Abstract

Cartography and architecture are official channels that facilitate remembrance in Ho Chi Minh City. Maps and buildings serve as sites for actors of memory to manipulate the city's narratives and shape its collective identity. Power enables the production of space and knowledge through sites of memory. The ruling regimes of Ho Chi Minh City have leveraged control over the natural environment and the local population to create new forms of materials that propagate their ideologies and ideals for the city. Alterations to the natural and built environments in the city legitimize the authorities' official narratives for its history and future developments. This project explores the context and subtext of urban memory and its formation, using critical augmented reality to visualize the sites of memory. The design of the supplementary augmented reality application takes into consideration the computational theory behind the technology and the development tools for digital historical narratives. In addition, as this study investigates the complicity of science in promoting colonialism, imperialism, nationalism and uninformed nostalgia within the urban setting, it also critiques the use of a new form of technology, augmented reality, in memory formation and other historical processes. Augmented reality offers unprecedented potentials for history and other disciplines thanks to its accessibility and performance; however, the pitfalls of technology require developers and users to remain aware of the implications and assumptions behind each design.

Advisor

Byrnes, Denise

Second Advisor

Ng, Margaret Wee Siang

Department

Computer Science; History

Disciplines

Architecture | Asian History | Computer Sciences | Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces | Historic Preservation and Conservation | History | Landscape Architecture | Urban, Community and Regional Planning

Keywords

architecture, cartography, memory, Ho Chi Minh City, augmented reality, power, identity, urban memory, feature detection, vuforia

Publication Date

2020

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis Exemplar

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