The Long Goodbye

Yushi Chen

The communities of boat-dwelling people are mainly concentrated in the inland sea, in river harbours and in areas with zigzag coastlines. These areas have slow currents, low wind and waves, large shallow beaches and rich fishery resources. It is suitable for boat-dwelling people to establish solid fishing rafts, not only to sail their boats to the sea to catch fish, but also to carry out some aquaculture in the rafts.  Under the effect of global warming, sea level rise is the most intuitive threat to the living environment of boat-dwelling families, and boat-dwelling houses in low- lying coastal areas will be submerged. In addition, global warming has led to an increase in typhoons and heavy rains, which not only increase the risk of fishing at sea, but also may damage the living environment of boat-dwelling families. The industrialisation process that started gradually from the Qing Dynasty (1616-1911) led to the improvement of fishermen’s boats, the shortening of the fishing operation time and the beginning of the energy and excess labour of the boat-dwelling people, who began to consider the education of their children who went to school ashore.

When personal memories are melded into collective memories attached to the physical space to which they refer, they form an ambient, collective city memory (Ringas et al. 2011) In this case, memories that generate cultural value are included in the city’s memory.

In the transition of the city, urban memory is used for the preservation of the culture in three steps in Urban Memory: Cognition, Signs, Symbols, Identity, and Beyond(Cheshmehzangi, 2021):

(1) Capturing the realities of experience
(2) Reproducing the perception of place
(3) Remembering through urban palimpsests (Cheshmehzangi, 2021, p. 2)

Physical preservation of the original site will only give us a certain understanding of the living culture of the boat-dwelling family. If the impact of environmental and social factors is completely erased and the original state is preserved for future display, audience will not be able to understand the reasons for the formation of the cultural heritage and the cultural background, which also simplifies the interaction between human beings and the culture. The preservation of memory at the urban scale relies on the conservation of architecture, the reorganisation of public space, and the citizens can travel between significant buildings to create new memories.

The experimental methodology builds on the urban memory preservation approach and establishes interaction with dynamic culture. Displaying tangible heritage does not reflect its cultural integrity, dynamism and continuity (Wang et al., 2010). Cultural heritage, in this paper, refers to the living space of boat-dwelling families, and in order to represent the three characteristics it possesses, the three steps of the urban memory preservation methodology need to be altered.

In a design paradigm, however, the solution is not locked away somewhere waiting to be discovered but lies in the creative work of the team. The creative process generates ideas and concepts that have not existed before. These are more likely to be triggered by observing the odd practices of an amateur carpenter or the incongruous detail in a mechanic’s shop than by hiring expert consultants or asking “statistically average” people to respond to a survey or fill out a questionnaire. (Brown, 2009, p. 30)

In order to avoid the influence of strong habits on the spatial cognition of observing space, we may need to observe space from perspectives that are not commonly used, and the digital processing of new technologies offers more possibilities.

Zoedepth: 2D to 3D

Zoe Depth converts 2D images into 3D scene images and diminishes the visual sense of lines. With clear solid lines gone, it is easier for the observer’s centre of vision to naturally spread out across the space rather than focusing on a single detail.

Digitalize: lighting view
When observing an interior space with the normal naked eye, light is affected by different materials. With the Light View treatment, the diffusion of light through a window or door can be observed under different lighting conditions.

Digitalize: Point cloud processing
Point cloud: Point cloud processing weakens the boundaries of the space and reduces redundant information in the space. It allows the observer to get the fastest understanding of the space pattern. The structure of a boathouse is narrow and crowded, while a foothillhouse is spacious and empty.

Following the three-step experiment, we went through capturing information, changing perspectives, and creating interaction. It is my hope that when viewers interact with the space of inherited culture, a shift in perception will occur and they will realise the dynamism of culture. This means that more and more people will not just notice the materiality of the artefacts when viewing them, but the immaterial culture behind them.

Using AR technology, the project allowed visitors to scan the artefacts with a mobile phone filter, and the augmented reality feature then unfolded the history behind the artefacts, accompanied by audio and images of how the artefacts were looted during the colonial period. (COTW, 2022)

If the interior spaces of the disappearing groups are recorded in a powerful database similar to the neural network algorithm of wework in future interior design research on cultural preservation and can be used to record and analyse frequent stops, light data, spatial perception of boat-dwelling families, it will greatly help outsiders to understand their space usage. As the use of interior space has a strong correlation with their living habits, we can restore their original life through the preserved information of space use. A new understanding of its dynamic cultural values is constantly being developed as a way of passing on culture.

While the objects that carry culture are inevitably fading, each iteration of the objects is documented and created to produce new memories and interactions with people. This process is like giving these objects more time and opportunity to say a long goodbye.