The SXSW XR Competition jury prize winner REFLECTIONS OF LITTLE RED DOT had some really innovative mixed reality integrations, and was also a part of a new trend of cultivating an archive of material as an artistic practice. This piece by director Chloé Lee featured about 3 hours of documentary interview footage shot in Singapore starting in 2015 exploring a variety of different themes. Originally started with the intent to create a documentary to learn more about her mother’s homeland, Lee turned to mixed reality to create sets of themes featuring looping clips from interviews she conducted to tell the story of Singapore. The experience creates a sense of wandering that you get when exploring a new place, and allows you to dip in and out of different flows of thought. You can navigate these different themes by placing a physical photo slide into a retro slide projector that only takes one slide at a time. Once you pop it in, then you immediately see a mixed reality light creating a holographic Singaporean table where you can sit down and navigate 5-6 different clips. It’s one of the more compelling uses of mixed reality I’ve seen that creates a holographic illusion that you use your body to edit between these different interview clips. The jury statement reads, “Deceptively humble and delightful, this open-world documentary invites us to freely explore a country in transition. Guided by a daring new talent in XR storytelling, it confronts us with the vulnerability of everyday life, evoking a universal sense of place.”
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of special computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my series of looking at different immersive stories from South by Southwest 2025, I'm going to be continuing my series where I'm looking at different projects that have elements of mixed reality, but also there's some projects both here at South by Southwest, but also at if a doc lab 2024 that started to have this theme of artists that are curating and cultivating different sets of archives and doing something interesting with that. In this case, the director Chloe Lui had been traveling to Singapore since 2015 and had been gathering interviews and documentary footage she originally thought she was gonna be putting together this film, but ended up finding different themes that were trying to tell the story of place. and give you this sense that you're kind of wandering around and coming across these different bits of information that are aggregated around these different themes. And so it's around three hours of footage and you have about half hour to see as much as you can. The previous slot that I was seeing it didn't show up. So I had 45 or 50 minutes to get through probably around a quarter of it. But it's also kind of looping when you're watching these different clips. So it's not starting from a consistent context. So it's kind of jumping in the middle and you kind of get this feeling of kind of dipping in and out of a slipstream that is trying to create this feeling of wandering as you're going through and discovering different things around Singapore. So the mixed reality component was really super strong in this experience. And what Chloe did was she had like these actual slides that you put into a slide projector and they had like written on it a title or topic that you could go into. And so there's this like 1950s projector that was there. put it in a slot it's like a type of slide projector that you can only show one side at a time and when you slot it in then immediately it clicks on and you see this mixed reality projection come out of this projector and create this whole hologram table and there's these seats and you sit around and by moving your body you're kind of editing through these different clips again creating this abstraction of wandering through the city by going around this table That whole effect was super magical because it was like instantaneous. Once you clicked it in, then it immediately flipped on. There must have been some way that it's communicating. They did a brilliant job of communicating between this projector and the headset to really make this responsive mixed reality effect. And I think that the jurors are also super impressed overall with this experience and ended up winning the grand jury prize this year at Southwest Southwest. And I just wanted to read the jury statement for what they said about this experience. Disciplely humble and delightful, this open world documentary invites us to freely explore a country in transition. Guided by a daring new talent in XR storytelling, it confronts us with the vulnerability of everyday life, evoking a universal sense of place. And so, yeah, and also just the fact that More and more artists, I think, are going to be starting to create these different archives of material and that XR is this perfect medium to start to explore these different archives. And I'll be diving into the next interview. I'll be covering that as a topic as well. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Chloe happened on Tuesday, March 11th, 2025 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:03:33.564] Chloé Lee: Hello, my name is Chloe Lee. I'm an artist and producer, creator. And this time I'm showing a work called Reflections of Little Red Dot. I guess I would say that I have a documentary background, but also fine arts. And I work a lot at the intersection of art and technology. And I really appreciate experimental works that are artistic. And we also like playing around with these new technologies, I would say. to try to find new applications for them that can show these stories or i would say also like conceptual work in different ways and yeah i mean last time i worked with haptics and i worked with a fashion designer to create kind of a unique art piece that's wearable and now this time we've hacked into some old projector and now made it work so that it controls a mixed reality experience that's walkable
[00:04:26.618] Kent Bye: Yeah. And maybe give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:04:32.040] Chloé Lee: Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I had this film school background and I started off more in film production, so more working in traditional storytelling and 2D works, film works. But then I, you know, during pandemic, I got very much into creating these 3D immersive worlds and going into my own head because, you know, we were in lockdown, we were by ourselves. So thinking about externalizing internal worlds and I've always been a dabbler you know like I I love playing with new technologies learning new softwares and you know give me like a week to myself and I could be doing these all-nighters just because I want to figure out how it works and I work with Lucas Martini based in Berlin and we have a company together present futures and so he's experimental developer he's great he's a rapid prototyper and so I think together because I come from more of the storytelling and this conceptual side, we find interesting uses for new ways to use the technology together. And yeah, I think ever since Temporal Worlds, the first one we did, which is a memory, a personal memory project that's interactive with these sculptable point cloud like vast universal world that you can walk through we kind of expanded that and as the technology comes out we're working together just try to find ways to make impactful experiences that are different I like to take risks I would say like I like that process of trying things out and then not everything works but then maybe there's an idea there and then it carries on to the next project we kind of like to make things quickly see what works see what doesn't work but Yeah, I like the process of collaborating with other people and seeing what can come out of people with really different backgrounds.
[00:06:12.789] Kent Bye: You know, this project's really interesting on a technological front, but you're also telling a pretty broad and wide-ranging story about a place. And so maybe you could just give a bit more context for how it came about.
[00:06:23.877] Chloé Lee: Sure. Yeah. So, well, it did start 10 years ago in 2015. It's a Singaporean archive. It actually started because, well, my mom's Singaporean and so that's in my family heritage. And I really wanted to get to know this place. And I started going, I grew up in California, so it was quite the trip, you know, over 20 hour flight. And when I was younger, you know, I grew up in California. I didn't, I guess I felt like I was a little bit different from the landscape I didn't know so much about my family history or it wasn't very present in my surroundings. And so i've always had that yearning I think to connect with that and so hearing about these places like Singapore, and when I you know, basically, was my grandmother was getting really old. And, you know, it was that sense of urgency to kind of meet her and that she was kind of this holder of this history and the stories. And, you know, and I think a lot of people probably have that sense, especially growing up in America, that, you know, they're trying to connect with certain diaspora. You have an idea of that. You don't really know what that is because you've never experienced that. And so, yeah, I would go to Singapore. It started when, you know, she was getting up there to her 90s. And then we started going every year because she was just like a fighter. She like lost until 96 years old. And, you know, you hear these stories of how it used to be in Singapore. you know, all in one generation since like before the 60s, they grew up with very minimal amenities, you know, many, many people to kind of village style houses with no running sewage system and all of this. And all in one generation, you know, you hear stories from grandparents, oh, this is how it used to be. And even people who were my parents age had grown up maybe in those kinds of conditions and now you know one of the most advanced societies in the world high high living standards and you know globalization and like gentrification these things are happening in many urban areas and big cities so i think like a lot of the themes that i was discovering you know of course like even if you've never been to singapore like i found it really fascinating because i was living in new york when i started actually filming so i had been going to singapore hearing this becoming more and more curious And then I actually in 2015 finally went with like the film crew and actually started meeting Singaporeans who had different stories of where they were trying to preserve different historical sites. And I wanted to kind of get to know the country outside of my family and see how people were actually taking action and how they felt. And now that year is actually their 50th year of independence. So the country had like different events happening around the country to celebrate their 50th year. And, you know, over that time, of course, they reached huge economic success. And so, you know, they're very proud of this. But then I guess some of the people I talked to, you know, were kind of thinking, okay, well, what's next? What's the next 50 years? And kind of really reflectively examining how the place has changed. Like, do they like all the changes? And a lot of people I talked to also felt like a bit unrooted. Like the pace of life obviously is very different in a village than it is, you know, in a big city where people are trying to get these jobs. They work nine to fives. And also the housing setup was changing a lot from like the communal style villages to, you know, then high rises that would come down and to be rebuilt into higher high rises. And so I think people are trying to like latch onto that and really thinking about what was happening and where the country was going. And so, yeah, there's a range of voices though. So it's not, you know, all people who are preserving. I think like many, many people are also talking about you know, how they're multitasking or also how like the way that urban design, you know, factors into how they feel connected to people around them or, or more disconnected. We get to also see like, you know, the last Kampong, which Kampong is a village in Malay. So like you could still see physical evidence of the old way of life. And so I think a lot of the young people too, who maybe don't necessarily have those experiences, maybe felt discontent with the pace of life, you know, kind of latch on to the few things, the few reminders of the way things used to be, which wasn't actually so far in the distant past. But anyway, yeah, I think it just started with this curiosity of, yeah, like what happens if all these places disappear and people were trying to hold on to them was there another way of preserving that because there was also like heritage society that I spoke with and you know different organizations talking about conservation and when they're talking about this of course it's like you know preserving a physical building or facade you know what does that mean compared to you know what are people actually trying to hold on to and talking about the difficulties of preserving intangibles you know and how do you really go about that and so but I was really fascinated with like Some of the young people, I think. I think I related a little with the age group. You know, I'm in my 30s now, and people that I met, like Carmen Lo, she grew up in Singapore, and I think she said that she was very, like, inspired because of her family's, like, this multi-generation owner of a traditional Chinese medicine shop. I mean, she grew up with the local businesses and felt a strong relationship with the individual people. And with the gentrification that she kind of shows us through some of the streets, she says how she's trying to create new spaces that, to her, embody those ideas, those kinds of relationships, but through newer events. So there's still electronic music events that she curates in her rooftop restaurant, for instance. So just like this idea of the merging the old and the new. So I think that's also kind of what inspired this form of merging old and new that you see in the installation where it's kind of this empty space. It's like a new space, you know, and kind of injecting was like things from the past into this new space and kind of transforming into something where you see, yeah, the old, but it's clearly, you know, not a recreation of that.
[00:12:22.208] Kent Bye: Okay, so I have a clarifying question around the origins of the project, because you said that you were going to Singapore to visit your grandmother. You also said you went in 2015, but you had already had a film crew that you were taking for your first trip?
[00:12:34.011] Chloé Lee: So 2015 is when we filmed, so I had been visiting prior to that.
[00:12:38.592] Kent Bye: So you had already been visiting for a while, and then what was the point under which that you decided that you wanted to start capturing footage in 2015?
[00:12:47.735] Chloé Lee: So long ago. I guess I didn't know how to explore the questions. I also, in New York, I decided I had been wanting to make a film. I was, you know, I came out of film school and it was kind of my, the first time that I went and started documenting stories from... topic that I was personally interested in before that I was kind of freelancing on other people's works a lot of interviews and this sort of thing and I guess it was also a way for me to connect more with Singapore itself because it's part of my family's history and I was still in California and still in New York and I felt like I hadn't fully explored that and so I think the act of going in with a camera you know or you know how it is like you can go in and you have your device that is kind of this proxy that gives you a reason to connect with the people in the place.
[00:13:39.879] Kent Bye: Yeah, I mean, I completely know what you mean, because, you know, in some sense, I love to see these projects and talk to people. So I understand the power of having a way of chasing my own curiosity, but also capturing it for sharing it to the world. And the output of this project is so experimental. I'm trying to get a sense of like, if you had a sense of what the end point was going to be when you started it in terms of As you're capturing all this stuff, if you were like chasing your curiosity or if you were also like imagining that this would be like a 2D film or if you really wanted to just also capture these archives and find new ways of exhibiting it. So the output also determines the way that you're taking it in. So just trying to get a sense of the origins to understand the evolution of it.
[00:14:19.684] Chloé Lee: That's a good question. Yeah. So I originally thought it was going to be, you know, the traditional documentary. And actually in this one, you hear my voiceover kind of framing up every slide, which has an array of different videos from different perspectives on one set theme that did not exist going into filming. Yeah, no, I was thinking, okay, linear documentary, it was going to have this kind of message, you would hear an array of voices that kind of all spoke to one like final storyline. But actually, as I after I went there, and then after looking at the footage, it was like, there were so many beautiful moments and being in spaces that I thought it was necessary, I think, to be in the places for X amount of time, like there's one shot, I don't know if you saw it, but Carmen brings us into her grandmother's the TCM shop and it's like back past the front of the store you meet her whole family and then on the back you know she serves the soup and they talk a little bit about that and I just thought you know with the traditional documentary and this linear durational piece that, you know, all these bits would be cut and I had to select just these sound bites and then weave them into this very singular, defined narrative. And I thought a lot of the viewpoints were different or they showed different aspects and they had different nuances. And really what was I, all their voices were supposed to come together to be this collective voice, right? And I thought that the collective voice was maybe more like the multiplicity of it and that maintains the differences and so that's why actually you hear like when you stand further away from the table and all the videos are around a round table which is like a scan that's very very commonly found of Like public housing, they have these shared common roundtables and so like I put together this like metaphorical roundtable discussion, where you see like the voices are in conversation with each other and there's some figural drawings to represent the people. But when you stand away from it and you're just looking at the projection out of the scene of people talking. Then you just hear this kind of like fragmented voices, all of the voices all at once. And it's meant to just sound like a sea of voices, like a collective voice. But then to maintain each individual story, which I think that that's important, you find what's interesting to you. I think, you know, not everything is going to be interesting for everyone. There's also just so much footage that I don't think it makes sense to watch every moment. But yeah, you can sit in on one particular conversation, one video from one person's story, and actually the sound will die down. So that way you can hear clearly that person's voice and that particular place.
[00:16:56.309] Kent Bye: It's sort of like exploring an archive where it's broken up to different themes and that you have this really cool mixed reality effect of having a slide projector that is shooting out virtual beams of light. But as you're picking a slide that has the overall theme and you put it in, you slide it, and then it clicks on, the light turns on, and then it has this kind of like holographic effect of the table that's there in some ways reminds me of like the star wars scene when they're playing chess because it's kind of like a chess board but it's being holographically projected and you have five or six different video clips and so before you sit down you have like an overall context setting of introducing the theme of each of the clips and then when you sit down then you have a 2d video that pops up One kind of logistical note in terms of the looping nature, and just to also clarify, so it seems like each of these videos are on a loop, and that sometimes when I would start it, it would start in the middle of the loop. So sometimes when I find pieces that are looping, I find that sometimes it's easier to track if I start from a beginning point. And so I'm wondering if you considered, as you sit down, starting from the beginning, because in the middle, sometimes it was like, oh, I don't fully get the full context of what's being talked about in this clip, and so I'll have to wait for a loop, and then I'd have to almost watch it all over again, and then I didn't necessarily have time to do all that, so then I would sort of move on. So sometimes I would feel like I was kind of missing some of the context, and so it was harder for me to sink into the discussion because it wasn't starting at a clear point, so... Yeah, I'd just love to hear specifically that decision.
[00:18:28.678] Chloé Lee: Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course I considered, does it start from the head every time, like if you step away and then you step in? I think you still get a sense, even though it loops, enough context. And if you really are interested in that one, you can decide for it to circle back around. Also, in the beginning of the slides, there's kind of an intro of, you know, like we met these people, and it gives you a little bit of context of the main takeaways of what you'll see and so yeah in like a video installation I think it's pretty common that you might have a series of videos on a certain topic that loop it back around and it lets the viewer kind of have that freedom to pick and choose like there's literally no constraint because I think also forcing it back to the video head in the front it's like forcing someone to watch this video again so it's yeah yeah it's definitely a creative choice I think I see what you're saying because I definitely thought hard about that one
[00:19:21.960] Kent Bye: Yeah, that'd be one tweak that I would consider is like starting the beginning. But then at that point, then are you just watching like a linear documentary? So it's sort of like trade-offs there.
[00:19:30.806] Chloé Lee: I was going to add to that too. It's like, I think certain videos could make it a little more, like if you had more time, for instance, I think that's also another factor because here we You know, people have 30 minute slots and it's chaotic. You want to move from one thing to the next, but it's really meant for this kind of more open-ended space that people can freely walk around. And normally in exhibits, you do have that. I think also certain videos that are more of an overview, I would say it's, you know, more superficial. Some of them are created really to be looped and some of them though are hard because it is like a journey. Like if that someone is taking you through a space. Yeah, then maybe it makes a little more sense to have. But, you know, you come in in the middle of the tour and then you see like you'll see one place and then the thing is, is that you might also see that person in another slide. So I also set it up to be like a puzzle to be figured out, too, if you like that person. I didn't put all that person's footage on one slide, for instance. So I kind of thought, you know, some people might also be interested in hopping around. For instance, you might have seen a family party. There was this very loud family party where you actually see a few of the characters all in one party, and they make reference to the last kampong. So, I mean, that's actually further in. But if you hear that and then you hear Last Kampong, only reference, you know, they don't go into it in that slide. But then, you know, you can pop back in earlier. There's actually a tour of that place or there's little references. So, you know, you can jump around and even like you don't necessarily go from one slide, you can go from one video like that and say, oh, wait, I saw that somewhere else. And so it really can change the narrative, the order in which you see things like that. There were little like eggs I put that way and this way. And I thought, OK, then maybe they can go here. And then I thought, these are kind of maybe the paths that people tend to go down.
[00:21:16.099] Kent Bye: Yeah, what I noticed was that it was really cool effect actually how you had the video playing and then when you went up to it it was picking up right where the thumbnail was playing and so you had this sense of like a shortcut but the problem I had was that it was all people talking it wasn't like spatial or spatial context and so it was basically like other people talking but I don't have enough context to see these five thumbnails of people talking to know any difference between any of them because If there was like a spatial guided tour where the point of focus was a place, then I'd be like, oh, that looks interesting. I want to go to that place. So it was more like people talking. And so I had no sense of what the difference was. So I just systematically went through each of them.
[00:21:56.296] Chloé Lee: I'll say something that I set it up to be walking through a space in this way because it's a little bit like getting to know a place. I think that most of the people here have never been to Singapore or don't know that much about it. or certainly haven't gone to these places. And so it's a little bit like how, I mean, I like to kind of explore, especially I don't like an agenda, you know? So I prefer to be dropped in a place have a whole day open and just kind of follow where I think what might be interesting and I set it up a bit like that where some things might be kinda boring to someone and the thing is is when you're wandering a city like that you don't really have the context and then yeah maybe you'll talk to somebody you know they might give you a little snippet but they're not gonna be your higher target unless yeah you could pay for that you know but like you know that's not the thing you kinda go down maybe it's not that interesting but then hey you go another way and then when you work to find it and it makes it extra But filming, it's like you found that thing that you really like, and then you can follow that. So it's a bit like that, how you get to know a place through wandering.
[00:22:56.163] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so when you were choosing the different themes, is that something that when you were filming it that you were already covering, or is that something that emerged in the post-production?
[00:23:05.509] Chloé Lee: that emerged. It was all through the material that dictated everything. I mean, that was another thing when filming it. I didn't know, you know, I had the questions, the curiosity, and I think I probably just wouldn't have done it if I knew all the answers, you know, where the fun and be in that. So, I mean, yeah, it was really like people had these stories and it was really interesting what they said. And so that's what formed the themes. I just kind of looked at what themes came out of what people were saying. It was really just trying the form, trying to highlight what was there and what people wanted to talk about.
[00:23:36.595] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so when I did my session, the person before me didn't show up, so I actually had like an extra 10 or 15 minutes. So I spent maybe 40, 45, maybe up to 50 minutes in it. And I was able to get through each of the clips, but I wouldn't say that I was necessarily retaining all the information that was said in each of them. And so if you were to take all the footage that you have in this piece and put it back to back on the timeline, how long would that runtime be?
[00:24:03.456] Chloé Lee: in this version there is quite a lot i mean there's like three hours yeah no we were just doing a playthrough and i mean we accidentally went to almost an hour 30 and we did not go through all of the content so and there was actually more that i wanted to fit in but there were kind of odds that i couldn't quite put into the themes i think i can spend longer and try because i mean there was for instance there was some interesting performance works who go really into how you know like these double entendres and puns that they would do based off of Singlish and talking about how, you know, they did these experimental formats to be able to talk about kind of touchy, I would say touchy topics where they would drop out, you know, the act two. They had people during intermission would read the script on their chairs because they weren't allowed to perform this. But this piece, I would say, it focuses a lot on the cultural side of it. I wouldn't say it's overtly political.
[00:25:00.441] Kent Bye: Yeah, so I probably saw like a quarter of the content then through my pay through of going through 50 minutes. But I would often start the first clip, it would start near the beginning. And then when it would fade to black, I would move on just to keep moving because I was trying to, I don't know, I guess I'm a completionist. I try to see everything. It was sort of like taking a little taste of each of the different clips. And so the fragmentary nature of the structure of the piece also gave me kind of a fragmented experience of the piece where if you were to ask, like, what was everything that was said in the scene, I have difficulty re-articulating it. So sometimes I found myself kind of wandering, but sometimes in that wandering and aimlessness, my memory of it is somewhat unrooted to understand the full context and then to be able to retain it. So I guess it's this kind of like, liminal space that you've created to drop in, but also float in and out. So yeah, it creates more fuzzy memories of it, my experience of it.
[00:25:56.857] Chloé Lee: That's a bit of the point. I mean, people talk a lot about how the landscape is changing so rapidly that they feel unrooted. So actually the unrootedness is a certain feeling I wanted to create. And I don't want to give any spoilers, but I mean, you know, this liminal, it is liminal. And it's because they also talk about the rapid urban development that leaves them feeling this way, that they're unrooted because the familiar places are disappearing at a rate where they can't feel rooted. And I think there's a lack of a sense of agency in that. And that's also part of the reason of giving people the agency to control the story and how they see the places and traverse them. That's also what you see in the window projection that comes from the projector, where every landscape changes based on the interviewee's transcript. And this effect of one landscape morphing into another fairly quickly because as you move, the pace you move, it'll move in the same pace. The landscapes shift. And so that kind of represents this shifting landscape that is happening there.
[00:27:00.853] Kent Bye: So just to clarify, there's the entrance where you come in, it's overlaid with like a photo. So in the course of a scene, is that photo changing, representing the change?
[00:27:09.562] Chloé Lee: Yeah. I mean, they're different. It's, it depends on what's said at the interview, but they're all changing as you move through this space. So if you're going through it faster, the landscapes will change faster.
[00:27:20.834] Kent Bye: Okay.
[00:27:22.475] Chloé Lee: And there's also like a quote that hints at pace of life and kind of like how much more can you grow and you know, how can we maybe slow down and yeah.
[00:27:33.391] Kent Bye: What I'm really struck with is that virtual reality as a medium in general is really well suited to tell the story of a place just because it's able to preserve a lot of that spatial context. In this case, you have a little bit more of 2D film that is capturing these oral history interviews across these different topics. But in aggregate, you've created an archive of stories about a place. And so I'd love to hear any reflections around what it's like to try to tell the story of a place.
[00:28:02.964] Chloé Lee: I think that's also partially why I did this form where I included more rather than less. I didn't feel like, you know, what is someone's responsibility as a storyteller? What are the ethics in that? And like, you know, I'm not Singaporean. My mom is Singaporean. So I'm a bit like I'm an insider because of that. But then also from the outside looking in an outsider kind of in limbo. And so I think that's why I wanted to leave intact as much of like the original context of the interview at one time as possible to kind of let the stories speak for themselves rather than me, you know, like cutting every ace and taking out every. It was also a balance of that because it also needs to be somewhat watchable. But I tried to preserve like longer takes you hear the interview questions that prompts the answers in a lot of situations. And so that's also why I wanted to leave it more feeling like an archive, like you would have the whole clip versus, you know, cutting everything and making it flow really fast. And I tried to strike a balance where, you know, because I don't think you could just watch purely the raw footage, but I wanted it to have a feeling of being raw.
[00:29:07.932] Kent Bye: Yeah, and there's one clip near the end that talks around the red dot and the metaphor of the red dot, and it's the title of the piece. And so I'm wondering if you could elaborate on the meaning of the red dot in reference to Singapore.
[00:29:19.974] Chloé Lee: Yeah, so this was actually used as initially like a derogatory term toward the size of the country. So it's a nickname for Singapore. And it was back in the 70s that Indonesian politician called Singapore a little red dot as a way to say, you know, like you're small you're not gonna succeed basically because of all the challenges and You know since then obviously that's been proven wrong and Singaporeans now use this as a term of pride So now that's why they refer to themselves as the little red dot Nice and so have you had a chance to show it to any other Singaporeans and get some of their reaction I Yeah, actually, I was surprised to see how many Singaporeans have been here in the last couple of days, like, had Singaporeans be very moved, which is, you know, the most fulfilling thing. And people who have also visited Singapore who right away as the experience opens, you have the round table from the common spaces pop up and say, I'm in Singapore. So, you know, it's kind of cool that you, yeah, you could see how people relate and say they feel like they are brought back to the place and so i think that's fulfilling and also some interesting conversations have come up around the piece so yeah and it's so i mean it's allowed me to connect i think already even in this first few days of showing to people singaporeans and and countries so yeah i'm excited because i think next i obviously i want to show it there
[00:30:47.208] Kent Bye: In terms of the emotions that were coming up for people who are either from Singapore, familiar with Singapore, have Singaporean heritage, what were some of the resonant themes that you heard feedback on?
[00:31:00.161] Chloé Lee: Pace of life. I think we had a whole conversation about pace of life and like the speed at which things move but also like I think how far they've come like seeing like the history of it all in one place seeing all Singaporeans voices and then hearing the dialects and everyone together as this voice I think was quite powerful. I think people were just proud to also see that the country was represented here. But yeah, I think they asked me because they're also doing now it's been 10 years. They asked me, is it going to be showing for the 60th year anniversary? Because that was 50 years. Yeah.
[00:31:35.862] Kent Bye: And one other thing that's happening in this slide against the wall, which is like this more immersive monoscopic slide of a scene, there's also like a little whispering and you said that you can go up and listen to it. I was like listening to the stories and so I never went to listen, but maybe you could elaborate on what the messages were if you were to go up and listen to the whispering that's coming from the slide.
[00:31:58.055] Chloé Lee: I mean, I think they're more poetic than what I said just now, but they kind of hint at how this landscape is changing. They're different actually on a few slides. So they hint at the rapidness of the changing landscapes. They also talk about how projecting out into the future is something that is never really going to be accurate and if you're also reaching back to the past you know that memory or the way that you thought of it won't ever really be the same and so like some of the images are kind of abstract or like you know impressionistic and there's a haziness to them and so you feel that in those images the fact that we can never really predict what will happen. There's a certain uncertainty about the future and of recreating the past. Another slide in the window, I believe, I talk about the 99-year leases. I talk about how the majority of the public housing there is actually 99-year leases. So it gives them this kind of like continuous renewal. So this feeling that you're never really ever going to be able to hold on to this place that you call home. home for more than a generation and a half unless you know there's some different cases but you know it hints at that and there's more details about specific scenarios and the housing situation and buying and selling and the temporality of it all in that slide too
[00:33:19.216] Kent Bye: Yeah, in terms of the audio design, there's some times where it felt like there is kind of like overlapping audios in a deliberate sense with like the whispering on top of the individual oral history testimonies for these different hotspots. And then sometimes I think it was maybe a little bit of a bug or a glitch, the kind of introduction audio was playing again and so but sometimes I'd be watching a scene and maybe I would be outside of like a hot spot or something and it would clip out of another but sometimes it felt like you wanted to have like a deliberate lots of different audio happening at the same time and so sometimes I was unsure as to whether or not there was a deliberate design decision or sometimes it was something that may be mist triggering or something but love if you have any comment in terms of that kind of overlapping nature of some of the sound design
[00:34:03.479] Chloé Lee: Yeah, I mean, there's some deliberate overlapping, but also you're one of the early people to see it. And so we actually did another build. There's like a loop. So yeah, I mean, with the whispering of the window, we spatialize the whole thing. So it depends where you're standing in the room. So if you're standing by the projector, you're supposed to hear sea of voices and every slide has an intro that's very, very short. It's like, Most of them are 30 seconds. I think there's one that's a minute long. And then when you get up very close to the window, if you do, then you hear like a voice whispering. It's just like a little extra layer that's poetics that pertain to the theme of the slide.
[00:34:41.798] Kent Bye: I wonder if we could get into a little of the spatial triggering that is in this piece. You have both turning on the projector, and then you have the triggering of the different clips. I'm assuming that you may be doing the triggering of the video clips based upon where you're at in the virtual experience, and that there seemed to be some sort of very responsive physical triggering that was happening in the slide projector. But I thought we could maybe elaborate on how you're doing the spatial triggering for this piece.
[00:35:08.010] Chloé Lee: Yeah, we did come up with a system for the projector. Yeah, basically it's like a unique setup with the projector that when you put in the slide, basically it'll communicate with the headset that the scene has changed. And then when you sit around the table, it's actually just by proximity. So it's your position and we actually desensitized a bit. So that way when you step in, it just kind of goes on and off. you're standing I recommend people to sit though just because we had calibrated at best to be a viewing height and especially because some people can get tired if they're standing too long so then they could just take a seat if they're really interested but yeah it's just position of the head and then yeah the slide system has its own setup that communicates with the headset and yeah I mean we use the spatial anchors and then we have our own calibration system okay and in terms of the projector is it communicating via Bluetooth Oh, we'll keep it on the down low. We kind of experimented with that. So yeah, we're working to maybe use the archive system and maybe another project, too.
[00:36:15.568] Kent Bye: OK. Yeah, it's really responsive. So it felt really cool to see, as soon as I put it in, then to see that kind of mixed reality light come out of the projector. It was just very satisfying to have something physically to push and touch and to have it be so responsive. So yeah, it worked really well.
[00:36:31.155] Chloé Lee: Thank you. Maybe I can just say that, yeah, we have like this set of eight slides and that we found these unique, we sourced these unique projectors in Germany where we're based. But they're from like the 50s. And, you know, typically the ones we think of are like the ones that hold a long row of slides or the carousel. And we needed something that would hold one at a time just for design's sake so it didn't confuse people. But essentially, it's pretty satisfying. Yeah, that when you drop in the slide in the slot and then you pop it in and then it immediately will turn on and you'll see the projector beams project out the 3D scene with the table and then the window behind it.
[00:37:08.825] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, you have this archive of material. Have you thought of other ways of creating metadata or other types of themes, like text or other things? Because there is the visual thumbnails, and you have it into themes, but just as you continue to develop it and potentially expand it, other ways to help people potentially kind of hone in to topics that they might want to dive into, if you've thought about other metadata, word clouds or other spatial representations of this information to really encourage people to dip in and out to themes that they might be interested in?
[00:37:40.869] Chloé Lee: Yeah, I mean, that's a good question, because right now I'm trying to expand the archives content itself. But I mean, it's a bit separate. I don't know if I would do it for this project, but just if you were talking about archives. always thought it's interesting if they could be collaborative that you know when you go into the library you do your notes you know like for me I definitely write in books and yeah I've always thought it would be interesting in archives to kind of add your notes or add your thoughts or add details I guess that goes toward your idea of metadata but I like the idea of like handwritten or somehow it feeling like it fits into that world instead of like you know how an archiving system maybe like seeing a metadata panel would be too, yeah, it feels a little impersonal or it feels too much like quote unquote data, like looking like that. But it would be interesting, like especially with people there in Singapore, if maybe they related in some way, you know, that they could add their own thoughts or their own memories or whatever. to the clips or to those themes. But I know that during that year they had their own web archive, you know, but it was more like on your phone or video, you had video that you could upload to a website. And so it was like maybe more of a map, you know, it was completely, you know, we've seen these interfaces before. So yeah, I always like something where maybe more people can contribute. in what way I don't know but I always thought it was interesting yeah that if you could kind of write right in there like what if you could go in to the experience and you can add it some way like you could write it or type it or speak it I don't know but yeah that's a good question.
[00:39:17.674] Kent Bye: As you're saying that, it also reminds me of a map in a spatial context, because I don't know if each of these places are near each other or if we're talking about different regions or themes, but having some sort of spatial context, I think, helps me at least understand where things are at. I'm just thinking of hierarchies of how my brain processes information, and sometimes a spatial orientation helps to get a sense of where we're actually talking about in this place. Coming away from it, I didn't get a sense of the overall where each of these different places are located on a larger spatial context. So yeah, I don't know if a spatial map is also something that you considered or explored.
[00:39:57.037] Chloé Lee: Yeah, I mean I was more focused here on the sentiment and I think sometimes too much information can also be overwhelming so that I was just trying to focus more on the feelings and kind of those intimate moments like feeling like you're in conversation with someone, what does that feel like? And then, yeah, because when you're across the table, you can see the shape of the figure across from you. So it really feels like someone is sitting across from you. So that idea. And I think that if you start to have too much other data, it all could be distraction, I guess. But I do see your point. I did think about it. Yeah, like these are specific places. Maybe it also should be for people to be able to know where it is, especially if they've never been. But I guess if I were to show it in Singapore and Singaporeans know it, maybe it's not so necessary. Yeah, I think. Also, some of the places that I filmed aren't there anymore. Like Rocher Center is featured there, the colorful buildings. I don't know if you saw that. But yeah, that building was actually demolished shortly after. Actually, it was like a year later. So I thought also that was kind of interesting that maybe the mapping, like what is the significance of mapping these places if after a certain amount of time, you know, they're kind of gone. I mean, the sentiments there, like we still hear the place. So yeah, that was something I was definitely thinking about a lot. It's like how much context
[00:41:16.065] Kent Bye: Yeah, you had mentioned earlier that you wanted people to puzzle things together. And I noticed that the names of the slides, they had kind of a poetic interpretation sometimes. Or sometimes it was like, OK, we're going to discover what this means. But maybe you could just briefly recap the slide names and the themes that people could potentially explore in this experience, just to refresh my own memory, but also to kind of map out all the different ways that you were clustering these videos into these emergent themes.
[00:41:42.515] Chloé Lee: Yeah, I mean, of course, like one of the early ones is kind of more of an overview of the development, more on the public housing, kind of how things are decided whether they stay or not, like how people felt in their own situations. Like Jonathan Lim, you know, he had just moved into Rocha Center like three months and then he got the notice that the building was going to be torn down. They were all going to be relocated. So you learn more about the specifics there and then in each theme you also get kind of more there. There's a professor Chua. He's a professor of sociology at the university there. He usually gives kind of more of this overview of what's happening. in society on each of the themes. And then I also have Chua Ah Lin, who's the president of the Heritage Society at the time, who speaks about the work that they're doing to conserve places. And so there's context to each of those scenes. So you have the urban development, and then I kind of spoke with individuals about the pace of life. I didn't particularly ask them about this, but they talked about how they got into their jobs and some of the entrepreneurs I talked to and how some of them were doing some interesting restaurants where they didn't allow any technology. They had community style seating. They were talking about the design of the spaces itself. how they were maybe inspired by family parties or how their families gathered or how growing up, but there were trendy or, or, you know, contemporary restaurants, like contemporary interpretations of it. And so some people I talked to said they got into the restaurant industry actually. Yeah. Because they came from designer. They came from, you know, like somebody who talks about crisis management, you know, and, and coming from an unhealthy lifestyle, fast pace of life. And so then that's what got them into kind of this, uh, fell into this path of creating events or creating community spaces. And it was because they were dissatisfied in their industries. And so then I also spoke with Janice Wong, who was very impressive with this very high tech space doing amazing desserts. And she seemed to be able to juggle all these projects simultaneously, like 15 when I was, you know, talking to her and some with very high, you know, doing fashion look books with chocolate and, you know, drawing inspiration from like Prada and doing all this amazing like paintings that were community done. And, you know, I was thinking, you know, I'm just trying to do this one film. So, yeah, it just kind of happened that people were talking about pace of life. And so then we also have a slide on Ubin. Pulau Ubin is an island that is off the mainland. So you have to take a ferry there. And basically people aren't allowed to move to this island anymore. There are a few inhabitants that are older. And the government's looking to preserve this as a nature preserve for visitors to hike. And they still have like some tourist attractions. So you can rent bikes and there's some very few eateries, but it's kind of the older generation who, you know, take care of the island there, but they're not allowed to have like livestock. So it's not supposed to be a place that people stay anymore. And so you get to meet some of the older folk there. But yeah, Inch Chua, who's an artist who had done a residency there and continually goes back to kind of find solace on the island, she showed us around. And we had a couple other people who basically work to preserve other parts of Singapore also show us around. And we went to, yeah, this temple there with a fortune teller. And we just hopped around. And so I kind of let that be its own slide. And yeah, we have one on like heritage. We have one on language, which, you know, it was kind of difficult. Most of it is in English. That's interesting. I think like people are surprised by that. There's actually like four national languages there. English, Chinese, Tamil and Malay. Malay is actually like the indigenous language. and actually when I was trying to translate everything it was so so difficult and actually my mom helped me like clean up some things I had translated because there's so many dialects you know aside from those four languages and they have something there that's called Singlish which is a mix of English and their mother tongue and so you often would just get more than one language in a sentence and it was a nightmare to translate the bit that I have in there but Also, when I was swimming, you know, it was self-funded, so it just didn't have so much budget to have a translator. But the people that were showing us around, like Lawrence, he was amazing. And, like, there's some footage where it's like, I don't know what's being said. He's having this interaction with a local, and he'll turn back to me and kind of give me this translation in, like, a few words, but they said, like, you know, ten times as much. But I realized, too, because it's like I was in—my perspective as an outsider— but it was fine you know like I got the context and that was part of the experience and that kind of lost in translation feeling was also part of it and as long as the context was given to me in some form that was fine. It's actually funny because they talk about the generational gap also because of the dying languages that there's often a disconnect between like the grandparents and the grandchildren say and you know that's the case for me also like English is my native tongue and I Yeah, I grew up, I can understand a little bit of Cantonese, but I can't connect with anyone. And so you see that actually in the footage and I didn't discover until I did the translations with like, and she's like translating back to me what was said and she'll like tell me what was said. But then in the translation, I realized, you know, she got it wrong. And so, you know, those are things that probably most people won't pick up. But when I was doing it, I noticed it and it kind of reinforced some of the other ideas. yeah and then um there's a few ones on heritage in different ways and language but then there's one slide on the little red dot history and it kind of goes back further to talk about the history prior to the 50 years because actually yeah a lot of people will say like well we're so young we're 50 50 years old but actually you talk to quite a few people and talk about all the cultures that came together and how they were more of a like transient like people would come to work say and then really it was the adversity like coming after World War II and then their independence and there was a lot of strife to become independent that created a sense of identity over time, I think, through that. And so it kind of goes more establishing where Little Red Dot came from and then also like what was before 50 years. And then the last side is kind of like, it's a little bit nostalgic. It's like, well, I won't give anything away, but it just kind of closes it all up. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:48:06.826] Kent Bye: What was the title of the slide that had the fortune teller on it?
[00:48:10.688] Chloé Lee: It was an Ubin.
[00:48:12.008] Kent Bye: Ubin, okay. Yeah, I missed the fortune teller. If I would have known there was a fortune teller, I would have probably gone straight there and listened. And I think for me, having seen around like 45 minutes or so of the footage of the three hours, I found myself, because it was kind of looping, and it was really helpful for you to give that overview context, because I wouldn't have been able to sort of re-articulate all those different themes because, like I said, it was a little fragmentary. If there was an opportunity to make a choice of exploring some of these different things, I think it's also in the context of this festival exhibition, having a half-hour slot for something that's really three hours long, then it means that you feel rushed already, but then you feel like you can't see all the content. And then because it's not starting from the beginning, then I'm sort of jumping in the context. So there's stuff that if I were to go back in again, I would probably go back to Ubin. And I didn't realize it was an island off of the mainland. So that was probably another example for the map would be helpful. But I'm just thinking of different ways of as people are asked to make a choice between what essentially these titles of these slides and how to connect that title into a theme that I would be interested in exploring if I have to make a choice to choose amongst all of these. And so, yeah, it feels like one of the design problems there. Or to have it in a context where people are not constrained by space and they can spend as much time as they want to go through and explore it. So it sounds like that, in an ideal context, they might be watching it where they wouldn't feel so rushed to make those choices and pick and choose. Yeah.
[00:49:38.348] Chloé Lee: Yeah, I mean, I actually wanted to do hour-long slots, I was thinking. But then with South by Southwest, you just can't really do that. And even when I say 30 minutes, people are a bit like, oh, that's a long time. Can I go in for like 10 minutes or five minutes? But yeah, it's really not meant to be seen in such a short amount of time.
[00:49:57.314] Kent Bye: MARK MANDELBACHER- Great. So what's next for this project, then?
[00:50:01.121] Chloé Lee: Hopefully going to Singapore soon. Yeah. But I also would like to have it in different places. I think the idea of it too is like these places are, you know, changing, they're disappearing. And like, what does it mean to have this place travel and be injected into like a new space? I think it's really interesting when projects can travel and have a home in different places. So yeah, I have yet to see, but I'm excited to see where it'll go.
[00:50:28.277] Kent Bye: You said you have some plans to expand the archive. Does that mean that you have footage that you've already shot that you want to add or that you want to go back and shoot even more footage to add?
[00:50:37.253] Chloé Lee: Well, not maybe more to add. We'll see. But I started with 40 over 40 hours. Yeah, I spent a while there. Yeah. And I actually did plan a lot. And yeah, but when I go back, I definitely want to film some of these places and especially want to film the reactions of the people who try it. So, I mean, I'll film it, but I don't have a plan. Like, I don't know what will come from that. But who knows? Maybe it can build. I don't know.
[00:51:04.775] Kent Bye: It'll be a new immersive interactive project a couple years from now.
[00:51:07.676] Chloé Lee: Maybe, yeah. Maybe it'll be so different if I had more that it'll require a new setting.
[00:51:13.918] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential for this type of immersive and interactive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:51:22.981] Chloé Lee: You mean the technology in general or kind of like the setup of this project?
[00:51:26.722] Kent Bye: Oh, just like immersive storytelling, you know, the new forms of using the technology to tell stories in a new way. Where do you think that might all go here in the future?
[00:51:36.112] Chloé Lee: I'm really not. I mean, I think being able to show an archive was so interesting in this way. But I mean, there's some really interesting projects on the floor of haptics that being able to actually feel what someone goes through is someone else's experience. I think that's extremely powerful. I think care and better understanding to others experiences or other ways of living or other ways of understanding, which I mean, you know, it's I think the machine has been turned forever. So I mean, I'm not really saying anything new there, but I really do believe in that. And to be able to communicate in a way that's not just through the church, like the words, the visual alone. I mean, it's immersive and film and being in a theater is immersive. But I mean, with this technology and integrating it with the headset and other XR formats, like I really do think yeah has great potential there and I think it's exciting to see really like the diversity in the showcase I think being able to experience other people's work so important and drawing the ideas and I think that's how you know I mean that's how new music genres are made or just the new things I think it's really like yeah you just get the ideas all mixing together and I think like that's how new things pop up, and it's important that there's a lot of failure in iterating. But yeah, I think better understand other ways of thinking, feeling, understanding other things, living beings. But yeah, anyway, I'll stop there.
[00:53:02.864] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:53:10.911] Chloé Lee: I would say, yeah, that even if you haven't had experience or haven't used the technology, I think that more people should get involved in seeing how they might be able to use the technology to tell their own stories or their community's stories. and that it's becoming accessible and there's so many people making ways to use these things and set them up and more out of the box scenarios and also to reach out and also to reach out to other creators because I think there are so many people who want to help other people make their projects happen and so it isn't like this thing that's so inaccessible and so difficult to do that yeah I really I mean I didn't really have experience in this at all like a few years ago and now this is my second project and so I would just encourage anyone who's mildly interested in it to give it a go.
[00:54:04.289] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, I really appreciate the ambitious nature of taking a big, vast archive, starting from 40 hours, cutting it down to three hours, and then creating this kind of novel way of this kind of liminal space that allows people to experience wandering and discovering and chasing their curiosities. And as somebody who is an archivist myself who has thousands of hours of different material I've captured over the years, then it makes me think around similarly how to create other new interfaces for people to interface with archives. So it's a big and deep question that I'm sure we'll both continue to think about and explore. But I really appreciate the ambitious nature of trying to capture and tell the story of a place, which is also something that's not so easy to do. So, yeah, thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down.
[00:54:48.236] Chloé Lee: Thanks so much, Kent.
[00:54:50.373] Kent Bye: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And there is a lot that's happening in the world today. And the one place that I find solace is in stories, whether that's a great movie, a documentary, or immersive storytelling. And I love going to these different conferences and festivals and seeing all the different work and talking to all the different artists. And sharing that with the community, because I think there's just so much to be learned from listening to someone's process to hear about what they want to tell a story about. And even if you don't have a chance to see it, just to have the opportunity to hear about a project that you might have missed or to learn about it. And so this is a part of my own creative process of capturing these stories and sharing it with a larger community. And if you find that valuable and want to sustain this oral history project that I've been doing for the last decade, then please do consider supporting me on Patreon at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Every amount does indeed help sustain the work that I'm doing here, even if it's just $5 a month. That goes a long way for allowing me to continue to make these trips and to to ensure that I can see as much of the work as I can and to talk to as many of the artists as I can and to share that with the larger community. So you can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
