Speaker
Description
This poster will focus on the development of an immersive virtual landscape platform for the exploration of local stories and knowledge documented as part of the Gullah Geechee Digital Project. This project, led by the Athenaeum Press at Coastal Carolina University, brings together South Carolina Gullah Geechee archival collections held by a number of national and regional partners for the express purpose of creating online digital access to these valuable materials. This portion of the project focuses on Sandy Island/Murrells Inlet, Plantersville, Johns Island, and St. Helena Island. The project’s goals are twofold: create digital access to these collections and develop interpretation of these materials for access by communities and the general public. This second goal is the driving force behind the development of our immersive virtual landscape platform.
To date, three applications have been designed and prototyped: Virtual Sandy Island, Virtual Plantersville, and Virtual Johns Island. A fourth prototype, Virtual St. Helena Island, is under early development. Each of these applications has been developed using the Unity Real-Time Development Platform, and centers around a 3D virtual landscape recreation that users can explore with a third-person character perspective. Embedded within this landscape are spatial narrative elements in the form of multimedia, such as text, images, and video. These story elements enhance a user’s explorative experience with the historical, archaeological, ethnographic, and other scholarly information that guide our knowledge of the past and current cultural landscapes of the Gullah Geechee people.
