AHA Session 253
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Central Park West (Sheraton New York, Second Floor)
Chair:
Andrew Britt, University of North Carolina School of the Arts
Papers:
Session Abstract
Emerging technologies under the umbrella category of immersive reality, including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), present novel modes of engaging audiences in narrative experiences centered on or in the past. The spectrum of such experiences is broad and can include the full-scale transportation of a user to - and their high-fidelity immersion in - a different place and time. Alternatively, such experiences can also involve the conjuring of a person, place, object or otherwise from the past in a contemporary landscape in the present through the overlaying of digital content on the physical world. Focused on Negro League Baseball, the Mitchelville freedman’s community, the headquarters of Brazil’s Underground Railroad and a museum to the enslaved, and the Kinfolk digital monuments project, this session explores the power of immersive experiences to exhume, engage, and narrate often-buried or -marginalized histories of people of African descent. While we are convinced that this powerful medium can be mobilized for productive and just ends, we are also conscious of - and consciously interrogate in our presentations - the ethical dimensions of producing and disseminating such experiences in an array of contexts and for a broad range of audiences.
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