The Space Archivists have landed! TRANSMIXR’s brand new VR game made it to the Cinekid Medialab. Over 7000 visitors got the chance to become space travellers and help repair the broken archive of human memories.
Over the course of three years, the TRANSMIXR cultural heritage use case team explored how to meaningfully use XR within the sector. From desktop research, interviews with stakeholders, design salons with industry experts and several studies with Kids Team Research, we gained all necessary insights to develop a social VR game that allows children to explore the digital collections of Sound & Vision: The Space Archivists.
Imagine this: it’s the end of the Earth. To preserve the memories of life on Earth forever, an archive brimming with media items – such as photos and videos – has been sent into space. But oh no! A meteorite crashed into the archive…
The Space Archivists is a multiplayer game in social VR that allows players to explore the digital collection of museums in a futuristic sci-fi scenario. In this broken space archive, all sorts of items float through the air. It’s up to the players to fix the archive by putting all media-items back in place. The game was initially built with archival items from Sound & Vision’s collection, but becomes templateable through the Curator Studio. In the Curator Studio, curators from any museum can upload their own items so their visitors can explore digital collections with any themes.
After extensive testing with children, the social VR installation had its soft launch during the Xperience Day at Sound & Vision in the summer of 2025. Thanks to the many positive responses from players, we decided we wanted more! We applied to the Medialab of Cinekid 2025 – a children’s festival with countless AR, VR and MR installations tailored to kids. And we got accepted! From October 11 to 24, The Space Archivists was featured in full glory at the festival. With an estimated audience of 7.000, hundreds of children got to explore the digital collection of Sound & Vision and save the space archive.
Photos © Cinekid / Momenttom
Of course, that is not all that we did. We also wrote the guide Creating Meaningful Interactions with Cultural Heritage in Immersive Environments to help heritage professionals start their journey in XR. In addition, we developed the workshop and workbook Beyond Virtual Museums to help curators come up with XR experiences tailored to their museum visitors. Curious to see our timeline and all our milestones? Take a look at the use case page here.
Authors: NISV – Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid
