Penn&Slavery AR Tour (2020/24)
The Penn&Slavery app is an AR tour app exploring and discussing the University of Pennsylvania's history with slavery. Dream Syndicate was initially brought on as development consultants, but eventually fully took over development. We worked together with the Penn&Slavery project team to help bring together and help realize their research and experience concepts. You can learn more about the app here: https://dreamsyndicate.com/?p=4937, and more about the Penn&Slavery project here: https://pennandslaveryproject.org/
Development took place over the course of a couple years. Over that time I helped implement, optimize, and polish each of the experiences. Yuhao Ko handled the app UI, and Matt Tidridge did most of the 3D assets. We recently just updated the app with some stability fixes, a small revision to one of the experiences, updating the pipeline to Unity URP, and making a few new polish adjustments.
Stop 1 originally used an AR wall plane for placement on the front of this statue. Due to some difficulty with tracking, this has recently updated to a ground plane based experience.
Stop 3 places the user inside a geodesic dome of documents, tools, and concepts related to scientific racism. These documents and objects are found in the nearby UPenn Museum, which requires payed entry.
Stop 5 allows users to virtually enter the various locations outside the UPenn Quad dormitories, where there are statues of founders who owned or were involved in slavery.
Stop 6 places down a digitized quilt with 4 videos telling the story of student researcher Breanna Moore's family history and it's connections with UPenn history and slavery.