Creating an Escape Room for Cultural Mediation: Insights from "The Archivist's Dream

Abstract

The Archivist's Dream („Der Traum der Archivarin") is a Live Escape Room Game that has been developed by the University of Krems' Center for Applied Game Studies on behalf of the Archives of Contemporary Arts in Krems, Austria, which are dedicated to collecting pre-mortem bequests and post-mortem estates of outstanding artists. Located in the underground facilities of the archive, the Escape Room interweaves selected archival materials, historic media devices and archivist approaches to form an interactive puzzle experience. However, it is not an interactive exhibition showcasing the archives' contents; and while the Escape Room incorporates elements of educational game design, it is an example for a less common application of (Escape Room) Games: the use of game design in the field of cultural mediation (Kulturvermittlung). Instead of following an educational goal in the narrower sense, the Escape Room is designed to turn aspects of cultural mediation and archival practice into gameplay principles, focusing on letting players explore the tenets of archival thinking rather than on "teachable" content. This is achieved by establishing different levels of (un-)reality players have to travers within the game: players follow a fictional archivist into her dreams, which merge with the real-life archives. In order to "escape" this dream world, players combine archival practices with dream logic to solve a secret tied to actual archival materials, while at the same time dissolving the borders between real life, dream and game.