The Constitution Project – it was really
the brainchild, I believe, of Warren
Hofstra. An idea was born to recreate the
constitutional debates inside of a
virtual Independence Hall. So this is a
recreation of the national constitution,
or national constitutional debate, that
took place specifically the parts of the
debate that relate to the topic of the
electoral college. The project that we're
working on is a virtual-reality
immersive program that started last year
with Dr. Hofstra and I wrote the script
for James Wilson here, and we are now in
the process of scanning the statues here
to make them virtual-reality characters.
So we're here today to 3-D scan a bunch
of the signers of the Constitution and
there's all these brass statues here
that we're getting to 3-D scan. We have
11 delegates that we're focusing on for
this debate in particular, and so we
really focused on getting their scans;
making sure that we get the, you know,
specific details of their faces. We're
getting other the other delegates too, to
ensure that they're at least present. For
each one of these delegates we have a
virtual template from which we're with
some work we'll be able to derive an
entire avatar that we could use in VR.
We're able to 3-D scan that and then
convert those into useable models later
for a virtual-reality experience.
According to the National Constitution
Center there's not a physical recreation
of these avatars but rather of these
statues other than in here.
So essentially what we're doing, we're
making a digital copy of these very
accurate representations of the
delegates which, to our knowledge, do not
exist anywhere else. We are collecting
not just the 3-D scans, but pictures, data
and information on like you know their
height, the sort of clothing that they
wore, eye color and hair color, how old
were they?
We're just collecting everything that we
possibly can in order to ensure that
when we get into this, building the
simulation, it is as realistic as
possible and as close to reality as
possible, so that's the user both feels
immersed and so that it is an
educational experience. So our objective
is to create a working model that we can
then demonstrate and use; we can road
test and then develop it even further
for educational purposes, for the
interest of the public. We are building a
collaboration between the history
departments and our virtual reality
programs because we believe immersive
history is going to be one of the
implications of these new technologies.
We're really exploring a new technology
and applying it to history. It's a great
opportunity and we need to find out just
how immersive technology can truly
immerse someone in the past and make
that past live in a way that they gain
an understanding of it that they
wouldn't have outside of a virtual-reality experience.
So I'm super excited
about this because I believe this is a
new mode of learning that we're going to
be replicating in other arenas. The
benefit for students is if they engage
in this conversation in the future
they'll have a much richer answer that's
grounded not only in their own personal
political ideologies but in history – in
the history itself and the reasons
people had in 1787, and then they can
they can reflect on whether that's still
consistent with their own views of today,
whether they would agree with the
delegates then or whether maybe their
views need to need to change – so it's that
reflective process that I think is a
real benefit of this project. You know,
far as I've heard at least, you know, just
as a, you know, 24-year-old student
there's been a lot of debate going on as
to whether or not the electoral college
is relevant anymore or not, so I think
that it's really crucial, you know, no
matter which side of the argument that
you're on, to really sit down and listen
to what the reasons were for and what
the reasons are against, not just today
but when it was originally created, so we
have a better understanding of our past
as we go on into our future.
