The Living Marketplace: A Visual Ethnography of Cultural Exchange in Xizhou Market

This project presents a visual ethnography of the vibrant, everyday transactions and embodied practices within the periodic market of Xizhou, Yunnan, China. Developed as a web-based 3D Virtual Gallery using Three.js, the project functions as a "living archive" that records local knowledge and social relations through an immersive, first-person roaming experience. By moving beyond top-down institutional heritage narratives, the gallery utilizes a thematic Cluster Tree to reorganize 56 field photographs into networks of local culture—ranging from traditional Bai headwear to regional medicinal herbs. This spatialized narrative encourages "slow looking" and treats digital media not just as a recording tool, but as a critical intervention that reclaims the marketplace as a social space full of memory, emotion, and lived history

Course: ARTHIST 580S Digital Humanities Proseminar (2025)