (Strauss, 1993) with distinct stages.

FIGURE 8: The front of the dessert stall (left); ice kacang on the menu (right)

In one particular case they ordered a dessert from a stall called ‘ice kacang’ – a combination of crushed ice and sweet toppings distinctive to Singapore. This firstly involved going to the stall (Figure 8 (left)), checking who was there (extract below), viewing the menu (Figure 8 (right) and extract below).

G: “Is your friend with you?”
A: “Sorry.”
G: “is your friend with you?”
…
A: “Can you let me see the menu? I can see but it’s quite blurry.”
A: “Quite blurry ah?”
G: “I can see it’s ice kacang right?”
A: “Okay.”
G: “Okay”