Designing Mixed Reality Heritage Performances to Support Decolonisation of Heritage Sites

几十年来，遗产行业一直在努力解决其组织中的殖民主义遗产，然而，直到最近，策展人和程序员才开始积极挑战遗产地中嵌入的殖民权力结构。传统上，博物馆和遗址的叙事是通过特定的透镜来策划历史事件的，通常充满了殖民和经验主义的权力结构。与此同时，英国和美国的遗产组织对过时的展览风格表示担忧，希望策展创新以吸引更多样化和更年轻的观众。该项目的核心研究调查是调查沉浸式技术和沉浸式表演作为非殖民化工具的组合，这有可能吸引不同的世纪观众。该项目探讨了数字遗产表现，特别是使用混合现实技术，如何帮助遗产地吸引新的观众，同时批判性地让公众参与到代表性不足的声音和观点中，并关注欧洲和殖民历史。为了实现这一目标，该项目将设计和开发两种创新的沉浸式遗产体验，结合混合现实，以智能眼镜的形式，并在英国和美国的遗产地进行现场表演，重点关注生活在伦敦和马萨诸塞州迪尔菲尔德的18世纪被奴役和解放的奴隶人口的故事。该研究将通过为遗产工作者及其创意产业合作伙伴提供两个工具包来促进未来的跨大西洋产业创新，以协助设计，实施和员工培训，以使用MR沉浸式遗产体验。该项目将与历史学家、沉浸式技术设计师、数字故事讲述者、表演者、文化遗产研究人员、现场工作人员和每个遗产地的边缘化社区合作，探索适当的设计方法，以创造一种情感故事驱动的参与式体验，挑战每个遗产地的殖民叙事。其目的是制作一个工具包，以支持遗产组织和创意产业在非殖民化过程中的可持续设计合作。与此同时，反思性设计将从数字学术、所需技能以及技术和物流方面来审视这种合作所面临的挑战。然后，它将为遗产工作人员和表演者提供一个培训工具包，帮助遗产行业建立数字能力，创造可持续的参与，将混合技术经验作为博物馆遗址非殖民化的工具，教他们与MR平台合作的创新戏剧技术，并探索新兴的数字和表演技能和角色。

The heritage industry has been struggling with the legacy of colonialism in their organisations for decades, however, it has only recently become a priority for curators and programmers to actively challenge colonial power structures embedded in heritage sites. Traditionally museum and heritage site narratives were designed to curate historical events through a particular lens, often fraught with colonial and empirical power structures. At the same time, UK and US based heritage organisations have raised concern over outdated exhibition styles, looking to curatorial innovation to attract more diverse, and younger, audiences. The core research inquiry of this project is to investigate the combination of immersive technologies and immersive performance as tools for decolonisation, that has the potential to attract diverse, 21st century audiences. The project asks how digital heritage performance, using in particular Mixed Reality technologies, can aid heritage sites in their endeavour to attract new audiences while critically engaging the public with under-represented voices and viewpoints of troubled European and colonial histories. To achieve this goal, the project will design and develop two innovative immersive heritage experiences combining Mixed Reality, in the form of smart glasses, and live performance at heritage sites in the UK and US focusing on under-represented stories from 18th century enslaved and freed slave populations living in London and Deerfield, Massachusetts. The research will further future transatlantic industry innovation by providing heritage workers, and their creative industry partners, with two toolkits to assist the design, implementation, and staff training for the use of MR immersive heritage experiences. In collaboration with historians, immersive technology designers, digital storytellers, performance makers, cultural heritage researchers, on-site staff, and marginalised communities at each heritage site, the project will explore appropriate design methodologies to create an affective story driven participatory experience that challenges colonial narratives in each site. The aim is to produce a toolkit to enable and support a sustainable design collaboration between heritage organisations and the creative industries in the process of decolonisation. In parallel, reflective design will examine challenges of such collaborations, in terms of digital scholarship, required skills, and technical and logistic aspects. It will then deliver a training toolkit for heritage staff and performers, that can help the heritage industry build digital capacity, create sustainable engagement with hybrid technological experiences as tools for decolonising museum sites, teach them innovative theatrical techniques in working with MR platforms, and explore emerging digital and performance skill sets and roles.