ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how augmented storytelling reconfigures the lived experience of tourist places in Singapore. Drawing on the case of the augmented reality app BalikSG, the ethnographic investigation demonstrates how imaginaries about places, people and practices come into being in the popular travel destination. Combining ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore with walkthroughs of central app interfaces, the purpose of this study is to trace the transformations of touristic flânerie through augmented reality technologies. A dynamic map embedded in the interfaces of the researched app enables promenading tourists to orient themselves in the streets of Singapore. Furthermore, the app’s interfaces display animated characters who convey stories about Singapore’s diverse cultural and religious heritages. A postphenomenological perspective illuminates the dynamic interplay between the corporal movement of tourists and the augmented storytelling on the screens of their mobile devices. Collated material suggests the mobile app BalikSG recalibrates the socio-technical lifeworlds of tourists by facilitating augmented place-making practices which blur the boundaries between present-day local ambiences and simulated sceneries from the local past.
