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

糖不仅仅是一种商品，而是一系列跨越时空的社会关系。该项目旨在重塑我们如何思考，理解和生活在苏格兰和西印度群岛的制糖业的跨国和未完成的性质。通过与西印度群岛和苏格兰表演艺术家的一系列研讨会，我们将共同创作歌曲，故事和视觉效果，邀请苏格兰在奴隶（18 - 19世纪）和糖贸易（18 - 20世纪）中的作用的多种多样的解释。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关于糖，奴役和糖工作的新艺术材料（歌曲），并评估这些方法是否可以增加非标准英语记录的音频数据的访问; 2）为互动表演创造故事情节，包括可视化，历史重演和新旧故事歌曲; 3）开始与博物馆学家和行业专业人士的概念工作，以获得进一步的资金开发混合现实（MR）体验。该网络将把特里尼巴格尼亚、牙买加和苏格兰的演员和歌手/词曲作者与一个国际跨学科的学者小组聚集在一起，这些学者具有糖、奴役和契约的历史和地理方面的专门知识（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（Virginia Commonwealth，Texas）、听觉数据挖掘（Edinburgh，Texas）、数据可视化（Edinburgh，St Andrews）和MR（Abertay，Edinburgh）。在第一年，我们将产生听觉和视觉数据，歌曲和故事情节，从以前收集的档案和口述历史数据有关苏格兰糖业和正在进行的（博士）研究有关糖，奴役和契约在西印度群岛绘制。除了对二级文献的历史研究，我们将探索数字化档案电影，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庭谁拥有苏格兰庄园的个人文件，位于档案馆文化公平，西印度群岛埃尔纳Brodber收集大学，特立尼达和托巴哥国家档案馆，苏格兰和牙买加国家图书馆、牙买加记忆银行、苏格兰国家记录和爱丁堡大学的苏格兰研究和声音档案馆。在第2年，我们将利用以下内容完成互动表演：1）第1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1年和第2年开发的可视化。现场表演中捕捉到的歌曲、故事和视觉效果，以及观众的反馈，将为MR体验的概念化提供基础。MR概念工作将在项目结束时与英国创意企业和博物馆学家举行的最后一次研讨会上启动。我们对表演和MR概念化的目标是揭示跨国糖作为“多居住”：涉及不同的人跨越地方和空间，以及“多维”：涉及各种社会变革，例如人口，文化，饮食，环境。随着人们对苏格兰参与奴隶制的兴趣越来越大，该项目提供了一个及时的机会，以发展对大西洋两岸的糖，奴役和制糖业的影响的理解。该项目的主要公共产出-两个互动现场表演-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述，并分享他们自己的糖生活史。表演和其他项目活动将通过一个网页（托管在爱丁堡大学的Media Hopper和open.ed.ac.uk上）在项目结束后继续存在，该网页展示了如何通过共同创造的做法重新利用档案材料，并链接到数字档案收藏。

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.