Playing the Archive: memory, community and mixed reality play

游戏是所有社区、文化和历史时期的普遍人类活动。在游戏中，文化记忆被塑造并代代相传。然而，在当今社会，我们在支持玩耍方面面临着许多挑战。游戏档案解决了其中三个问题：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消失，并被后代遗忘。相反，老一辈人可能会对今天的孩子们的游戏感到焦虑和恐惧，特别是在数字领域。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互联系的。第三，在城市环境中，由于街头游戏的丧失、社会提供的减少以及出于对儿童安全的担忧而对成人进行的严密监视，游戏越来越受到限制。“玩档案”提供了三种解决这些问题的方法，每种方法都关注其中一种。第一种方法是数字化和转换博德莱安图书馆的一个重要文化记忆资源：民俗学家艾奥纳和彼得·奥佩在20世纪50年代和60年代收集的20,000名英国儿童的游戏记录。该项目将创建一个虚拟的，身临其境的世界，使老年人和年轻人的用户都能与档案玩，体验20世纪50 - 60年代的虚拟现实，免费提供给游客在V&A童年博物馆在伦敦，和韦斯顿公园博物馆在谢菲尔德。这种3D虚拟现实体验还将包括当今儿童玩的游戏，例如基于流行音乐和电影的歌曲的拍手游戏。这项工作将是谢菲尔德大学的档案管理员和编目员与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。他们将共同设计这些新的工具与儿童和老年人谁有助于原来的Opie调查，现在在他们的70年代。第二种方法是研究记忆和实践的发挥，通过采访和观察原来的Opie贡献者和儿童在小学，这有助于原来的研究。孩子们将为研究做出贡献，相互采访和年长的参与者，并拍摄自己的戏剧。这项工作将帮助我们理解什么是游戏，为什么有些游戏幸存下来，而另一些则消失了，物理游戏，仪式，歌曲，圣歌是如何从一代传到下一代的，特别是从20世纪50年代到现在，以及电子游戏等数字游戏如何增加了今天儿童的游戏剧目。我们还将探索在不同的语言和文化中存在什么样的游戏，如孟加拉语，普通话，索马里语，旁遮普语和波兰语，以及儿童如何使用游戏来协商社区的成员资格和在其中的位置。第三种方法，使用项目其他部分中创造的想法，是在谢菲尔德（公园山庄园）和伦敦（伊丽莎白二世奥林匹克公园）的再生区建造两个实验性游乐场。这些游乐场将采用创新的方法来设计游戏空间和设备，但也将“智能”物体与Bodleian和V&A童年博物馆档案中的历史物品联系起来，这两个项目的合作伙伴将为数字化工具和资源的设计做出贡献。该游乐场将采用“混合现实”游戏，将现实与虚拟相结合，并将游乐场和电子游戏的游戏文化联系起来，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童年博物馆举办一场免费的公共活动“游戏节”，以启动虚拟游戏世界。

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.