Listening Experience

Listening Experience

Four professional recordings/sound mixes provide distinct listening experiences of the speech and are helpful for audiences to begin to understand how an individual’s position in the room and physical relation to the speaker impacts one’s experience of a speech. Additionally, they can view the video of the June 2014 re-enactment given at the new White Rock Baptist Church that is the basis of the project.  

Cite this page as: vMLK Project Team. Virtual Martin Luther King, Jr. Project. 2019. Retrieved from https://vmlk.chass.ncsu.edu/experience/listening/

Overview of the Listening Experience of the Speech

On June 8, 2014, scholars from NC State University partnered with the White Rock Baptist Church congregation, the Durham Ministerial Alliance, political leaders, and the surrounding communities to stage a public recreation of the speech. The recordings from that event are the basis for the 3D audio-visual installations of the vMLK project. The collective sound experience, the listening experiences and the gaming and VR experiences all demonstrate the location-based function of sound by focusing attention on how the sound of King’s voice (as re-created by Mr. Blanks) and of the congregation (the people who gathered for the re-creation event) function to immerse visitors/audiences in the experience of the speech.