How much does it cost to recover all China cultural relics lost overseas?

What is the first sentence you want to say in such a scene today?

I'm thinking, what about the Dunhuang artifacts in the British Museum?

Digitize them back!

On the afternoon of February 29th, 2065438+0717, the strategic cooperation between Tencent and Dunhuang Research Institute and the conference forum of "Digital Silk Road" project were held in imperial academy. This dialogue about Dunhuang's future is in full swing.

In fact, the restoration of cultural relics seems to deviate a little from the theme of this dialogue.

But who says that recovering cultural relics is not a part of Dunhuang's future?

Let's talk about the initial intention of this activity.

How do you feel when you mention Dunhuang? Isn't it a little cold and out of reach?

"The number of visitors to the Forbidden City in a year is much higher than that in Dunhuang, but due to time and space constraints, it can only be less than 20 million. However, on the Internet platform, 1 month, the download volume of the expression pack of the Forbidden City created by young people can reach 40 million. "

At the event site, Wang Xudong, Dean of Dunhuang Research Institute, understood this sentence well for everyone. What will happen to Dunhuang in the future? Digitalization is the best way out.

Dunhuang met Tencent on the road of digitalization. This Internet company, transformed into technology+culture, is interested in using technology to promote the breaking of culture and help the digitalization and popularization of traditional culture. The previous cooperation with the Forbidden City is undoubtedly a successful example.

20 17 12.29, on the last working day of this year, Tencent and Dunhuang Research Institute signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly launch the "Digital Silk Road" project to promote the protection, inheritance and exchange of cultural heritage along the Silk Road.

Yes, it is the cooperation between the two sides that has turned Dunhuang into an IP of China traditional culture, which is as different as the IP of the Forbidden City.

"I've been talking about it. In fact, the cultural history of a country is, to some extent, the IP history of a country. In this process, we have been thinking about whether we can use our pan-entertainment ability to create a group of star IPS based on China's traditional culture to enhance our cultural self-confidence and cultural consciousness. " At the press conference that day, Cheng Wu, the proponent of the concept of "pan-entertainment", vice president of Tencent Group and CEO of Tencent Pictures, summarized the cooperation with the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Dunhuang in 20 17.

Wang Xudong, Dean of Dunhuang Research Institute, also expressed his expectation for this cooperation with Tencent. "Dunhuang culture itself is the crystallization of internationalization. More than 2000 years ago, the Silk Road was a network, not a single road, but a road network. Today's Internet is also a network, and Dunhuang is the crystallization of that network. We hope that in today's Internet age, people from different regions, nationalities and countries can be brought closer together, and our entire multiculturalism can be combined to form a new cultural form. "

On Dunhuang, Digitalization and the Future of China Traditional Culture, Wang Xudong and Cheng Wu answered reporters' questions.

1. Just now, when the forum started, I thought it was very good, that is, Dunhuang cultural relics lost overseas, including other valuable national cultural relics, can be digitized if they can't be found back. I think this is very important for the country and people, and for the dignity and cultural self-confidence of a country. Is this part of the work already done by Dunhuang Research Institute, or how to make further breakthroughs next, and how does Tencent cooperate with this work?

Dunhuang frescoes in the British Museum

Wang Xudong: Dunhuang Research Institute has signed a cooperation framework agreement with British Museum, including French National Library and Russian Elmy Tashi Museum.

We hope that through our joint efforts, this part of Dunhuang cultural relics will be digitized. Some Dunhuang cultural relics lost overseas have been returned digitally, including 5,000 high-definition digital files of Dunhuang scriptures collected in France, which have all been returned to Dunhuang Research Institute and can be used for free.

Dunhuang suicide note of the French National Library? The picture comes from the website of the National Library of France.

The next step may be to cooperate with the British Museum, Russia and other institutions.

The British Library has a special International Dunhuang Project (IDP), which is dedicated to the digitization of Dunhuang classics and cultural relics collected by other countries in the British Library and the realization of global sharing. We're all partners. However, it did not rise to a higher level, and the speed of advancement was relatively slow.

In the future, I hope that more enterprises with scientific and technological strength and financial strength like Tencent can participate in the digital return of Dunhuang cultural relics and show more cultural responsibility.

Cheng Wu: Let me briefly add. Because of this work, we are more promoters of science, technology and culture. Therefore, partners like Dunhuang Research Institute are duty-bound as long as there is demand.

We have the strength of science and technology and culture, and we also have such a sense of social responsibility. At the same time, as President Wang said, there must be cultural responsibility. I think this is a matter of course, and we will definitely participate.

2. Dunhuang has also done many digital projects before. How to further develop and popularize these achievements in this cooperation? Is there a timetable for specific cooperation projects, such as animation?

Wang Xudong: It seems that you have been to Dunhuang and seen our digital exhibition center. This kind of digital display is relatively rare, mainly for tourists coming to Dunhuang. We hope that through this exhibition, visitors can know the historical and cultural background of the Mogao Grottoes in advance, and they can also know some special contents in advance, which can reduce their stay in the caves. In the past, all our explanations for tourists were done in caves. Now, we have done a lot of explanation work in the digital exhibition center, which has doubled the carrying capacity of the Mogao Grottoes. In the past, it could only accommodate 3,000 people a day, but now it can accommodate 6,000 people a day.

Mogao Grottoes-Cave 220-Main Room-South Wall-Music and Dance (Part) Photo courtesy of Dunhuang Institute of Cultural Relics Digitalization

Mogao Grottoes-Cave 220-Main Room-Nanbi Music Dance (partial), after virtual restoration. Photo courtesy of Dunhuang Institute of Cultural Relics Digitalization

But now, our cooperation with Tencent is open to the public through the Internet, which is an active learning interaction. We spread Dunhuang culture in different forms through the Internet. These forms include games, music, animation and, of course, product creation of AR and VR technologies. If there is no internet platform, I think the spread of Dunhuang culture is very slow. The number of visitors to Dunhuang in a year is 6.5438+0.7 million, and that of the Forbidden City is 6.5438+0.7 million. You can imagine how this touched us.

Dunhuang grottoes culture was born through the ancient "crowdfunding", which was completed by ordinary people (folk). It is a very grounded culture and very diverse. We hope that what we do today will also enable the Dunhuang Grottoes culture to continue to blend into the multi-culture of today's society and continue to blend and collide. This is a global cultural era.

I think the biggest problem of Dunhuang cultural communication at present lies in our lack of talents and abilities. So does Tencent really have such a group of people who can devote themselves to the excavation of Dunhuang culture and then innovate, transform and present it? How many people in Dunhuang can really devote themselves to VR, AR, animation and games? The participation of these people, whether it is cooperation or active interest, is very important.

3. Regarding new technologies, I have seen elements of AR and VR before, and there may be applications of artificial intelligence technology in the future. Can you talk about the significance of this new technology to the protection and inheritance of cultural relics?

Wang Xudong: The introduction or application of new technologies really deserves our active efforts. But in this process, no matter how new and high the technology is, the content will always come first. There is no content, just dazzling technology, and it has not really spread our culture. Facing the traditional culture of Dunhuang Grottoes, it is very important for you to improve its value, how to combine it with these technologies, and how to make children and even adults get a pleasure from it, or get a brand-new feeling that we can't get when visiting.

So the cooperation between our two families must be in-depth, not superficial. Our team and Tencent's team must understand each other, we must understand Tencent's technology, and Tencent must also understand the value of Dunhuang culture.

What we want to convey may be the most important. You can't make everyone feel that this technology is advanced, but you can't use these technologies to feel the content well. Technologies such as VR, AR and artificial intelligence are just means, and content is always important. Tencent also understands this, so we can reach such an understanding. We are very cautious in signing the strategic cooperation agreement.

Cheng Wu: The new technology includes many aspects.

The first aspect, maybe a few years ago, we said that cloud technology is a new technology. But now, cloud technology has become a large-scale commercial application. We also hope that Tencent Cloud's existing storage technology and intelligent computing can effectively help Dunhuang Research Institute to optimize image and data collection.

In the second aspect, the AR virtual reality and VR augmented reality technologies you see are popular technologies now, but they are not particularly widely used. However, we think that in the field of scientific research, how can people feel more immersive and experience Dunhuang culture on the Internet? This can do a lot of homework. Because the commercial applications of AR and VR are definitely moving forward, there may be a certain scale of commercial applications in the next 3-5 years. Our technical team will continue to explore with the team in Wang Chuang how to better integrate technology with Dunhuang content and continuously improve the user experience.

Then the third aspect is AI artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is still a frontier research. Many domestic and foreign enterprises, including Tencent, have begun to invest heavily in this field. We also invite talents from all over the world to form an artificial intelligence team with very strong technical strength. Therefore, in the field of artificial intelligence, we have accumulated a certain amount and made breakthroughs in some aspects. Many artificial intelligence technologies have been integrated into the specific business of our company.

The outside world has heard a lot, and I think it may be our Go "stunt" AI. Through more than a year's efforts, he won two consecutive world artificial intelligence Go champions. In addition, in terms of medical care, our "Tencent Yingying" AI has assisted doctors in screening early esophageal cancer, pulmonary nodules, diabetic retinopathy and other diseases, and found diseases more efficiently and accurately, with the accuracy rate of screening early esophageal cancer reaching more than 90%. At the same time, using natural speech to process massive medical records, Tencent's AI-assisted diagnosis ability can identify more than 500 common diseases, which helps to assist doctors to improve diagnosis efficiency and accuracy. These are just examples. Basically, Tencent has systematically explored the game AI, social AI, content AI and platform tool AI, and provided open solutions based on technology accumulation and cloud platform, such as image-based face recognition, speech recognition, natural language processing and deep learning. On the one hand, based on Tencent's business, AI is used to optimize products and services. On the other hand, we will keep an open mind and share the research results with the society.

Therefore, although the development of artificial intelligence has just begun, its combination with various industries is full of imagination. But how to effectively apply artificial intelligence to traditional cultural relics and cultural preservation projects like Dunhuang, as President Wang said, requires us to fully deepen mutual understanding on the basis of respecting cultural relics, history and content itself. I think this requires a special team to sit down and do in-depth and detailed research.

Mogao grottoes 17 (Tibetan sutra cave)?

Cave 249 of Mogao Grottoes

I am interested in the open digital library of traditional games. How many ancient China games are recorded in Dunhuang murals? Are you going to do which one first?

Wang Xudong: The ancient games in Dunhuang murals have not been specially studied before, but are now being sorted out.

Cheng Wu: In the early stage, we both have an understanding of the mission, and then find a concrete and feasible direction to start preparations. This is the starting point, and we announce cooperation today. But you may have to wait patiently for a while to see the fruitful things.

For example, the traditional game open digital library project is the first CSR project of Tencent's mutual entertainment, and it is also the first time that we have joined hands with UNESCO to protect traditional games with China enterprises by using digital technology.

In this cooperation with Dunhuang Research Institute, Tencent team did their homework and found that Dunhuang murals recorded dozens of traditional games popular on the Silk Road. So we discussed with the team partners of Dunhuang Research Institute whether these traditional games in Dunhuang murals and the traditional culture behind them can be activated and reproduced through online games, VR games and AI works of art. In this process, we are not just two teams. We also envisage introducing innovative institutions for young students in established universities, so that more young people with ideas and skills can join in and contribute to the activation of Dunhuang culture.

But today I will give you a timetable and make a concrete plan. I don't think we should put too much pressure on the teams behind. I think the way of the Internet is not only to integrate our team, but also to connect all young people with other creators through the Internet and Tencent.

Another example is the cooperation between Tencent and the Forbidden City. At the earliest press conference, our director may not share much with you. However, after four months of cooperation, Dean Shan took out several IP addresses of the Forbidden City and authorized some cultural relics. In the Tencent NEXTIDEA project, we are open to young people to create, and young people use their intelligence and enthusiasm to create Yan characters based on their understanding of the Forbidden City culture. Within a month of uploading, 40 million people downloaded them.

So even as we just said, the number of visitors to the Forbidden City is much higher than that of Dunhuang, but due to the limitation of time and space, it can only be less than 20 million. However, on the Internet platform, 1 month, the download volume of expression packs of the Forbidden City created by young people can reach 40 million.

For this example, I want to explain why we are a connector. Through Tencent's ability, we can connect the whole society and hundreds of millions of users who are interested in this matter, including young people, the elderly and even children. In the cooperation between Tencent and Dunhuang, everyone can find their love and interest in Dunhuang, and they can give full play to their creative talents, upload their works to the Internet, and contribute to the inheritance and activation of Dunhuang culture. I think this is the most valuable for us.

Partial map of Dunhuang mural "Jiuse Deer Wang Bensheng"

Now young people's understanding of Dunhuang culture may not only be directly perceived by the 654.38+07,000 people who come to Dunhuang every year, but more people still see and remember the "Nine Colors Deer" in the 1980s, in fact, it contains very good content. We believe that film and television, animation and other forms will give Dunhuang culture more other bearing. The cooperation between Tencent and Dunhuang will definitely help Dunhuang culture to bloom more vitality at the mass level. At the same time, I hope that we can have interactive works like "Nine Colors Deer" H5, and we can also vividly show more stories on Dunhuang murals in more interactive forms. In fact, we are just throwing bricks to attract jade, and more hope to arouse the desire of hundreds of millions of users to participate. Culture is not something a company can do.

5. Because Dunhuang is a very good IP in China, including Dunhuang itself, will related movies be released?

Cheng Wu: At present, the first step of communication between the two teams does not include film and television, but we do not rule out this possibility. I don't think we should be too anxious about culture, which is the most urgent, not to mention the profound traditional culture like Dunhuang Grottoes, which should be done step by step.

In addition to using a lot of Internet technology protection measures and the cooperation between animation and games, we will definitely think about how to learn more from the essence of Dunhuang Grottoes culture in the process of film and television creation. As for how to do it, it needs the continuous collision and demonstration of both teams.