Videogames: Perspectives from the Museum

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This project seeks to facilitate the development of new approaches to videogames design and the communities that make and play them. It also aims to define the 'objecthood' of videogames as complex, interactive, digital objects encompassing both tangible (hardware) and intangible (user content, interaction) elements. It will posit that UNESCO's current definition of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) as 'traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants', including 'oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts' does not adequately take into account the inherently hybrid, networked and interactive nature of digital objects and - taking videogames as a case in point - will produce, in collaboration with colleagues at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (CHSDM), the draft of a new, critical framework for assessing, acquiring and documenting videogames into museum collections which will be trialled at both museums. This work will involve hosting closed workshops with practitioners and industry leaders in the UK and US, and staging two conferences to make public the work and findings of the Fellowship. This work and the insights generated will be tested and shared during the workshops and conferences and will be published broadly via the V&A's blog and Cooper Hewitt's public channels. The work will further form a case study for planned research into digital collecting at the V&A, and the prototype framework for videogames acquisition will also be published for a specialist audiences in both videogame and museum sector journals. This Fellowship is timely and urgent as both participating institutions acknowledge the pressing need to make informed decisions on the collection, preservation and documentation of intangible, complex, digital heritage.