From Textual Representation to Bodily Presence: Recontextualizing Cultural Symbols through Bilingual Short Video and AR Try-On
How can a cultural symbol mean anything to someone who has never worn it, spoken its language, or shared its history? This paper argues that the cross-cultural transmission of symbols such as hanfu fails when it relies on textual representation alone, because the meaning of such symbols is generated in bodily practice rather than stored in descriptions. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body and Heidegger's account of presence, we define bodily presence operationally and propose a dual-layer mechanism of recontextualization: bilingual short video supplies semantic anchors, while AR try-on supplies bodily participation. A design case, HanVision, illustrates the mechanism. We conclude that recontextualization is a bodily event, and that the task of cross-cultural media is shifting from translating meaning to creating the conditions under which meaning can be generated.
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