Lilian Leung

Future through Memory - Virtual Storytelling in Toronto's Chinatown

Future through Memory is a workshop framework and ongoing interactive documentary (living database) that is co-created with and for the Toronto Chinatown community. Through the participatory workshop, participants (co-creators) take part in knowledge sharing and are introduced to volumetric media capturing techniques (photogrammetry) to create their own site of memory (lieux de memoire) as conceptualized by Nora (1989) in virtual reality. This project is driven by the act of remembrance and reflection being transformative as well as an act of resistance, exploring the affordances of VR and interactive documentary techniques as methods of civic engagement. The project takes a mixed-methods approach to community-based participatory action research (CB-PARs) to create a decentralized database, where individuals retain ownership and are able to navigate their own agency with their memories.