Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1649
When the plane swept into the northwest plateau, the land exposed its most primitive appearance. The sand hills undulate and stretch like the folds of the earth; the sand river in the dry season becomes a deep and clear map of tree roots. The road to the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang is smooth and lonely, and the yellow sand is endless. I wish I could just extend from people’s vision to the edge of the world.
A Dunhuang that conforms to everyone’s imagination was gradually built like this, until it was broken by an overly intense and brilliant way when it stepped into the cave.
Passing through a hole, walking through a narrow corridor, and entering a space several times the height of the body, all the sensory contrasts are caught off guard-first is the vision, a pair of eyes accustomed to the city have not waited to adapt to the straightforward sun of the desert, and immediately faced the darkness; Then there is the sense of touch, the cool air in the grotto makes people suddenly focus; at the end of the light beam of the guide’s flashlight, the murals more than a thousand years ago are colorful and the stories are vivid. with a smile.
If you had come here more than a thousand years ago, you would have seen a completely different scene. You will be in an international metropolis, buying spices from Sogdian people, sugar from Tianzhu people, silk from Central Plains people, and watching a Huxuan dance performed by Kang people… At that time, Dunhuang was the “throat of communication between China and the West”. place”. The Chinese civilization and different civilizations from India, ancient Greece, and ancient Persia merge and communicate here. With a developed economy and diverse cultures, Dunhuang has been a pearl on the Silk Road since then. Since 366 A.D., a monk named Le Zun dug the first grotto at the eastern foot of Mingsha Mountain. In the long history since then, people have opened caves along the cliff to worship Buddha and make offerings to Bodhisattvas. However, the Mogao Grottoes have quietly preserved more than 1,600 years of culture and art.
Mogao Grottoes also follow the natural law of “birth, old age, sickness and death”. Fan Jinshi once stood in the cave, holding a photo taken by the French explorer Pelliot 100 years ago in her hand. Comparing the two, she saw the haggard speed of the Mogao Grottoes, and the change was shocking. The color of the murals has faded, and some walls have fallen off and disappeared. “The disappearance of Mogao Grottoes is unstoppable.” Fan Jinshi stated this cruel fact long ago. Before graduating from Peking University, she came to Mogao Grottoes as an intern and dedicated her life to it. Now she is the honorary president of the Dunhuang Academy.
The Mogao Grottoes are not the kind of cultural relics carefully sealed in glass cabinets or carefully covered by high-tech materials. When people study and watch its history, they are also influencing and shaping it. In addition to Dunhuang’s strong wind and sand and other natural factors, human beings are also its threat. Relatively airtight caves have special requirements on air temperature and humidity, and the carbon dioxide exhaled by people will affect mural paints, wall surfaces, and clay sculptures. At its peak, more than 2 million people visit each year. Caves are difficult to “rest”.
Scholars talk about the Mogao Grottoes as if it were a person. They describe it as “breathing” and say, “Looking at the Mogao Grottoes is not a specimen that has died for a thousand years, but a life that has lived for a thousand years.” They care for it like an old man who is dying of old age, try to slow down its aging speed, and try their best to preserve its current appearance before its entity disappears completely, so that its story can be known to more people.
1
The Mogao Grottoes are located in the southeast of Dunhuang City, at the east foot of Mingsha Mountain. The altitude is 300 meters higher than that of the urban area. Scholars of the Dunhuang Academy call going to work “up the mountain”.
In addition to the most well-known protection of murals, painted sculptures, and grottoes, there is also a cave of less than 8 square meters that supports the research of scholars: the Sutra Cave.
Scholars say this when referring to it——
“Academics have been working on it for over 120 years.”
“Comprehensive, encyclopedic, a medieval library.”
“Opened ‘Dunhuang Studies’.”
On the north wall of the corridor of Cave 16 on the northernmost side of the southern part of Mogao Grottoes, there is a “cave within a cave” that is so small that an adult needs to bow his body to get in. It is Cave 17 of Mogao Grottoes, the scripture cave. The length and width of the cave are 2.6 meters and 3 meters high. It is a memorial cave for Master Hongbian, the monk Tong of Hexi during the Guiyi Army period. It once contained more than 60,000 pieces of ancient documents and artworks from the 4th century to the 11th century.
In 1900, Wang Yuanlu, a Taoist priest who lived in Mogao Grottoes, and a fellow surnamed Yang discovered it by accident when they were cleaning the silt in Cave 16. According to Wang Yuanlu’s epitaph, at that time, “the sand came out, and a hole was cracked in the wall, as if there was light. When the wall was broken, there was a small hole, which suddenly opened up. There are thousands of volumes of Tang scriptures in it, and there are many ancient objects. Most people who see it are wonders. Those who pass it down as gods.”
The global archaeological community is excited about its reappearance. It provides rigid and fresh evidence for the study of medieval history. It is no wonder that the academic community will say that this is “one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.”
The scripture cave is small in size, but the unearthed cultural relics are vast, and they are unique in terms of time, capacity, quantity, and value.
In addition to various Buddhist scriptures in different languages, official documents and other serious text files, there are also the world’s earliest star distribution maps, engraved prints, rubbings of calligraphers’ works, professional books teaching people to play Go, and nine-nine multiplication tables ; Marriage copywriting know-how, civil lawsuit complaint records, children’s practice books; and husbands decently divorced wives, wishing each other “a separation and a happy life” (yes, the source of popular copywriting on social networks is here ), the poor scholar shed tears to commemorate the dismal life of his dead donkey… These unpolished public and private documents, which are different from official historical records, have been collected into the records of secular life in the Middle Ages, leaving precious evidence for future generations.
However, if anyone comes to the Bible Cave with historical curiosity to find out, he will probably taste a bit of disappointment. Due to the weakening of the national power in the late Qing Dynasty, these cultural relics were “defrauded and stolen” by explorers from Britain, France, Russia, Japan, the United States and other countries, scattered all over the world, and are now collected in the British Library, the French National Library, the British Museum, etc. among institutions. Because of this, the public awareness of the Buddhist scripture cave cannot be compared with its reputation in the academic circle.
The status quo of the Buddhist scripture cave in Cave 17 of Mogao Grottoes
In the face of huge cultural value, people who understand the Buddhist scriptures cave have more anxiety. If it cannot be perceived by more people, it is still “sealed” in history and has nothing to do with people today. How can we break through the limitations of media and forms of communication, so that more ordinary people can see the beauty of the scripture cave and realize its value?
In June 2022, the Dunhuang Research Institute and Tencent announced the joint establishment of the “Digital Dunhuang x Tencent Interactive Entertainment Cultural Heritage Digital Creative Technology Joint Laboratory”. The original intention is to combine the digitization technology of cultural relics of the Dunhuang Academy and the game technology of Tencent Interactive Entertainment to share the “living history” behind the Buddhist scripture cave with the public in an “immersive” and “interactive” way.
But no matter whether it is the scholars and experts of the research institute or the young people in Tencent Interactive Entertainment, although they have strong desires, they have not yet formed a clear idea – because there is no precedent to follow in the face of such a vast academic ocean as the Buddhist scripture cave.
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In Shenzhen Kexing Science Park, on the reception table in the office of Dai Bin, general manager of the Tencent Interactive Entertainment Public Relations Department, there are Chinese ancient architectural models assembled with mortise and tenon building blocks and a Lego model of the ancient Roman Colosseum. , ancient temple economy and other works are filled. He is a sincere lover of Dunhuang culture. When talking about the details of Mogao Grottoes, he can bring specific years, names of authoritative scholars and papers, and he will immediately get up and pull out a book to find examples.
After visiting the Mogao Grottoes for the first time thirteen years ago, Dai Bin has been paying attention to the popularization of Dunhuang culture, not only out of professional sensitivity. He also believes that the essence of cultural heritage protection is to manage the information displayed and conveyed, and Internet technology companies have natural reserves in information management.
About seven years ago, the Dunhuang Research Institute and Tencent reached a strategic cooperation agreement, and then the two parties jointly launched “Digital Providers”, QQ Music “Ancient Music” Concert, “Dunhuang Poetry Scarf”, “Glory of the King” “Meet Feitian” “Meeting the Deer” and “Meeting Hu Xuan” series of game skins, Dunhuang animation dramas and other digital cultural and creative boutique content, summarizing the past few cooperations, Liu Xiaolan, deputy general manager of the marketing and public relations department of Tencent Group, commented, “Tencent has made great achievements in Dunhuang culture. It builds a creative bridge and a digital bridge between China and the public.” Now, the new proposition of disseminating the scripture caves is in front of us again, “Can a new bridge be built?”
Liu Xiaolan’s team found Dai Bin. Dai Bin thought of several things about how to spread the scripture cave:
First, the area of the Buddhist scripture cave is so small, but it has a history of more than a thousand years, and the contrast is huge; second, digital cultural products used to “push” information out, which is not conducive to being received. The order of information transmission; thirdly, the development of technology provides the possibility to transmit “more massive, more relevant and easier to accept” information.
The answer to the proposition, Dai Bin thinks it may be game technology. He found Cui Xiaochun, vice president of Tencent Interactive Entertainment and head of the CROS team. CROS is the middle-stage department of Tencent Games. It is responsible for researching the latest game technology and supporting various products inside and outside the company. It has previously used game technology to create the “Digital Great Wall”, which is the largest cultural heritage realized through cloud game technology. Millimeter-level high-precision , Immersive and interactive digital restoration. Dai Bin suggested that the CROS team make a “digital scripture cave”, but add the game’s operation, perspective, storyline and reward mechanism.
In addition to being a form of entertainment, games are also a tool for storytelling. In recent years, “Edie Finch”, “The Last of Us” and “Uncharted” are not only popular games, but also huge novels.
Literature is writing and narration, film is watching and giving, and games add interaction and feedback on this basis. With these three narrative techniques, the sensory participation of the listener is increasing. Understand the story through interaction, design key information as props and clues, let people actively obtain it, and be pushed by the sense of accomplishment to understand cultural common sense. This is the unique advantage of game narrative.
And what supports the narrative ability of the game at the bottom is technical ability. The development of technologies such as 3D modeling, global dynamic lighting, and physical rendering can restore the “real world” in virtual space-time and create “real-world physical experience”, which is a channel from reality to virtual.
Mogao Grottoes “Three Floors” rendered by game engine
Cui Xiaochun immediately agreed to the proposal. The team members were also excited about this idea, but they couldn’t help but feel bold: because such a product has never been done in the cultural and cultural industry, and Tencent itself has never done it.
To tell a story you need a clue. When this idea was passed on to the Dunhuang Academy, Zhao Xiaoxing, director of the Dunhuang Literature Research Institute, quickly created the story script “Confessions of a “Piece of Paper””-this “paper” is the excavated document “Dunyan 001 “” Guiyi Army Yafu Wine Breaking Calendar”.
As a professional scholar of Dunhuang studies, Zhao Xiaoxing has always paid great attention to popularizing the Buddhist scripture caves and the Dunhuang culture contained in them to the public. For this reason, she participated in the recording of “National Treasure Everyone Says”, “Archaeological Open Class”, “Silk Road Lecture Hall” and “Here Comes!” “Dunhuang” and other TV programs, planned cultural promotion projects such as “Treasures of Dunhuang” and “Interesting Dunhuang”, and wanted to “turn interesting culture into something easy to understand”, and the Buddhist scripture cave especially needs such “translation”.
“The Sutra Cave lacks a ‘concrete and easily perceivable thing’, which is why it is not well recognized. Every time people talk about it, it is easy to highlight its history of cultural relics loss and tragic fate, But in fact, ‘what’ is in the scripture cave is more important.” Zhao Xiaoxing said, “The scripture cave is too rich and precious, and our cultural self-confidence can be established through these documents.”
“Confessions of a “Piece of Paper”” was originally a script prepared for a cartoon album, using the first person to tell the ins and outs of “Guiyi Army Yafu Wine Breaking Calendar”. Zhao Xiaoxing is very fond of this document, because it represents the “essence” of the Sutra Cave to a certain extent – it records the “Commentary to the Diamond Sutra” on one side, and Buddhist scriptures are the most document type unearthed in the Sutra Cave; The rebel government’s 213 public expenditures on alcohol are the first-hand historical files. “The official historical records are all rough lines, but the Jiu Po Calendar can see the situation of the Guiyi military government’s diplomatic use of wine and festival activities at that time, revealing the living historical details. In addition, it was later divided into three, and after many years, they were divided into three parts. Returning to Dunhuang can completely connect the stories of the Buddhist scripture cave.” Zhao Xiaoxing said.
Soon, this story was adapted into a product script for the “Digital Library Cave”. After initial communication between the two parties, in June 2022, members of Tencent’s “Digital Sutra Cave” project team came to Lanzhou with a nearly 50-page presentation to demonstrate product planning for the Dunhuang Research Institute.
Tencent employees explained the process, dialog boxes, arrows, and tasks. Scholars were faintly worried when they heard the “players”, “strategies” and “tasks” that popped up from time to time. The teachers were unable to establish a specific imagination for the final state of this product for a while.
Yang Xuemei is in charge of scientific research management, academic exchanges and intellectual property management of the Dunhuang Research Institute. She is open to new forms of communication. She thought at the time: “Showing it in the form of a game, should I just scan the panorama of the cave and put it in it? “
The big challenge ahead is to ensure academic accuracy. “I have seen such mistakes before watching TV dramas. The story is about the Tang Dynasty, and the actors are wearing clothes from the Song Dynasty. Low-level academic mistakes must be avoided.” Yang Xuemei thinks, “Only by delivering accurate information can we deliver the correct value.”
Su Bomin, director of the Dunhuang Academy, led the formation of a team of 6 or 7 experts in the fields of literature, art, architecture, archaeology, music and dance, and digitization to participate in the project. Such a large-scale cross-departmental cooperation is rare in the research institute. “The two sides have indeed invested a lot of technology, manpower, and material resources. Either they don’t do it, or they do it well.” Yang Xuemei said.
In addition to ensuring academic accuracy, it is also necessary to ensure that the technology is feasible, and the two need to be integrated and balanced. Before all the doubts are answered, the two parties have established a consensus: on the bottom line of respecting the original appearance of history, give space for product creativity and create an unprecedented visiting experience.
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Technology allows the imagination to take root. With the help of technology’s presentation capabilities, people can no longer only see the results of history, but also the process of history and the scenes that no longer exist in the real world.
In the “Digital Sutra Cave”, Tencent and the Dunhuang Research Institute restored the Temple of the Three Realms through 3D modeling for the first time. Sanjie Temple was a famous temple in the Dunhuang area during the Tang Dynasty, but no image data was left, and even the ruins have not been excavated so far.
At the end of March 2023, Lanzhou was rainy in spring. At the Lanzhou Branch of the Dunhuang Research Institute, Zhao Xiaoxing brought up the document PT993 unearthed in the Sutra Cave. It was a map of Tubo temples, and it was also the reference map for Tencent to draw the Three Realms Temple. “This picture is too sloppy.” She said, waiting for the webpage to load, and continued: “Can you imagine using it to restore a real building?”
The lines of PT993 are clean and regular, and no fair judge can deny the seriousness of the painter, but the perspective knowledge mastered by this ancient technician is not consistent with the cognition of modern people. Just such a simple picture, both flat and three-dimensional. Facing it, Tencent’s team is also clueless.
Initially, Tencent had designed a Temple of the Three Realms, but in Zhao Xiaoxing’s view, “It may be fine in Chang’an and Luoyang, but it cannot match the entire environment in Mogao Grottoes.”
When she proposed to overthrow the first version of the art design of the Three Realms Temple, Yang Xuemei felt that the atmosphere of the video meeting was “a little bit tense”. For Tencent, the first draft has basically been finalized, and revision means that not only the art has to be redone from the original painting stage, but also the post-production rendering, lines, and character routes have to be changed accordingly. “The cost of overturning is not low,” Yang Xuemei knew. But from the perspective of the research institute, even if the data is limited, it cannot compromise the academic accuracy.
At a difficult moment, Zhao Xiaoxing asked Sun Yihua, an architecture expert at the Institute, for help. Mr. Sun, who has already lived a retired life, hand-painted the schematic diagram overnight, took pictures and sent it at 11 o’clock in the middle of the night. Sun Yihua carefully guided, and if the text was not easy to understand, he hand-drawn it with a pencil, strictly marked the scale and legend, and sent it one by one.
The Sanjie Temple restored according to the document PT993 and Mr. Sun Yihua’s hand-painted drawings
Just like doing academics, experts consulted literature and verified history, and the Tencent team cooperated efficiently, revised details, and made digital presentations. The two sides “one draft and one draft every day”. Presenting the Mogao Grottoes of four eras, the characters, buildings, cliff faces of Mingsha Mountain, and cave murals must conform to historical facts and cannot be simply copied and pasted.
The roof of the monk’s house in Sanjie Temple should be flat. Dunhuang is very hot in summer, and monks will sleep directly on the roof; the prop mica is a kind of shale pigment used for murals in Dunhuang, and it should be painted in flakes instead of “potato eggs” The brush used to copy the scriptures is not the thin bamboo stick and thick brush that is common today, but the brush used to write Tang Kai is more like a short and powerful broom head. For another example, should Hong Bian, the monk who built the scripture cave, be called a “high monk” or a “master” by outsiders? Zhao Yanlin, deputy director of the Institute of Archeology, went to check the literature and found the answer in the “Praise of Dunhuang Stele Inscriptions” on the bookshelf of the dormitory. It must be called “Dade”.
Every detail is infinitely real, and the scene created is richer in information and more immersive. Similarly, rather than watching a Dunhuang dance on stage, it is better to create a highly restored Chang’an grand scene, so that the dance will be shocking.
Two units with completely different attributes cooperate to create a product that has never been seen before. The running-in cost can be imagined, but both parties have a common belief and bottom line. In the openness, respect and collision, the “Digital Bible Cave” can be iterated every day. The speed of the version is advancing, sometimes iterating twice a day, until the last day before going online.
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Whether you like it or not, nature has its life cycle. Grottoes will be born and will be annihilated. Time will permanently hide most things into history, and some things will be left behind by chance. If you want to change the fate of cultural heritage, what way can you resist nature and time?
Copying is a simple way of preservation. In the 1940s, Chang Shuhong, the first director of the Dunhuang Academy, came to Mogao Grottoes. His first job was to copy and study murals. The floor plan of the cave drawn by Dunhuang architect Sun Ruzhen not only copied the murals, but also added the schematic diagram of the cave building structure.
In the past, the way scholars raced against time could only rely on investing their own lives and letting their descendants continue to pass on. Sun Ruzhen’s wife, Li Qiqiong, was the deputy director of the Fine Arts Research Institute of the Dunhuang Academy and a master of mural copying. Their daughter is exactly Sun Yihua who helped the project team out of the siege in the previous article. In the Dunhuang Academy, there are many academic families such as couples and two generations.
Later, there was technology, a “weapon” that could beat time with higher efficiency, and the research institute firmly grasped it. Since Fan Jinshi proposed the concept of digital preservation in the 1980s, the Mogao Grottoes in the desert have been connected to the world’s most advanced technology in the past 40 years. Large Internet companies at home and abroad, and scientific research teams of well-known universities are all partners, in order to apply the most appropriate technology to the protection of Mogao Grottoes.
Ding Xiaohong is an employee of the Institute of Cultural Relics Digitization. He remembers the day of reporting as before. On July 6, 2005, the temperature was scorching and there were many tourists. His office is in a small bungalow, and there is a sand mountain less than one meter outside the window.
From the earliest manual shooting with a digital camera, the use of human eyes to stitch together the photos one by one, to high-precision scanning, software splicing, and digital storage, to spread the complete murals of the cave on the digital world plane – those files cannot be opened by a home computer at all. Yes, if a visitor wants to observe the results, they have to open it two hours in advance and wait for it to be loaded.
In such a rough environment, the Dunhuang Research Institute was supported by the Mellon Foundation of the United States, and cooperated with Northwestern University to find a way to shoot murals with high precision. It has professional shooting tracks, camera frames, rail cars, and professional lighting. The shooting track and shooting frame were custom-made from Hollywood, “it was very advanced at the time, the equipment for making movies.”
In the past 20 years, the Dunhuang Academy has collected more than 200 caves. This is a delicate job that cannot be rushed. In order to “keep those data safe and secure”, they have made all preparations to build a distributed storage structure, automatic backup, off-site backup, and automatic verification and storage system. In the most extreme scenario, the earth’s magnetic field is disrupted, and all digital resources are destroyed. In order to survive in such an extreme world, the Institute of Archeology used as comprehensive means as possible to write archaeological reports, and ensured to record a complete file of grotto relics information as much as possible.
From the establishment of the archaeological report writing team in 1994 to its official publication in 2011, Fan Jinshi edited the first volume of “The Complete Works of Dunhuang Grottoes”, “Archaeological Report on Caves 266-275 of Mogao Grottoes”, which took nearly 17 years. In a space of 300,000 words, it accurately, completely and comprehensively records all the remains of the early three caves, and is known as “the most scientific and comprehensive cave archives”.
“Our mission is to compile a scientific, complete and comprehensive archaeological report on the caves, so that future generations can reproduce the caves completely with just this book,” said Zhao Yanlin, deputy director of the Institute of Archeology. “The meaning is all about preservation, but the working methods are different. Emerging technologies are moving forward, but we are looking backward.” Zhao Yanlin provides archaeological academic guidance for the “Digital Scripture Cave”. His usual working environment is either a cave or a building on a sandy mountain This is the first time to participate in the foreign cooperation project of the institute.
From a longer-term perspective, it is not necessarily yellow sand that buried these cultural heritages, but alienation and forgetting. Only when cultural heritage is fully understood and transformed into human cultural aesthetics and daily life can it exist forever. Only memory can truly fight time, and technology can help remember better. Therefore, the three tasks of “protection, research, and promotion” are equally important in the Dunhuang Academy, which is the “six-character motto” engraved in the hearts of scholars.
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Cultural promotion is far from a one-time event.
In April, Du Juan, deputy director of the Financial Media Center of the Dunhuang Academy, was thinking about whether the social account attention of the Dunhuang Academy was stuck at a bottleneck. “How can the number of fans grow faster?”
The Media Center was established in 2018. As the “translator” of the Dunhuang Academy, it is responsible for “translating” the beauty and heritage of Dunhuang culture. With the first tweet of “Dunhuang Seasons and Seasons”, Du Juan and her young team have continuously exported Dunhuang culture and spirit with the help of new technologies and new forms of communication.
After the Dunhuang Research Institute and Tencent became strategic partners, the two parties jointly launched a series of projects such as the “Traveling in Dunhuang” mini-program, digital supporters, “Lighting up the Mogao Grottoes”, Dunhuang animation dramas, and Dunhuang poetry scarves. Du Juan, who was deeply involved in the “explosive product” loved by the public, felt the power of technology and creativity.
Although she is in the desert in the northwest, she is connected to a more open and technological world. After the King of Glory Feitian skin was launched, a college student who was born in Dunhuang and studied abroad said that he told his classmates: “Feitian belongs to Dunhuang.” The pride in that tone touched Du Juan. To reach young people, we must express Dunhuang culture in a way they can accept and like.”
It’s just that the trend of communication is changing too fast, first Weibo, WeChat, then small programs, short videos, and now Bilibili, Xiaohongshu… Culture promotion requires innovation, and you can’t follow platforms and hotspots.
“While Dunhuang culture is extensive and profound, it is also difficult to understand. It is necessary to broaden the thinking and constantly innovate technical means and promotion models when disseminating it,” said Du Juan. In 2022, the Convergent Media Center will launch the virtual human “Dunhuang Fairy-Gayao” (the prototype comes from the divine bird “Kalingpinga” with a melodious voice in the murals of Mogao Grottoes). She has bright eyes like a girl’s, and she is graceful. Du Juan wants to spread Dunhuang culture in a “personalized” way. In the “Digital Sutra Cave”, “Gayao” plays the role of “guide”, guiding users through time and space to experience the fate of the Sutra Cave.
Fairy of Dunhuang: Jia Yao
Du Juan, who was born in art, is the art director of the “Digital Sutra Cave”. While doing a good job in the artistic visual expression of the entire product, he also participated in the deliberation and polishing of NPC character settings and content interaction logic, with the purpose of integrating academic achievements Carrying out effective visual transformation and presentation not only respects academics but also conveys the aesthetic meaning of Dunhuang.
Zhu Xiaofeng is another person who is in Dunhuang but connected to the Internet world. As soon as he sat down, he quickly showed cheerfulness and talkativeness. He likes all kinds of sports, watching game videos, listening to different styles of music, chasing the latest movies, and thinks that his ability to find movies “maybe better than many post-90s” .
In the past few years, Zhu Xiaofeng has completed several cooperations between the Dunhuang Academy and the King of Glory themed skins. Zhu Xiaofeng’s main business is research on Dunhuang music and dance and the history of Chinese music, and he dubbed cooperation with Internet companies “amateur play tickets”, although he is willing to work overtime until one or two in the morning for these “play tickets”; he also tries to present the history of Dunhuang music and dance through exhibitions Research results. When cooperating with Glory of Kings on the “Meet Hu Xuan” skin, they created a grand scene of Chang’an Shangyuan Night Lantern Festival. On a small round carpet, Diao Chan danced with a speed and strength that normal dancers cannot reproduce.
For the “Digital Sutra Cave” this time, Zhu Xiaofeng advocated that the music should “not be too Western, nor too Buddhist”. He specially selected the melody fragments in the Dunhuang document P. Cave theme. According to his research in recent years, “Music of Dunhuang” should be “Music of the Central Plains” – the spread of culture goes to the most economically developed places first, and then returns to Dunhuang.
Zhu Xiaofeng felt that to a certain extent, by cooperating with Internet companies, he was equivalent to using high-tech means to tell the latest research, and the public could easily accept it, which was much more efficient than the “hypnotic academic books” written by himself.
Although the methods and states are different, Zhao Xiaoxing, Yang Xuemei, Du Juan, Ding Xiaohong, Zhao Yanlin, Zhu Xiaofeng and other Dunhuang scholars want to solve the same problem: how to make Dunhuang culture known, known and felt by more people.
This seems to be the consciousness of everyone who loves Dunhuang.
In the past 20 years, many world-renowned Internet and technology companies have actively sought cooperation with the Dunhuang Academy, and the Academy has embraced it with open arms, expecting cross-field collisions to produce good works. Liu Xiaolan, deputy general manager of Tencent’s marketing and public relations department, mentioned that when he first came to Dunhuang to discuss cooperation, the leader of the research institute said two sentences: The first sentence is to see what Tencent can do. The second sentence is, how long do you plan to do it?
As a “technology + culture” company, over the past few years, Tencent has tried to use technological power to help protect and inherit traditional culture, and has established cooperation with top domestic cultural institutions such as Dunhuang and the Forbidden City.
“Preserve information, process information, and disseminate information”, in Dai Bin’s view, the protection and promotion of cultural heritage and the working methods of Internet technology companies are different on the surface, but they are actually similar in essence: “The protection and promotion of cultural heritage is information management. For work, Internet technology companies are precisely prepared in terms of information management technology and concepts. Promoting self-knowledge, building consensus emotions, and completing aesthetic education must rely on the most cutting-edge information technology in different eras to complete.”
In 2022, an expert group from the Dunhuang Research Institute visited Tencent in Shenzhen. On the way out of the exhibition hall, Dean Su Bomin told Liu Xiaolan next to him: “If one day the culture of Dunhuang allows more people to see and go to more places, How nice it would be.”
Su Bomin is a person who cherishes words like gold. Liu Xiaolan was deeply impressed by that emotion. She felt Dean Su’s concern and expectation for cutting-edge digital technology.
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The protection and promotion of cultural heritage by each new generation of new technology will inevitably bring the expressive characteristics of that era. We are in an era of mass migration from reality to virtuality. Entering a realistic virtual world has become commonplace. People have long been accustomed to more and more “open worlds” in games, communicating and interacting with virtual people (or NPCs).
In Shenzhen Kexing Science Park, on the monitor screen of Qiu Hairong, an employee of the CROS technology R&D team of Tencent Interactive Entertainment, a three-dimensional Mogao Grottoes unfolds in detail as he moves the mouse. This “Digital Mogao Grottoes” consists of data points, and each point corresponds to several real photos. The “Digital Sutra Cave” restores the “three-story building” of Mogao Grottoes and Caves 16 and 17 with millimeter-level precision, rendering more than 30,000 images for this purpose, and generating a super-realistic digital model with 900 million surfaces.
By taking 30,000 real-scene pictures and processing them technically, the millimeter-level restoration of the physical world can be realized on the computer
This technology enables users who enter the product to get rid of space constraints and visit the Buddhist scripture cave at close range and indefinitely-in reality, you cannot stay in the cave for too long, and you cannot see details such as statues and murals clearly. Due to protection needs, you can only take a quick look at the entrance of the scripture cave for a while.
Liang Bing of the “Digital Sutra Cave” project team led the planning team. He said that the biggest challenge this time is that the narrative spans as long as a thousand years. The environment changes, the seasons change, the timeline, character line, and history line are intertwined, and there is a huge amount of information to be presented.” Finally, using the game narrative and the art style of Chinese meticulous painting, these information can be accommodated one by one.
Such an immersive and realistic scene, the reappearance of multiple historical dynasties, finally forms a data package as large as 36GB, and it is obviously unrealistic for users to download it to the mobile phone to experience it, and even if it is downloaded, the rendering capability is also relatively high for mobile phone chips and other configurations. requirements. In order to lower the user experience threshold, Tencent chose the presentation method of cloud games.
Thanks to technology, people can see more details on their mobile phones than they can actually go to the cave
Tang Bing, the person in charge of the client, is a typical technical expert with a mild personality, flexible mind and fast speech. He lightly disassembled the technology that “it is not difficult to implement”, which still makes people marvel at the charm of game technology-cloud game technology is to put all digital assets in the cloud and complete complex calculations in the cloud, even if the user’s mobile phone configuration It is not too high, and you can also get an experience with high-definition pictures and rich details.
“This would not have been possible five years ago,” Tang Bing said. Because of the latest “virtual geometry technology” in the industry, equipped with a game engine, billions of patches can be run on the cloud, and users can maintain high frame rates in real-time operations. “Basically, these technologies are not used by many people in China.” For more than ten years after graduation, Tang Bing has joined many large companies and worked on commercial games, e-commerce and other commercial projects. When the superior proposed to recruit technical talents to participate When it came to the digital culture project, he agreed without hesitation.
All of this can go back to the original proposition – small scripture cave, huge amount of information, is there a new “display order” that allows audiences to “participate” in culture “over time and space” and “low threshold” Heritage history?
With the help of game technology, in the past few years, CROS has successively launched and developed three digital cultural products: the Digital Great Wall, the Digital Library Cave, and the Digital Central Axis.
At the beginning of April, two weeks before the launch of the “Digital Sutra Cave”, at ten o’clock in the morning, members of the Tencent project team held a morning meeting on time. The corporate WeChat avatars of more than a dozen employees were spread out on the large curved screen in the conference room, and there were more than a dozen people sitting in the conference room. Deng Dafu, Assistant General Manager of the R&D Efficiency Department of Tencent Interactive Entertainment, had a loud voice and heated discussions.
Deng Dafu is the technical leader of CROS, a “pure technical nerd”, and his daily pleasure is to discuss technical papers with his peers. In the morning meeting that day, they discussed how to make the literature exhibition hall of the “Digital Library Cave” feel very large and tall. Specific to the technical implementation, it is to give it an area, given the line of sight and movement of the mirror, and after calculation, you can truly experience the “sense of space”. It was an exhibition hall with a strong sense of science fiction, and 21 cultural relics in it are now scattered all over the world. Only in the digital world can they be observed at the same time.
Doing three digital cultural projects in a row, Deng Dafu’s cognition has changed subtly. In the past, his first goal in game technology was “not to be left behind”. After the completion of the “Digital Great Wall” in 2022, many cultural and tourism units took the initiative to come to him, and he saw the public value of game technology. He vaguely feels that what he is doing is a “cultural metaverse”, and the technical tools and processes accumulated by the team in the project are the keys to open the door of this “cultural metaverse”.
With the help of game technology, return from the real state to the way when the Buddhist scriptures cave was just discovered
This may not be accidental. The protection and preservation of cultural heritage by digital means has a history of at least 30 years. The earliest “flat” form mainly consisted of pictures, videos and websites; the “three-dimensional” form with 3D and three-dimensional display effects; now, game technology brings ” The digitalization of cultural heritage has entered a new stage in the form of “immersive”, “participatory” and “interactive experience”.
“游戏科技参与文化遗产数字化是自然而然的。” 戴斌强调两者的关联性，“敦煌文化需要被公众了解，游戏科技让人们更容易抵达藏经洞。” 他期待“数字藏经洞” 产生一种示范效应，让更多人看到游戏科技的可行性、投入到文化遗产的保护和弘扬当中，“这种价值会比我们想象的大。”
“当我们获得技术能力后，就想着打开技术的更多可能，期望为社会创造更大的价值。” 戴斌解释了为什么要用游戏科技做游戏之外的事，“这些跨领域尝试验证了游戏科技能够外溢到其它领域，游戏能够产生超越游戏之外的多元价值，正在进化成为’超级数字场景’。”
2023 年4 月18 日，“数字藏经洞” 正式上线，首周内超1400 万人次进入小程序，超40 万人在云游戏中深度体验，且数据还在攀升。
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初春时节，敦煌的黄昏要在北京时间8 点才展露它壮美的姿色。每天傍晚5:30 游客全部离开景区后，莫高窟又静回来了。
那是一种需要外人适应和用通感去体验的安静。在远离市区20 多公里的沙漠，几百个佛窟默然矗立，远处的风吹拂起一层薄薄的沙，啸声淡淡，鸣沙山的名字就是这么来的。落日余晖一寸一寸消逝在山的背面，几千年时间周而复始，一秒钟也能绵密厚实。
人的复杂性被物理和时空的空旷广博性轻轻扫开，只剩下单纯的崇敬和热爱。正如丁晓宏所说，“敦煌确实是有些条件不如外面，但是这个感情是简单的。” 莫高窟有惊人的感召力。
爱和责任感并非没有源头。因为了解，他们懂得藏经洞的诞生、敦煌文献的掩埋、汇聚以及跨越千年的重现，都是极为罕见的“幸运”。文物的流散是无法更改的历史，但要如何表达它、记住它是可以选择的，“数字藏经洞” 是突破物理局限、对抗自然和时间的“时光机”。
去年7 月，腾讯项目组派出一个小分队，从深圳、上海、杭州分别出发，去敦煌采集数字资料。彼时很多城市还在封控，有人要连转三次飞机才能到敦煌。为了不打扰游客参观，他们早上4 点开工，工作到8、9 点，晚上5:30 后再开工，直到深夜12 点后。
近距离拍摄壁画让邱海榕得以看到更多细节，那些规律排列的小佛像看似重复，实际上每个都保留了不同的刮痕，被画工和时光塑造成一个个独特的存在。回到深圳后，处理噪点、校正颜色，他舍不得去修改照片里的每一个像素，虽然斑驳但感觉有一种难以名状的和谐。“就希望感动自己的东西，也给大家看到。” 他说。
他们见到了沙漠里的暴雨，在全年降水量只有40 毫米的敦煌，那场雨下了整个下午；还有一场突然袭来的沙尘暴，黄沙瞬间漫布， 游客尖叫，30 几秒后，身上全是沙土。他们一下子理解了莫高窟的伟大和脆弱，一切美好的事物，终将消逝。
策划组成员薛晓黎那时深刻感受到自己这份工作的意义和使命感。她才刚刚毕业转正，活泼、细腻、感性。那种使命感在成员之间蔓延，一位平时少言寡语的美术组同事某日袒露心扉，说，“投身敦煌已不只是因为工作。”
回到各自的工作岗位上后，他们把鸣沙山风的声音、莫高窟风铃的声音，还有敦煌咯哒鸡的声音埋在“数字藏经洞” 里。
在敦煌的最后一天，晚上12 点收工后，莫高窟送给他们一个晴朗的深夜，星星密布，北斗七星清晰，那晚的星空图成为薛晓黎设为每次汇报演示文稿的最后一页。她的工位上贴着在敦煌拍的照片、敦煌元素的公仔，他们一次次修改和迭代产品，克服了许多困难，她说，“就觉得冥冥中我们这群人要一起做这件事。”
如今，这份爱和责任已不止在敦煌。
本文转自： https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1649
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