Preserving Gullah Geechee Heritage Through Immersive Access
This site is part of a thesis project that explores how immersive technologies—such as 3D scans, 360° video, ambient sound, and interactive environments—can help preserve, extend, and regenerate Gullah Geechee cultural memory in the face of displacement, privatization, and environmental change.
At the heart of this work is a guiding question:
What would you want descendants 50 years from now to know about Daufuskie 50 years ago?
You are invited to explore sacred spaces, spiritual traditions, and community stories rooted in Daufuskie Island’s unique heritage. These digital scenes were selected in partnership with Gullah Geechee residents and reflect both memories of the past and visions for the future.
This site is both an archive and an offering—a space to connect, remember, and reimagine what continuity can look like in the digital age.
Preservation is often framed as an inherently benevolent act, yet too frequently it reproduces power dynamics that marginalize the very communities it purports to protect. This project actively rejects archival practices that extract memory while denying present-day voice.
Instead, it frames preservation as a process of reparation and re-centering. In Black communities like Daufuskie, documentation must go beyond capturing visual surfaces—it must reckon with erasure, displacement, and the politics of visibility. Preservation should not only remember the past but actively restore the conditions for autonomy, inviting descendants and current residents to define the future of their spaces.
In the case of this project, the opportunity came through partnership with Ms. Sallie Ann Robinson—a sixth-generation Daufuskie native, renowned author, and cultural historian. After building trust and deepening our relationship, we were invited to scan her family home, a 1930s structure set across 12 acres—the largest Gullah-owned landholding on Daufuskie Island. It remains one of the few intact Gullah homes on the island, representing a vanishing but vital cultural legacy rooted in community, memory, and place.
Now urgently in need of restoration, Ms. Sallie Ann has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $150,000 in contributions to save this irreplaceable piece of living history.
Beyond documenting for the sake of memory, this project exists to galvanize resources, activate support, and build regenerative cycles of visibility, engagement, and reinvestment. Digitizing landscapes and cultural assets allows communities to reclaim narrative control and project their histories into broader public consciousness.
This regenerative loop unfolds as follows:
- Documentation creates visibility;
- Visibility generates engagement;
- Engagement mobilizes support;
- Support enables tangible reinvestment into community infrastructure.
Spatial justice, in this model, is not symbolic—it is material. By linking immersive preservation to place-based economies rooted in heritage, communities can build sustainable pathways toward autonomy and cultural resilience.
The key features of this site are the Memory Sites—digital gateways into sacred spaces rooted in Gullah Geechee spiritual and communal life.
As privatization reshapes the Lowcountry, this project offers a new form of access: immersive preservation. Daufuskie’s past and future are entangled in contested land. At Haig Point, a gated golf community now sits atop what was once the largest domestic tabby structure in coastal South Carolina, along with a North Slave Settlement. Though culturally significant, these spaces remain inaccessible to the descendants of those who built them.
This digital quilt—stitched together through interactive 360º 3D scans, videos, and photographs—offers a symbolic pathway back. Drawing inspiration from Underground Railroad quilts, each Memory Site thumbnail represents a coded message honoring the resilience, creativity, and continuity of the Gullah people.
Visitors can explore:
- Interactive 3D environments
- Immersive 360° video scenes
- Contextual histories, oral narratives, and cultural insight
This project is only a beginning. Future phases will deepen collaboration with community members to digitize lesser-known, sacred, or vulnerable spaces—continuing the work of cultural resurgence and spatial reclamation into the next generation.