Living Histories of Sugar in Scotland and the West Indies: Transnationalisms, Performance and Co-creation

糖不仅仅是一种商品，而是一套跨越空间和时间的社会关系。这个项目旨在重塑我们对苏格兰和西印度群岛糖业跨国和未完成性质的看法、理解和生活方式。通过与西印度群岛和苏格兰表演艺术家的一系列工作坊，我们将共同创作歌曲、故事和视觉效果，邀请对苏格兰在奴隶(18-19世纪)和糖贸易(18-20世纪)中所扮演的角色进行多种不同的解释。在这些研讨会期间，我们将：1)展示文本和数据挖掘如何支持有关糖业、奴役和糖业的新艺术素材(歌曲)，并评估这些方法是否可以增加对以非标准英语录制的音频数据的访问；2)为互动表演创建故事情节，包括可视化、历史重演和新旧讲故事歌曲；3)与博物馆学家和行业专业人员开始概念工作，以开发混合现实(MR)体验，并将获得更多资金。该网络将把特里尼巴戈尼亚、牙买加和苏格兰的演员和歌手/词曲作者与一个国际和跨学科的学者小组聚集在一起，这些学者拥有糖业、奴役和契约的历史和地理(爱丁堡、格拉斯哥、圣安德鲁斯)、角色扮演历史(爱丁堡)、声音研究(弗吉尼亚联邦、得克萨斯州)、听觉数据挖掘(爱丁堡，得克萨斯州)、数据可视化(爱丁堡、圣安德鲁斯)和MR(爱丁堡，爱丁堡)的专长。在第一年，我们将从以前收集的关于苏格兰糖业的档案和口述历史数据以及正在进行的关于西印度群岛糖业、奴役和契约的(PhD)研究中，生成听觉和视觉数据、歌曲和故事情节。除了对二级文献进行历史研究外，我们还将探索数字化的档案电影、歌曲、口述历史、照片、地籍和贸易地图、风景画、移民数据和苏格兰家族的个人文件，这些遗产位于文化公平档案馆、西印度群岛大学埃尔纳·布罗德伯收藏馆、特立尼达和多巴哥国家档案馆、苏格兰和牙买加国家图书馆、牙买加记忆库、苏格兰国家记录和爱丁堡大学苏格兰研究和声音档案馆。在第二年，我们将通过使用：1)第一年共同创作的故事情节和歌曲，以及2)由两名设计信息学硕士学生在第一年和第二年开发的可视化来完成互动表演。现场表演中捕捉到的歌曲、故事和可视化，以及观众的反馈，将为概念化MR体验提供基础。MR概念工作将在项目结束时启动，届时将与英国创意企业和博物馆学家举行最后一次研讨会。我们的表演和MR概念化的目的都是为了揭示跨国糖既是“多人居住的”：涉及不同地点和空间的不同人，也是“多维”的：涉及各种社会变革，例如人口、文化、饮食和环境。随着人们对苏格兰参与奴隶制的兴趣日益浓厚，该项目提供了一个及时的机会，让人们了解糖、奴役和大西洋两岸的糖业工作的影响。该项目的主要公共产品-两个互动的现场表演-将使苏格兰和西印度群岛的不同观众能够质疑既定的历史叙事，并分享他们自己的糖的生活史。演出和其他项目活动将通过一个网页(设在爱丁堡大学的Media Hopper和Open.ed.ac.uk上)继续存在，该网页展示了如何通过共同创作的做法改变档案材料的用途，并提供了数字档案收藏的链接。

Sugar is not just a commodity, but a set of social relationships across space and time. This project aims to recast how we think about, understand and live with the transnational and unfinished nature of the sugar industry in Scotland and the West Indies. Through a series of workshops with West Indian and Scottish performance artists, we will co-create songs, stories and visualisations that invite multiple and diverse interpretations of Scotland's role in the slave (18th-19th) and sugar trades (18th-20th centuries). During these workshops we will: 1) show how text and data mining can underpin new artistic material (songs) about sugar, enslavement and sugar work and assess whether these methods can increase access to audio data recorded in non-standard English; 2) create storylines for interactive performances that include visualisations, historical re-enactments and new and old storytelling songs; 3) begin concept work with museologists and industry professionals for a Mixed Reality (MR) experience to be developed with further funding. The network will bring together Trinibagonian, Jamaican and Scottish actors and singers/songwriters with an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars with expertise in the histories and geographies of sugar, enslavement and indentureship (Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews), role playing history (Edinburgh), sound studies (Virginia Commonwealth, Texas), aural data mining (Edinburgh, Texas), data visualisation (Edinburgh, St Andrews) and MR (Abertay, Edinburgh). In year 1 we will generate aural and visual data, songs and storylines, drawing from previously-collected archival and oral history data about the Scottish sugar industry and ongoing (PhD) research about sugar, enslavement and indentureship in the West Indies. In addition to historical research into secondary literatures, we will explore digitised archival films, songs, oral histories, photos, cadastral and trade maps, landscape paintings, migration data and personal papers of Scottish families who owned Scottish estates, located in the Archive for Cultural Equity, the University of the West Indies Erna Brodber Collection, the Trinidad and Tobago National Archives, the National Libraries of Scotland and Jamaica, the Jamaican Memory Bank, the National Records of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh's Scottish Studies and Sound Archives. In year 2 we will finalise the interactive performance by utilising: 1) the storylines and songs co-created in year 1, and 2) visualisations developed in years 1 and 2 by two MA students in Design Informatics. Songs, stories and visualisations captured in the live performances, and audience feedback, will provide the groundwork for conceptualising the MR experience. MR concept work will be initiated at the end of the project during a final workshop with UK creative businesses and museologists. Our aim for both the performance and the MR conceptualisation is to reveal transnational sugar as both 'multiply-inhabited': involving different people across place and space, and 'multi-dimensional': involving a variety of social transformations, e.g. demographic, cultural, dietary, environmental.With increasing interest in Scotland's involvement in slavery, the project offers a timely opportunity to develop understandings of the effects of sugar, enslavement and sugar work on both sides of the Atlantic. The primary public output of the project - two interactive live performances - will enable diverse audiences in Scotland and the West Indies to question established historical narratives and share their own living histories of sugar. The performances and other project activities will exist beyond the life of the project through a webpage (hosted on University of Edinburgh's Media Hopper and open.ed.ac.uk) that shows how archival materials were repurposed through practices of co-creation, with links to the digital archival collections.