Within the walls of York Gaol: Memory, Place and the Immersive Museum

这里提出的工作是约克博物馆信托基金（YMT）和约克大学EPSRC资助的数字创意实验室的跨学科研究人员团队之间的合作，旨在解决实施沉浸式体验以参与文化遗产的主要挑战。我们将为YMT运营的约克城堡博物馆设计和实施一个实验性的移动的虚拟现实（VR）体验，将沉浸式、协作式和基于地点的故事讲述与物体和建筑空间的物理体验相结合。博物馆拥有的物体有能力在个人和社区身份的形成中发挥不可或缺的作用。区域社会历史博物馆通过它们所关注的对象，帮助参观者有意义地与过去的人的经历联系起来，并通过个人反思的方式对地方产生更大的依恋。使用研究设计方法，我们将开发一个虚拟现实体验，以丰富和指导18世纪世纪约克城堡监狱，现在是YMT管理的约克城堡博物馆的团体探索。实验性的探索将反映约克城堡博物馆新的策展优先事项，通过寻找方法将当代社会相关性的问题，包括债务和拘留，编织到监狱的解释。VR体验将讲述债务对过去约克居民生活的影响的故事;这是一个引起当代共鸣的问题。它将专注于YMT档案和收藏中证明的日常生活中的相关故事，目前还没有在城堡博物馆的现有解释中呈现。利用VR，根据现有的档案研究，想象约克监狱过去居民的记忆将在监狱空间内上演。灵活的叙事结构将使一个单一的故事被探索和揭示通过各种途径通过空间。受到VikingVR开发过程中非常成功的实验的启发，VR的叙事结构将鼓励人们分享VR面具，并参与和探索监狱空间和周围的物体，将监狱转变为一个协作和高度社会化的混合现实体验。这个概念验证的设计、实施和评估将使研究团队能够开始对三个与创意产业相关的潜在研究问题做出回应：1）VR的叙事媒体发展不足。VR叙事形式的发展是VR作为一种媒介被广泛接受的主要障碍之一，并推迟了其融入展览设计的结构。2)在博物馆环境中不存在部署这些技术的硬件。目前的技术对于无人值守或完全集成的博物馆使用来说还不够强大。它们的设计并不是为了提供人们所期望的、博物馆想要提供的那种社交、协作体验。3)VR的策展策略不足。VR是一种独特的媒介，具有非常具体的启示。将这项技术融入博物馆体验是一项重大挑战，如果得到解决，可能会彻底改变博物馆中讲故事的方式。VR体验将由考古、数字遗产、交互设计和技术团队以及人机交互研究人员与博物馆工作人员和社区代表共同设计，他们已经参与了城堡博物馆的重建工作。拟议的工作将为城堡博物馆正在进行的开发过程提供信息，VR体验将作为完全实现的永久数字沉浸式装置的原型，作为2018年至2022年城堡博物馆重建的一部分。我们还将利用这项研究作为一个机会，建立我们的合作，并进一步审查未来资助研究的优先事项。

The work proposed here is a collaboration between York Museums Trust (YMT) and an interdisciplinary team of researchers based at the University of York's EPSRC funded Digital Creativity Labs that seeks to address the major challenges to implementation of immersive experiences for engagement with cultural heritage. We will design and implement an experimental mobile Virtual Reality (VR) experience for YMT-run York Castle Museum that blends immersive, collaborative and place-based storytelling with physical experiences of objects and built space.Objects held by museums have the capacity to play an integral role in the formation of personal and communal identity. Through the objects in their care, regional social history museums help visitors to connect meaningfully to the experiences of past people and to develop greater attachments to place by means of personal reflection. Using a research-through-design methodology we will develop a VR experience to enrich and guide group explorations of the 18th Century York Castle Prison which is now YMT-managed York Castle Museum. The experimental exploration will reflect new curatorial priorities of York Castle Museum by finding ways to weave issues of contemporary social relevance including debt and detention into the interpretation of the prison. The VR experience will tell stories of the impact of debt on the lives of past York residents; an issue of great contemporary resonance. It will focus on relatable stories of everyday people evidenced in the archives and collections of YMT and not currently presented within existing interpretation at the Castle Museum. Using VR, imagined memories of past residents of York prison based on existing archival research will be staged within the prison space. Flexible narrative structures will enable a single story to be explored and revealed through a variety of pathways through the space. Inspired by highly successful experiments during the development of VikingVR (http://www.york.ac.uk/vikingvr), the narrative structure of the VR will encourage people to share VR masks and to engage with and explore the prison space and objects around them, transforming the prison into a collaborative and highly social, mixed reality experience. The design, implementation and evaluation of this proof of concept will enable the research team to begin to develop responses to three underlying research problems which are of relevance across the creative industries: 1) Underdeveloped narrative media for VR. The development of engaging narrative forms for VR has represented one of the main obstacles to the widespread acceptance of VR as a medium and has delayed its integration into the fabric of exhibition design. 2) Hardware does not exist to deploy these technologies within a museum setting. Current technologies are not robust enough for unattended or fully integrated museum use. They are not designed to offer the kinds of social, collaborative experiences which people expect and which museums want to deliver. 3) Inadequate curatorial strategies for VR. VR is a distinct medium with very specific affordances. Integrating this technology into the museum experience represents a major challenge which, if addressed could revolutionise the delivery of storytelling in a museum context. The VR experience will be co-designed by a team of archaeology, digital heritage, interaction design and technology, and human computer interaction researchers working with museum staff and community representatives already engaged in the redevelopment of the Castle Museum. The proposed work will inform the ongoing development process for the Castle Museum, with the VR experience acting as a prototype for fully realised permanent digital immersive installations as part of the redevelopment of Castle Museum between 2018 and 2022. We will also use this research as an opportunity to build our collaboration and to further examine priorities for future funded research.