Xing Chen
Following, Check-in, Flattening? - The research of museum-based spatial self-presentation on social media of China
Summary
Abstract: The spatial self, an aggregated image of self-expression, spatial materiality, and digital information, is considered the material configuration of the relationship between self and objects, also viewed as a habitation of public expression and idealized self-projection. This research interrogates and challenges how social media image transmits and forms a new representation of the spatial self in which the physical space participation always exists in tandem and intersection with the curated online self-presentation to display identity and socio-spatial position.
The term spatial self implies the public representation of private voyages, an act of engagement in the public space. While celebrating the potential public sphere that social media could be, fragmentation and alienation are spreading. At the same time, social media as the representation medium of physical space does not encourage all people or things to be presented. However, the instagrammable spaces that embody the idealized spatial self gain widespread publicity. As a highly visual public space, the museum actively encourages users to contribute and disseminate its architectural and artistic knowledge in the social media era. In the process, the representative capacity of social media interwinds people's experience of visual and materiality, flattening themselves into the objects creating their own, namely the images, narrowing the ''self'' into circulation and advertising.
By introducing the concept of the spatial self, this research observes and critiques the current phenomenon of instagrammable museums, which actively encourages the public spreading of spatial self-images, creating attractive spatial backdrops popular on social media. This research conducted digital ethnographic surveys (including data collection, image analysis, interviews, site writing, and site visits) of three museums in China to identify popular museum spaces in social media and the characteristics of the presentation of spatial self. This research also combined with extensive interdisciplinary theoretical research and philosophical texts to understand the motivations behind producing these images and check-ins and their significance to participants (particularly Gen Z users) and audiences, as well as the relationship between the perception and imagination of spatial materiality and idealized self-construction.
Keywords: Museums Public Space; Social Media Images; Spatial Self; Spectacle; Surveillance
This page just shows selected excerpts and part of the data from the thesis.
Additional info
About: Xing (Dominic) Chen is a recent MRes Architecture graduate from the Royal College of Art. Previously he graduated with a first-class B.A. degree from the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, China, with first-class scholarships (HIFA) for three consecutive years and the National Scholarship by the Ministry of Education, China in 2018. Xing was invited to participate in the land art workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 2017. His B.A. degree project on the application of urban acupuncture strategy in urban renewal won the gold medal in the 2019 Creative Design Contest organized by the Wuhan Municipal Government and China N.C. for UNESCO.
In his first term in RCA, Xing was a member of the Transmission group (MRes Architecture & MRes Communication Design) led by Dr Adam Kaasa, Dr Emily Candela, and Dr Rosa Ainley. He conducted a psychogeography dérive based on the methodology proposed by Debord, considered a new empiricist, posthumanist approach to urban studies, aiming to overcome the threats of technological alienation and orchestration associated with highly visual social media to free urban experiences from functionalist and passivity, understanding them from within. In the individual research project, he returned to the phenomenon of Instagrammable public space itself and focused on the specific spatial typology - museum space. Xing has developed a digital ethnography based on a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach to responding to research questions. His resulting theoretical and empirical research, was shared at the urban study conference, Lisbon, and the art philosophy seminar organized by the Fudan university and Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai.
Context
What is the spatial self?
The spatial self, a theoretical framework generalizing the process of online idealized self-presentation based on the curated exhibit of offline physical activities, is shaped by the character of physical spaces and how users associate with the spaces (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015). It is an aggregated representation of self-expression, spatial materiality, and digital information, displaying identity and socio-spatial position. The concept of the notion is not new, as it was expressed in the pre-digital era with the curation of photo albums, postcards, slideshows, etc. (Walker & Moulton, 1989).
Research Background
In the past 20 years, smartphone-based social media have continued to emerge, such as Facebook 2004, Weibo 2009, Instagram 2010, Xiaohongshu 2013, et cetera. According to Datareportal and Statista data report, more than 4.20 billion users were using social media worldwide in 2021, accounting for 53.6% of the global total (Datareportal, 2021); the average time daily use of social media has increased from approximately 1.8 hours in 2015 to 2.4 hours in 2021 (Statista, 2021). In China, the number of social media users reached 939 million in 2021, accounting for 65.2% of the total population; the average time Chinese users spend on social media is 2.04 hours (Datareportal, 2021). Further focusing on China, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (2021) report, as of June 2021, the highest proportion of Chinese netizens accessing the Internet through mobile phones reached 99.6% (ibid.). Among Chinese users, 79% took more photos since using social media (Wang, 2016). Chinese, specifically the young generation, are more connected to social media images than ever before (ibid.).
As scholars elucidate, people are immersed in a posthuman world mediated by ICT, in which the emerging digital generation is witnessing unprecedented knowledge transfer. While this process is considered barely resisted, our subjectivity is deeply shaped in the world reconstructed by social media. For example, in their book Cyberspace Odessey (2010), De Mul argues that virtual experiences created by information technology play an essential role in the de/reconstruction of personal and cultural identities. Kroker continues this argument in Exit to a Posthuman Future (2014) but highlights both the opportunities and dangers that they identify as the generation growing up in a posthuman age whose digital subjectivity and the magical expressions of social media mediate memories and relationships. The generation theory also supports this position. Generation Z, iGen (Twenge, 2017), and Selfie Generation (Eler, 2017), depict people born in the mid-1990s to the late 2010s, defined as the natives of social media.
Increasingly digital images that aggregate information (including location, text, and time) allow researchers to raise questions about the use of social media and the representation and recording of physical movement and presence. And how is this discussion constructed within the context of museum? In 1990, there were 494 museums in China, which increased to 1351 in 2010, then accelerated to 5616 in 2019 (Chang et al., 2021). At the same time, from mass media to social media, the development of technological medium has carried the complexity of museum interaction. In The Death of the Monument, Mumford (1937) elucidates the significant changes to museums that people may measure and photograph in still and moving pictures that cannot be preserved in material form.
And "so that we shall have, filed away for future reference, not merely an image of the shell, but a working knowledge of the physiology of the building or the artwork." (ibid.)
In Mumford's expectation, museums in the age of mass media should escape the death sanctuary of monuments and become the mass communication medium when life is still present. Yet did his vision really come true? In the digital age, new museum developments are being driven by the need to interact with the public in new approaches, as opposed to previous centuries' universalist exhibition practices (Barrett, 2012). In other words, museums are no longer regarded as the only subject of knowledge dissemination; this duty gradually is pinned on visitors as active contributors and communicators for its architectural and artistic knowledge. In this scenario, the phenomenon of Instagrammability (Tehve, 2021) actively encourages the public spreading of spatial self-images, creating novel and attractive spatial backdrops popular among social media. As active producers of media images, what new connections have emerged between the self of users and the materiality of museums?
Research questions
Under what conditions and circumstances are these digital traces created and understood? We need to understand the motivations behind producing these Instagrammable images and check-ins and their significance to participants (particularly Gen Z users) and audiences, and how they are being used as a form of spatial self-presentation as well as re/productive practices of perception and imagination of museum space.
Sub-questions: What are the social objects (architectural) that serve as the image backdrop of these Instagrammable museums? What new solidarity arises between spatial materiality, perception, imagination and idealized self-construction? What kind of new public sphere narratives does the public representation of private voyages create in the museum context? Is the spatial self as a digital image the ideal communication medium? What are the challenges and crises involved?
Digital Ethnography
Case studies of three museums in China
+ Social media image data crawling and analysis
In the collation and classification of the images, different periods (three months) were chosen according to the epidemic prevention and control requirements in Shanghai, Wuhan, and Beijing to keep the data results unaffected by the epidemic. Public Weibo images with geotags of these three museums were collected, and classified by image content.
+ Identifying museums' social objects (Architectural)
Semi-structured interviews and site writing
+ Follow-up interviews
An essential part of this research in museum-based spatial self is the identification of social objects, namely the specific Instagrammable spaces, which primarily rely on crawling and analyzing online image data. However, similarities and differences coexist in the spatial materiality of case studies. It is difficult to accurately connect the user's spatial perception and imagination with the idealized self-construction through image data collection and literature review. Still, the collection and analysis of the data confirmed some of the critical points and inferences from the theoretical discussion, and these inferences also form the focus of follow-up interviews that complement this research.
Participant Recruitment: 1.Participants need to have visited the above specific location and posted images of the location on social media (this can be a location or tag). 2. Chinese Gen Z (born in the mid-1990s to the late 2010s) social media users.
+ Site writing
During the interview, I invited the interviewees to reflect on how they felt when they took the photographs and to try their hand at site writing. Although the spatial self is seen mainly as a visual image in this research, it can also be constructed textually in the original narrative (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015), such as in the description of individual urban movements in the Victorian Diaries of Urban Flaneurs. Site writing could be a return to this non-visual form of spatial selfconstruction. Therefore, this study aims to introduce site writing in order to understand users’ spatial perception and imagination better. As Rendell states:
“A ‘voice’ in criticism can be objective and subjective, distant and intimate. From the close-up to the glance, from the caress to the accidental brush, such an approach to the writing of criticism can draw on spaces as they are remembered, dreamed and imagined, as well as observed,,,with a singular and static point of view located in the here and now.” (2007: 246)
Previously collected post text will be open coded (Khandkar, 2009), along with the interview data and site writing. In open coding of textual contents, concepts are labelled, and categories are defined and developed, according to their characteristics and dimensions. Following this approach, we could construct concepts from textual sources to find the meaning, ideas, and thoughts within them. Thus, we can better understand the motivation, purpose, spatial perception and imagination involved in the production of these images.
Additional material
Film:
FOLLOWING, CHECK-IN, FLATTENING: ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA?
The palindrome title is inspired by the title of Guy Debord's film - IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI, and is adapted from "Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?” (Anonymous). However, we are not the "few." This film is an attempt at the visual representation of the content of the thesis, combining methods such as photogrammetry, détournement, etc. It is additional material for this thesis-led research. More details
As a continuation of the digital ethnography approach, photogrammetric 3D digital surfaces or models are constructed from social media images and videos.
Photogrammetry as a medium
Visuality and materiality are no longer separate today, and validate each other. Back to Bruno's text (2014:7-8), she believes that materiality "is not a question of materials but, fundamentally, of activating material relations."; materiality involves rethinking people's spatial sense and environmental connection and rereading our perceptions of temporality, interiority, and subjectivity. In the digital age, new media can reactivate this materiality as written: "At the moment of celluloid's obsolescence, a form of materiality returns to the screen as it travels through other media." Social media images, or photogrammetry, etc., seem to connect to this new media definition because materiality was always a virtual state (ibid.).
Acknowledgements
Thanks to HoP Dr Esther Teichmann and my supervisor Dr Adam Kaasa, as well as Dr Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Bruna Montuori, Dr Jane Hall, Prof Sam Jacoby, Dr David Burns, Shumi Bose, Dima Srouji and the MRes tutor team for their guidance, help and suggestion. Thank you to my family and friends for their support.
