Phase 3 – Immersive Digital Experience

The fully immersive digital experience of Dr. King’s speech requires the development of a digitally rendered model of the church sanctuary in which it was given.

Phase 1 → Phase 2 → Phase 3

The visual model of the historic White Rock Baptist Church will be built to fit the visualization lab in the Hunt Library on North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus. The model will feature 270 degrees of visual surroundings on the walls and floor of the room and a speaker system delivering the audio. The goal will be to tell a narrative with the room: the audience will be able to see and hear what the speech was like from different angles and distances. The visual and audio model will transform with the changes that the audience makes: our acoustic model will track the changes in distance that are being shown on the visuals. These elements will tell a story of the speech beyond the speech, letting audience members learn what different reception the speech may have had from different areas of the room. For more on the reception of the speech, see the rhetorical history section.

The finished model will allow the audience to enter a room and find themselves in a digital recreation of the White Rock Baptist Church in Dr. King’s time. Sitting in the space, the audience will be able to listen to the speech from different perspectives. This digital model will situate the listener in a digital representation of a particular time and place, allowing listeners to see and hear an important part of North Carolina’s history, present, and, through this project, hopefully its future.