Salak Yom

#collaborativeethnography #multimodalanthropology #photography #interviews #virtual reality #drones #thailand

About

Salak Yom is a Buddhist tradition of the Yong minority in Lamphun, Thailand, during which community members and organizations make offerings to the local monks, and some of these offerings take the form of large, colorful, and elaborately decorated structures. Over the years I have been working with Dr. Alexandra Denes at Chiang Mai University, researcher Linina Phuttitarn, and Dr. Kate Hennessy to explore the impressions of 360° video and drone documentation in the community's ongoing work in safeguarding the Salak Yom festival

Role

I returned to Lamphun over the years as an ethnographic research, photographer, and videographer. I filmed using 360° video and drones, working with Linina as well as local officials, monks, documentarians, and community members in the filming process. Linina and I returned to share the footage with the community and interviewed people to understand their impressions of 360° video and drones for cultural safeguarding of the Salak Yom Festival.

Read More

Muntean, Reese, Kate Hennessy, Alexandra Denes, and Linina Phuttitarn. 2019. On research ethics and representation in virtual reality. In Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEEVR), pp. 1493-1496.

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