Initiative for Museum-based
Blended Worlds
About Humboldt-Innovation Initiative for Museum-based Blended Worlds:
A museum is “a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage.” It “fosters diversity and sustainability”, is “open to the public, accessible and inclusive”, and “operates with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing“.
This current definition, adopted in Prague in August 2022, is – according to the International Council of Museums – “a central reference point for the work of museums worldwide” and “provides a clear guideline for the tasks and functions of museums and underscores their social responsibility”.
The Humboldt-Innovation Initiative for Museum-based Blended Worlds is based on the assumption that an optimal implementation of these new demands on museums is not possible without utilization of the most wide-ranging and societal penetrating cultural medium of our time: video games. This includes gaming’s derivatives – like (proto-)metaverses and virtual worlds, esports, streaming – and it’s neighbourhoods, like memes, pen & paper and board games, or drone racing, just to name a few. Both as a technology driver and as a significant cultural technique of digitization, video games offer great opportunities and risks, especially for museums in times of the extended requirements by the new ICOM definition.
Embedded in Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s “third mission”, and based on over a decade of research, teaching, and (cultural) policy advising, the Initiative for Museum-based Blended Worlds therefore offers knowledge transfer on the interdependencies of gaming and museums. In doing so, it builds on an extensive network of potential partners in academia and practice, like “Orkenspalter TV”, with whom the largest Gaming-related exhibition in the DACH-region – Zeppelin Museum’s “Choose your Player. Spielwelten von Würfel bis Pixel” – was conceptualized and implemented.
M.P.P. FRSA studies the impact of games on society. He is a co-founder of gamelab.berlin at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Cluster of Excellence, and he is a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and the German Council on Foreign Relations. He has advised the Federal Foreign Office on gaming in strategic communications since 2018 and is the author of a study for the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen on the metaverse and gaming and its potential for foreign cultural and educational policy. Shamsrizi serves on the advisory boards (Kuratorium) of i.a. the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt and the BIOTOPIA Naturkundemuseum Bayern.
is the Co-Founder of the Spatial Computing Startup VRalive GmbH and formerly the Managing Director of the Serious Game Company RetroBrain R&D GmbH. As a scholar his interests range from (Social-)Entrepreneurship to Digitalization and Gaming. As an expert in Continuing Professional Development, Blended Learning and Instructional Design he is responsible for the holistic learning journeys inside the innovative knowledge transfer projects at the Initiative for Museum-based Blended Worlds.