Cultural heritage holds historical, artistic, literary, and scientific value and plays a crucial role in conveying and embodying the cultural identity of a nation and its people. Taiwan has been engaged in cultural heritage preservation for many years, covering various aspects. In recent years, cultural heritage has gradually been promoted through reinterpretation, integrating cultural and creative industries, curation, and educational initiatives. However, the general public still primarily views historical and cultural records through the lens of "preservation." Additionally, since the content is often too specialized and complex, even when made publicly available, it is only accessible to scholars and professionals in related fields. Given this, an important issue arises: how can cultural heritage be effectively reinterpreted and represented to communicate its content to the general public, thereby achieving knowledge transmission and cultural identity?
The military dependents' villages represent a unique chapter in Taiwan's history, not only documenting the changes of an era but also encompassing distinctive lifestyles, social interactions, and customs. Over time, the culture of these villages has gradually integrated into Taiwanese society. One could say that within Taiwan’s diverse historical and cultural memory, military dependents’ village culture is an indispensable part, containing many rich and authentic stories worthy of documentation and preservation.
The researcher's paternal family was an original resident of "Xinyi New Village" in Qingshui, Taichung. This area once faced demolition due to government policies but was later preserved as one of the 13 designated military dependents’ village cultural parks by the Ministry of National Defense, recognizing its architectural and cultural heritage value. Since 2015, the researcher has explored themes of "transformation and combination" from robotics and applied these concepts to paper-based creations, drawing inspiration from topics observed in daily life. One of the researcher’s main creative goals has been to depict family memories of life in Qingshui Military Dependents' Village.
This creative research project focuses on "Xinyi New Village in Qingshui, Taichung," where the researcher’s paternal family lived and grew up. Through historical document analysis, oral history interviews, and field observations, this study records the early life and memories of military dependents’ villages. A semiotic approach is then applied to analyze and derive creative content and materials, integrating paper mechanism structures to present the works in a paper toy format.
The project includes two series of ten interactive paper toy works: "Peeking," which requires viewers to actively lean forward to see hidden content, and "Connection," which simulates the opening and closing of windows to change the military dependents' village scenes. Both series require actual interaction between the viewer and the work to fully present various aspects of life in the village. Moreover, by operating the works, viewers engage in the same behaviors as former village residents, thus experiencing their daily lives firsthand.
Through this interactive paper toy project, the study explores the reconstruction and reinterpretation of memory-based cultural heritage. By collecting and compiling historical memories of Qingshui Military Dependents' Village, a deeper understanding of its development and transformation is gained. This research establishes a framework for reconstructing and reinterpreting cultural memory using a tangible "medium" and strengthens the comprehension and empathy toward cultural memory, ensuring that cultural content creation effectively facilitates cultural transmission.