Playing Beowulf: Gaming the Library

该项目将开发一个基于盎格鲁-撒克逊史诗《贝奥武夫》的游戏创作工具，供文学专业学生、策展人和图书馆参观者使用。这将使他们能够将这首诗转化为数字游戏，将文本解读为可玩的人物、风景和事件。这将允许大英图书馆的文学珍宝馆长设计贝奥武夫手稿的数字游戏体验，这份手稿的唯一副本保存在大英图书馆。然而，它也将允许参观者、学生和学童设计他们自己的游戏，从而通过数字环境产生一个联合馆长的例子。这些游戏将是基于屏幕的，可以在电脑、平板电脑和在线上玩。然而，Arduino控制板的使用将允许游戏控制外部环境，反之亦然，允许游戏事件与参与者戏剧性地演绎诗歌联系起来。这一“游戏图书馆”的愿景将探索如何在与游戏环境相连的戏剧化图书馆空间中接触文学珍宝。选择贝奥武夫有三个原因。首先，这是大英图书馆首批主要的数字化项目之一，因此这个项目可以将其数字改编的历史扩展到游戏叙事和戏剧动作的形式。其次，它属于一种叙事传统，这一传统强烈影响了过去20年的视频游戏设计：古老的和中世纪主题的奇幻游戏往往源于托尔金的故事，本身就借鉴了古英语和斯堪的纳维亚的诗歌和传奇。对于盎格鲁-撒克逊学者和英国高等教育学院的学生来说，将贝奥武夫改编成视频游戏开启了重新解读这首诗的途径，并将其与当代流行文化背景联系起来。第三，《贝奥武夫》是中学第三阶段的热门译本。如果学生能够通过戏剧和电子游戏设计来探索这首诗，他们也会将这种古老的叙事形式与他们自己的游戏文化联系起来。他们还可以仔细探索故事的叙述，甚至是原文的精选，例如贝奥武夫和格伦德尔的母亲都使用的模棱两可的术语“aglaeca”，但经常不同地翻译为英雄和怪物。这种模糊性可以转化为游戏设计中视觉角色的变形、视角的改变，甚至是口语对话。该项目是五个合作伙伴之间的合作。教育学院的英语、戏剧和媒体专家将牵头，为PGCE见习教师组织戏剧和游戏设计工作坊，并监督这些见习教师如何将这些经验复制到他们的中学生身上。这些活动将得到伦敦大学学院盎格鲁-撒克逊学者的支持，他们还将为本科生举办研讨会，并为研究游戏改编可以有助于解释贝奥武夫的学术努力做出贡献。大英图书馆将共同设计游戏创作工具，确保其适合策展人和图书馆参观者，并合作在BL的会议中心组织国际文学、戏剧和游戏会议。他们还将为伦敦青少年举办青年研究人员游戏设计研讨会。他们还将主持关于在图书馆和GLAM部门使用游戏的数字对话。第四个合作伙伴是悉尼大学，在那里，教育戏剧和视频游戏专家将复制英国学校的研讨会，并为解释这一活动的教学好处做出贡献。最后，布莱奇利公园的国家计算博物馆将在一个非正式的编程俱乐部举办两个使用该工具的研讨会。这里的目标将是将这种叙事适应与编程技能联系起来，询问编码如何与叙事相结合：或者更广泛地说，书籍艺术的教学如何与计算机科学的教学相结合。

This project will develop a game-authoring tool based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, for use by literature students, curators and library visitors. It will enable them to transform the poem into a digital game, interpreting the text into playable characters, landscapes and events. This will allow curators of literary treasures at the British Library to design digital game experiences of the Beowulf manuscript, the only copy of which is held at the British Library. It will also however allow visitors, students and schoolchildren to design their own games, thus producing an example of co-curatorship through a digital environment. The games will be screen-based, playable on computers, tablets and online. However, the use of arduino control boards will allow the game to control external environments and vice versa, allow the game events to connect with dramatic enactment of the poem by participants. This vision of 'gaming the library' will explore how literary treasures can be engaged with in dramatized library spaces connected to game environments.Beowulf is chosen for three reasons. Firstly, it was one of the first major digitisation projects of the British Library - so this project can extend its history of digital adaptation into forms of game narrative and dramatic action. Secondly, it belongs to a narrative tradition which has strongly influenced the videogame designs of the last twenty years: archaic and mediaeval-themed fantasy games often deriving from Tolkien's stories, themselves drawing on Old English and Scandinavian poems and sagas. For Anglo-Saxon scholars and HE English students, adaptation of Beowulf into a videogame opens up ways of reinterpreting the poem, and connecting it to contemporary popular cultural contexts. Thirdly, Beowulf is a popular text in translation for secondary schools at Key Stage 3. If students are able to explore the poem through drama and videogame design, they also will make connections between this archaic form of narrative and their own gaming cultures. They can also explore in close detail the narrative, and even selections of the original text, such as the ambiguous term 'aglaeca', used both of Beowulf and Grendel's mother, but often differently translated to signify hero in one case and monster in the other. This ambiguity can translate into morphing visual characters, shifting point-of-view, and even spoken dialogue in their game designs.The project is a collaboration between five partners. The Institute of Education's specialists in English, Drama and Media will lead, organising workshops for PGCE trainee teachers in drama and game design, and overseeing how those trainees replicate these experiences with their secondary school students. These activities will be supported by Anglo-Saxon scholars at UCL, who will also run workshops for undergraduates, and contribute to the scholarly effort to consider what game adaptation can contribute to the interpretation of Beowulf. The British Library will co-design the game-authoring tool, ensuring its suitability for curators and library visitors, and collaborating in the organisation of an international conference on Literature, Drama and Game at the BL's conference centre. They will also run Young Researchers game design workshops for London teenagers. They will also host a Digital Conversation on the use of games in libraries and the GLAM sector. The fourth partner is the University of Sydney, where specialists in educational drama and videogames will replicate the UK school workshops, and contribute to the interpretation of the pedagogic benefits of this activity. Finally, the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park will host two workshops using the tool with young people in an informal coding club. The objective here will be to link this kind of narrative adaptation to programming skills, asking how coding meets narrative: or more generally, how the pedagogies of the book arts meet those of computer science.