Although the "Guangfu Temple Fair Meta-Universe" has come to an end in 2022, the concept of "Meta-Universe" has just begun to create a new scene, new model and new experience for public cultural services. Following the first time in 2021, the traditional Guangfu Temple Fair was put on the "cloud", this year, Yuexiu District of Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, applied the concept of "meta-universe" to the field of public cultural services, and held the "Guangfu Temple Festival Meta-Universe" for the first time to provide safe and high-quality public cultural services for the masses through non-contact methods to meet the new requirements of digital development and high-quality development of public culture in the normalization stage of epidemic prevention and control.
The digitalization of public cultural services accelerates the transformation
As one of the most influential brand cultural activities in South China, the Guangfu Temple Fair will be mainly offline activities until 2020, attracting more than 5 million people to participate every year. After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the large-scale gathering offline activities pressed the "pause button", how to maintain the brand heat of the Canton Temple Fair, and how to provide richer and more popular cultural activities for the masses during the festival? Zhang Rong, director of the Yuexiu District Cultural Center, said that this requires the full release of the supporting role of science and technology on cultural construction, and requires cultural workers to accurately identify changes, respond scientifically, and take the initiative to seek changes.
In Zhang Rong's view, with the rapid development of digital technology, people's production and lifestyle have changed, and traditional public cultural services need to be seamlessly connected with digitalization in terms of object, content, scope and form of services. Especially since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the digital transformation of public cultural services has accelerated, indicating that digital cultural services will become one of the main fronts of public cultural services in the normalization stage of epidemic prevention and control, and will also become an important starting point and innovation focus for public cultural institutions to improve service efficiency.
In 2021, after comprehensively studying and judging the risks of epidemic prevention and control, the Organizing Committee of the Guangfu Temple Fair explored the launch of the "Cloud Tour Temple Fair", and on the basis of the traditional temple fair, launched new cultural experiences such as "Cloud Tour", "Cloud Watch Exhibition", "Cloud Performing Arts" and "Cloud Live Broadcast". With the blessing of digital technology, the Guangfu Temple Fair turned the crisis into an opportunity, attracting a total of 650,000 people to participate in 7 days. Based on this, the "Guangfu Temple Festival Meta-Universe" in 2022 will come to fruition.
Zhang Rong introduced that in the early stage of the preparation of the 2022 Guangfu Temple Fair, the organizers tried to innovate on the basis of maintaining the core connotation of the temple fair and attract more people to participate, so they coincided with the idea of holding a "meta-universe temple fair" loved by the public, especially young people. At the beginning of the planning, the organizer launched the "Meta-Universe in My Heart" prize message activity, and collected more than 100 messages. Whether it is "Lao Guang" or "Xin Guang", they all hope to find the original memory, the most dazzling experience and the truest emotions through the "Guangfu Temple Festival Meta Universe".
Science and technology help the cultural dissemination of Canton
The "Guangfu Temple Fair Meta Universe" series of activities lasted for more than 40 days from January 10, setting off a climax in the Lantern Festival. It not only innovates the mode of holding cultural activities under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, but also builds a virtual public cultural space that can be opened at any time and is full of "Cantonese flavor" through digital modeling and Unreal Engine technology.
In order to blend virtual and reality, the organizer invited the avatar to serve as the ambassador for the digital promotion of Cantonese culture. Entering the "Meta-Universe" scene, "Yi Yi" wore the Guangfu mascot Aoyu image qipao customized for the Guangfu Temple Fair, and interacted with everyone at the entrance of the virtual Beijing Road City God Temple Arch, introducing the culture of Guangfu, the history of Beijing Road and the grand events of previous temple fairs. Anime star "Pig Man" also came to the "Meta universe" for the first time as an "ambassador" to help the cultural spread of Canton.
In the past, the web design of public cultural services provided by the government mostly presented the overall content in aggregate pages, which was prone to problems such as lengthy menus, which affected the attention of the masses. In this regard, the "Guangfu Temple Fair Meta-Universe" effectively eliminates the boundary of restrictions through three-dimensional scene creation and audio-visual play and purchase application collection, and carries out "fission-type" promotion through sharing, invitation, challenge and other ways to guide participants to actively find and excavate content. In 2021, the online homepage contact point of the "Yunyou Temple Fair" will not exceed 15, while the interactive contact point of the first-level page of the "Guangfu Temple Festival Meta-Universe" in 2022 will have nearly 100.
At the same time, the organizers invited non-hereditary heirs, gourmets and animation stars to carry out more than 10 live broadcasts, with a total of more than 250,000 views. For example, the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Everyone Talks" Douyin series live broadcast invites inheritors of intangible cultural heritage projects such as Cantonese Speaking Ancient, Lingnan Guqin, and Cantonese Traditional Marriage Customs to participate in interviews and interactions, and perform on-site performances. Among them, Hongshan, the representative inheritor of Lingnan Guqin at the municipal level, and Liang Jianhua, the "Chief Cultural Tourism Communication Officer" of Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, in addition to introducing the Lingnan Guqin, also let everyone play music online and feast their ears; the eight sisters, the inheritors of the traditional marriage customs in Guangfu, used a funny and lively way to explain the details of marriage customs such as choosing auspicious days, excessive gifts, and the top; Su Xin, the representative inheritor of tongcao watercolor painting skills, and Zhou Ying, a teacher of tongcao painting, brought a number of exquisite tongcao watercolor paintings to introduce the history and stories behind them.
Online experiences translate into offline harvests
In order to cooperate with the online activities, the organizers set up 12 historical and cultural landmarks in Yuexiu District as punching points to carry out the immersive script punching activity of "One Day Millennium , Ancient Yue Jin Show". Citizens participated in the philatelic stamp customs clearance activity at the punching point and took a group photo with the interactive device and Hanfu masters to feel the thousand-year-old charm of Yuexiu and the new appearance of the shang capital.
At punch points such as the Five Immortals Temple and the Millennium Ancient Road in Yuexiu District, many citizens use "customs clearance documents" to collect stamps. Many citizens have participated in the philatelic stamping activities since the first Canton Temple Fair, and also brought the customs clearance documents from 12 years ago to the event site, stamped with a new postmark combined with the design of cultural landmarks. The interactive photo installations of "Guangfu Taste and Happy Year" distributed throughout the place also add to the festive atmosphere, with citizens wearing traditional costumes with their families, relatives and friends, traveling through the ancient charm of Yuexiu millennium and shangdu, leaving a group photo of happiness and reunion.
The "Guangfu Temple Festival Yuan Universe" entered the Times Foundation's "TianGeng Flower Blossom" multi-functional art classroom online, and the public welfare punch point under the Beijing route also attracted a large number of people to visit to experience the open class of aesthetic education, appreciate the paintings, handicrafts and other works of art of rural children, participate in the interactive activities of guarding the "TianGeng" small flowers, and experience rural aesthetic education. In the offline pop-up store of Guangzhou Unicom, the public can take photos with the digital people "Yiyi" and "Pig Pig Man" through virtual live broadcast technology, which is especially welcomed by children, and everyone has left their own images of the "meta-universe" of the Guangfu Temple Fair.
"This year's Guangfu Temple Fair for the first time applied the 'meta-universe' to the field of public cultural services, as a new attempt, upgraded the online cultural activity model, further optimized and improved the construction of the regional public digital culture cloud platform, and improved the level and connotation value of public cultural services." Zhang Rong said.
(Photo courtesy of Yuexiu District Cultural Center)
Editor-in-charge: Yuan Ming