When I was searching the video display of Assassin's Creed on Youtube, I encountered an animated Chinese painting named Qing Ming Shang He Tu (清明上河图 1085-1145) . It is a painting showcasing the prosperity of the daily life of Bianjing, the capital of Northern Song China (960-1127), during the Qingming Festival (a traditional Chinese festival for reverence of ancestors). I have known this painting since I took history courses in my middle school. And I was very surprised to learn the antique painting is digitalized and animated now. The painting is famous for depicting the street scenario and natural landscape along the river in a very specific and delicate way: over 800 people along with a number of livestock, ships, buildings, vehicles, trees, etc. are included in the painting. When I looked at the animated painting, and followed the movement of the scope that zooms in and out the living details, not only I obtained a deep aesthetic experience (the video is also accompanied with music), but I was also amazed by the way digitalization, especially the Virtual Reality (VR) technique, could play a role in learning the history and its products.
The worsening environmental condition caused by climate change, economic development projects, and other man-made damages have been posing threat to the preservation of historical sites and objects. How to effectively protect cultural heritage has become an urgent problem. And the solution to this does not merely rest on national departments, scholars and organizations. The public should also be involved in this process of retaining the material completeness of the common history. And to achieve this, the public needs to be educated and motivated. In this case, can VR be a promising tool in this regard? My understanding is that, through VR technology, people can either enter the space of the historical site by wearing VR glasses, and they can freely rotate their bodies to see the details in different directions; or they can exercise close observation of the historical collection by simply clicking the mouse or tapping the screen. The process could be made fun and exciting as much as possible with this more interactive technology. Distance between humans and objects is thus dissolved. However, whether and how this could be a start point to build deeper connections, and raise public awareness of historic preservation, is still unclear. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box.
1 comment:
Great Post Xu. And I agree with your point that the intent here is very different than that for a computer game. And this is a great way to breathe lived life into a remarkable historical record... thanks to 21st century capabilities. In my mind, though, the user experience potentially is the same to the concerns you and others raised about the computer game: we are passively engaging in a world, as viewer or as game player, constructed to be passively experienced. Qing Ming Shang He Tu is very detailed and I can see why it is a great tool to convey daily life (though in VR the streets are so clean. I wonder about that). But what is not here? What has the artist omitted? More broadly, why are these both captivating for people to experience the past (the gaps of history, as the narrator says, and limiting? I think there is a lot to like in these efforts, gaming or otherwise, but some reflexivity is needed, on top of commercial or conservation aims. See my post above on the reaction to the game environment by an archaeologist, for further thoughts!
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