Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of digital museum design and the internet-born aesthetic of “liminal spaces” (e.g., “dreamcore,” “weirdcore”) through the lens of Husserlian phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s body-centered phenomenology. By analyzing how nostalgic and uncanny emotions (“ai” and “jiu”) are mediated through digital interactivity, we propose that liminal spaces, when translated into virtual environments, can serve as phenomenological laboratories for examining collective memory and technological alienation. Drawing on case studies such as TeamLab’s interactive installations and user-generated “Chinese liminal space” artworks, we argue that intentional disruptions in technological fluency—such as interaction delays, glitch aesthetics, and fragmented audiovisual feedback—can evoke Husserl’s epoché (suspension of presuppositions) and Merleau-Ponty’s body schema (corporeal intentionality). These design strategies transform digital museums into sites where users confront the paradox of memory: a longing for the past that is simultaneously unreachable and hyper-mediated. The study concludes with a prototype for a mixed-reality digital museum, Threshold Archives, which operationalizes these theories to interrogate the modern condition of existential displacement.