Preserving Gullah Geechee Heritage Through Immersive Access

This digital platform presents a multimedia thesis investigating the use of immersive technologies in the preservation and regeneration of Gullah Geechee cultural memory on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. The project integrates methods of 3D documentation, photogrammetry, 360° video, ambient soundscapes, and oral history to render spatial and narrative environments rooted in Black cultural continuity.

A central prompt—generated in collaboration with community members—frames the project’s methodological and ethical orientation:

The resulting Memory Sites are co-curated with Gullah Geechee collaborators and reflect a dual commitment to cultural preservation and speculative future-making. As a digital intervention, this project positions immersive technologies not solely as tools for visualization, but as instruments for memory transmission, epistemic sovereignty, and community-defined spatial justice.

Preservation, as traditionally practiced, often reflects institutionalized power structures that extract cultural knowledge while excluding the communities to whom that knowledge belongs. This project critically engages with those dynamics, proposing an alternative framework grounded in reparation, autonomy, and spatial continuity.

Within historically Black geographies like Daufuskie Island, preservation must not only document the material remnants of the past, but actively contend with displacement, land dispossession, and cultural erasure.

Here, preservation is not conceived as a neutral act of remembrance but as a reparative process—an intervention into the present conditions of marginalization that seeks to restore voice, visibility, and self-determined futures.

A core case study in this project centers on the Robinson Family Home, a 1930s structure situated on 12 acres of land held by one of the island’s few remaining Gullah Geechee landowners. Access to this site was made possible through a collaborative relationship with Ms. Sallie Ann Robinson, a sixth-generation Daufuskie native and cultural historian, who granted permission for the home and its surrounding landscape to be digitally documented.

The structure, one of the last intact Gullah homes on the island, exemplifies vernacular Black architectural heritage and the intersection of memory, land tenure, and cultural resilience. It currently faces severe structural degradation, and restoration efforts are ongoing. This documentation constitutes both a digital record and an act of cultural advocacy, foregrounding the urgent need for material preservation.

This thesis proposes immersive documentation not as a static archival gesture, but as a regenerative strategy—one that enables cycles of visibility, engagement, and reinvestment. Within this framework, preservation operates as a mechanism for redistributing spatial and cultural capital.

The conceptual model underpinning this work can be articulated as follows:

• Documentation produces visibility;
• Visibility facilitates engagement;
• Engagement mobilizes social, financial, and political support;
• Support enables reinvestment into cultural and spatial infrastructure.

In this model, digital preservation functions not only as a representational act but as a material intervention that contributes to broader movements for spatial justice and cultural continuity.

The Memory Sites presented on this platform are immersive, data-rich renderings of Gullah Geechee sacred spaces and culturally significant locations. As the Lowcountry undergoes increasing privatization and ecological transformation, these digitized environments offer alternate modes of access and engagement—particularly for descendants who have been displaced from ancestral land.

One such example is Haig Point, a gated community constructed atop a former slave settlement and the remnants of the region’s largest domestic tabby structure. Though of high historical and cultural significance, this site remains physically inaccessible to many Gullah Geechee descendants.

Drawing on the metaphor of the Underground Railroad quilt, this project conceptualizes its digital infrastructure as a “quilted” repository of cultural memory, stitched from interactive 3D scans, spatialized oral histories, and embedded archival materials. These symbolic and technological layers resist erasure while creating pathways for cultural resurgence and speculative design.

This work represents an initial phase. Future iterations will expand co-design with local collaborators to include additional sites, deepen interpretive content, and explore more robust frameworks for community ownership of digital heritage assets.