Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2023
Abstract
This article introduces the VESPACE project, an international, multi-disciplinary digital humanities initiative to build a computer-mediated playable simulation—a video game—of the eighteenth-century Paris Fair theatre. As part of this project, a weeklong postgraduate workshop was convened by the authors in May 2020 to develop protocols and procedures for coding literary and historical data for the Ensemble social physics engine that will govern behaviour of non-player characters (NPCs) in the interactive model. This article lays out the history and theory of social physics, the potential impacts of this project on historiographic practice, and the methodology and outcomes of the workshop week. We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and promising leads with respect to the future of applying social physics to humanities research. [This article is part of the collection Computer Modelling and Simulation for Literary-Historical Research: VESPACE and Social Physics.]
Publication Source (Journal or Book title)
Digital Studies/ Le Champ Numerique
First Page
1
Last Page
33
Recommended Citation
Leichman, J., & Samuel, B. (2023). Part I — Introduction: Social Physics and the VESPACE Project. Digital Studies/ Le Champ Numerique, 13 (2), 1-33. https://doi.org/10.16995/DSCN.8085