Bunce Island is a small (502.9 meter by 106.7 meter) island located upriver from Freetown in the country of Sierra Leone. Despite its size, its location roughly where the broad Sierra Leone River grows shallow made it an ideal spot for slave vessels to anchor safely, sheltered from the Atlantic by the larger Tasso Island while maintaining access to the complex river system of the interior and the slave trade there. This site saw 148000 enslaved Africans embarked, primarily at Bunce Island's slave fortress.

We are delighted to introduce our new project, which is focused on digitally rebuilding Bunce Island and the present-day ruins. Through a narrative structure, the users will be guided through an immersive digital experience to learn more about the complex history which took place here. We are developing this virtual simulation within Unreal Engine, harnessing the power of RealityCapture and MetaHuman Creator to build a hyper-realistic and immersive learning environment for students and the general public to discover more about the precolonial African past of Sierra Leone estuary.

This project relies on our friends and collaborators around the world, who are generously contributing photos for references, archival sources, archaeological survey materials and satellite imagery, for this work. Ongoing work with researchers closely connected to the ruins at Bunce Island, as well as in-person trips throughout the past decade have produced a wealth of data sources from which we are recreating the ruins through the photogrammetry software offered by RealityCapture.

We anticipate that this work will be the first pilot of a far-reaching network of historical events recreated using sophisticated digital technologies, offering an entirely new way to engage with difficult pasts, permitting both Afro-descendants and learners to discover and experience histories that have shaped our present world.

Through a partnership with Freetown's We Own TV, we added to this rich resource with drone footage and careful photographs, from which we are creating 3D assets to be incorporated into the digital environment. We have also partnered with students and faculty at CUMT-SL in Mile 91, Sierra Leone, whose talented creatives are lending voice acting skills, sharing traditional knowledge, and offering ideas as we work to build a compelling series of branching narratives for learners. All work is drawn from careful archival research and discussion with international experts and scholars, with the intention of crafting a virtual experience which attempts to capture the feel and flavour of the eighteenth century in Sierra Leone's estuary. Intended for an African and a global audience, this project will present a complex historical world at the height of the slave trade and offer a glimpse into African cultures before colonization.

Learners will follow a narrative drawn from regional stories and actual historical events and find themselves moving from the present-day ruin into the 1720s, and later the 1790s, guided through eras in an immersive and compelling storyline. The project will offer four modes of experience, ranging from one dedicated to highlighting the culture of African peoples before colonization, to one which closely follows the complex trade networks of the region and focuses on the slave trade, to one which focuses on regional conflicts including the many pirate attacks of that era, to a mode which explicitly allows academic research. This final mode will allow users to access major digital humanities databases of lives, identities, and trajectories while within the recreated digital environment of Bunce Island: Through the Mirror. This project will therefore allow for a flexible approach to learning which is tailored to allow a wide range of interests in learners.


Screenshots from Bunce Island | Through the Mirror


Concepts and Sketches by Victor Mure, Jiwe Studios


"Bense [Bunce] Island and Fort, Sierra Leone, ca. 1727", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed March 19, 2021, Slavery Images

Dr. Katrina Keefer
Director | Walk With Web Inc.

  Technology is driven by innovation, and education is driven by the hunger to share research and passion. It is natural that the two should combine, and right now, that means that innovative technologies being developed for the Unreal Game Engine are being creatively applied to research and teaching. We are excited as we develop an interactive historical experience which will facilitate students, researchers and the community at large as they learn more about the complex period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Beginning with our digital reconstruction of Bunce Island and the user journey through time and place to listen to the reconstructed narratives of those who were once reduced to brands and slave shackles, we are beginning a new chapter in how we teach challenging histories, and how we share our work.

Project Lead | 3D Artist
Bunce Island: Through the Mirror

OUR PROJECT CREW

David Gonzalez
3D Modeling & Scripting

David Castro
Narrative Development (Lead)

Joseph Burton
Narrative Development

Wacera Muriuki
Narrative Development

Zachary Raimundo
Historical Research

Rachel Taunton
Historical Research & Conceptual Art

Charles Cumberland
Historical Research

Corby Berry
3D Modelling & Scripting

Christopher Kurak
Video & Sound Editing

Maria Yala
Voice Acting

Partners

Jiwe Studio, CEO Max Musau logo

Jiwe Studio, CEO Max Musau

African Digital Media Institute logo

African Digital Media Institute

Canadian University of Modern Technology - Sierra Leone logo

Canadian University of Modern Technology - Sierra Leone (CUMTSL)

Consultants

Nemata Blyden
Christopher R DeCorse
Érika Melek Delgado
Bronwen Everill
Tom Hurlbut
Sean Kelley
Henry Lovejoy
Paul Lovejoy
Philip Misevich
Scott D. Nichols
Suzanne Schwarz
Rosalind Shaw
Brian Srivastava
Timothy Dale Walker

Alpha Testers

Paul Bridgeman
Mackenzie Cansler-Kipp
Caius Kurak

Kartikay Chadha
President & CEO | Walk With Web Inc.

  Epic Games and Unreal have presented a remarkable opportunity with the release of the exciting new MetaHumans - high fidelity fully rigged character meshes for use within the Unreal Engine. These extraordinary customizable characters allow us to realize our goal of producing an immersive, populated and above all living 18th century fort within which users can walk, listen, and learn about life, events, and the people of that period. This is vital as a tool, because it brings a visceral connection to historical individuals who have largely been silenced through enslavement and forced transportation. After over two hundred years, we may be able to give their descendants a way to connect with distant ancestors.

Aknowledgments

Jared Asser
Allan Caulker
Jackson DesGagne
Bridget Huvane
Yusif Kamara
Martha Ladly
Eric Lehman
Gabriela Mattia
Michael McGill
Fernanda Sierra Suárez
Elizabeth Whitaker
Aiah Yendeh

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Sierra Leone Public Archives
Trent University
Visual Analytics Lab, OCAD University
York University