Design Reflections on Ancestral Remembrance Customs in Singapore

This extended abstract and presentation will briefly survey local Chinese funerary customs through the use of photography of particular sites and ritual items and commentary and descriptions from the author's own experience. My aim is twofold. Firstly I wish to examine the origin of some local customs around death. Secondly I wish to reflect on changes in these customs over the decades with Singapore’s shift into modernity. Emerging from these two aims and the work I will present to reach them I will conduct some initial analysis supporting the tentative exploration of important relationships involving technology in these settings and begin to speculate on the role of technology in the future. I will consider some perspectives on death, such as the notion that death is mediated through people and things, which support the use and design of certain technologies. Finally I begin to consider issues with and barriers to these technologies being accepted in particular settings in Singapore.