Playing the Archive: memory, community and mixed reality play

游戏是所有社区、文化和历史时期的一种普遍的人类活动。在游戏中，文化记忆被塑造并代代相传。然而，在当今社会，我们在支持游戏方面面临着许多挑战。播放《档案》解决了其中的三个问题。首先，游戏文化可能是脆弱和短暂的，很容易随着时间的推移而丢失，并被后代人遗忘。相反，老一辈人可能会对当今儿童的游戏感到焦虑和恐惧，尤其是在数字领域。其次，在规划和教育中管理游戏的方式可能会使儿童的游戏世界支离破碎，将他们的数字游戏与他们的物理游戏分开，尽管这些世界在儿童的想象和实践中仍然是相连的。第三，游戏在城市环境中越来越受到限制，因为街头游戏的减少，社会供给的减少，以及由于对儿童安全的担忧而对成年人进行严格监控。《玩档案》提供了三种解决这些问题的方法，每种方法都侧重于其中一种。第一种是数字化和转变博德利图书馆的一个重要的文化记忆资源：民俗学家艾奥娜和彼得·奥佩收集了20,000名英国儿童在20世纪50年代和60年代的游戏记录。该项目将创建一个虚拟的、身临其境的世界，让年老的和年轻的用户都能玩耍，体验1950-60年代的虚拟现实游戏，伦敦的V&A儿童博物馆和谢菲尔德的韦斯顿公园博物馆的参观者可以免费参观。这种3D、虚拟现实体验还将包括当今儿童玩的游戏，例如根据流行音乐和电影改编的歌曲拍手游戏。这项工作将是谢菲尔德大学的档案保管员和编目员以及伦敦大学学院巴特利特高级空间分析中心(CASA)的VR和高级可视化专家之间的合作。他们将与儿童和老年人共同设计这些新工具，这些人对最初的OPIE调查做出了贡献，现在已经70多岁了。第二种方法是通过采访和观察OPIE的原始贡献者和小学里对最初研究做出贡献的儿童来研究游戏的记忆和实践。孩子们将为研究做出贡献，采访彼此和年长的参与者，并拍摄他们自己的游戏。这项工作将帮助我们理解什么是游戏，为什么有些游戏存活下来，有些游戏消失了，身体游戏、仪式、歌曲、颂歌是如何代代相传的，特别是从20世纪50年代的S到现在，以及电子游戏等数字游戏是如何增加到今天的儿童游戏剧目的。我们还将探索不同语言和文化中存在的游戏类型，如孟加拉语、普通话、索马里语、旁遮普语和波兰语，以及儿童如何利用游戏来谈判社区的成员资格和在社区中的地位。第三种方法是利用项目其他部分创造的想法，在谢菲尔德(帕克希尔庄园)和伦敦(伊丽莎白女王二世奥林匹克公园)的重建地点建造两个实验性游乐场。这些游乐场将使用创新的游乐空间和设备，但也包括将物理游戏与Bodleian和V&A童年博物馆档案中的历史物品联系起来的“智能”物品，这两个博物馆都是该项目的合作伙伴，将为数字工具和资源的设计做出贡献。游乐场将会是“混合现实”游戏的典范，将实体和虚拟结合起来，并将游乐场和电子游戏的游戏文化联系在一起，因为它们已经在儿童的想象中联系在一起。最后，该项目将在V&A儿童博物馆举办游戏节，这是一项免费的公共活动，以推出虚拟游乐世界。

Play is a universal human activity in all communities, cultures and periods of history. In play, cultural memories are given shape and passed down from generation to generation. However, we face many challenges in supporting play in today's society. Playing the Archive addresses three of these problems.Firstly, play cultures can be fragile and ephemeral, easily lost over time and forgotten by successive generations. Conversely, older generations may be anxious and fearful about the play of today's children, especially in the digital realm. Secondly, the way play is managed in planning and education can have the effect of fragmenting children's playworlds, separating out their digital play from their physical play, although these worlds remain connected in children's imagination and practice. Thirdly, play is increasingly constrained in urban environments, through loss of street play, reductions in social provision, and tight adult surveillance in response to fears about child safety.'Playing the Archive' offers three approaches to these problems, each focusing on one of them.The first is to digitise and transform an important resource of cultural memory at the Bodleian Libraries: a collection of accounts of play from 20,000 UK children in the 1950s and 60's by folklorists Iona and Peter Opie. The project will create a virtual, immersive world enabling users both old and young to playfully engage with the archive, experiencing 1950-60s play as Virtual Reality, freely available to visitors at the V&A Museum of Childhood in London, and the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield. This 3D, Virtual Reality experience will also include games played by today's children, such as handclapping games with songs based on popular music and film. This work will be a collaboration between archivists and cataloguers at the University of Sheffield, and specialists in VR and advanced visualisation at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London. They will co-design these new tools with children and with older citizens who contributed to the original Opie surveys, now in their 70's.The second approach is to study memories and practices of play, by interviewing and observing the original Opie contributors and children at primary schools which contributed to the original studies. The children will contribute to the research, interviewing each other and the older participants, and filming their own play. This work will help us understand what play is, why some games survive and others are lost, how physical games, rituals, songs, chants are passed on from one generation to the next, especially from the 1950's to the present day, and how digital play such as videogames has added to the play repertories of today's children. We will also explore what kinds of play exist in different languages and cultures, such as Bengali, Mandarin, Somali, Punjabi and Polish, and how children use play to negotiate membership of communities and a place within them.The third approach, using the ideas created in the other parts of the project, is to build two experimental playgrounds in regeneration sites in Sheffield (the Park Hill estate) and London (the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park). These playgrounds will use innovative approaches to playspace and equipment, but also incorporate 'smart' objects linking physical play to the historic objects in the archives of the Bodleian and the V&A Museum of Childhood, both partners in the project who will contribute towards the design of the digital tools and resources. The playgrounds will exemplify 'mixed reality' play, combining the physical and the virtual, and linking the play cultures of playgrounds and videogames as they are already linked in children's imaginations.Finally, the project will hold a Festival of Play at the V&A Museum of Childhood, a free public event, to launch the virtual playworld.