Imagined Jewish Homeland in New York

Researchers Share How Augmented Reality Technology Animates Unrealized Plans for a City of Refuge for the Jews. By.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) - Special to UM News CORAL GABLES, Fla. (April 18, 2014) — In 1825, Mordecai Manuel Noah held a proclamation event on Grand Island, New York designating a new refuge for Jews. Although this refuge, named Ararat, after the mountain where Noah's Ark came to rest, never came to fruition, researchers from the University of Toronto have recreated what it may have looked like today. Two University of Toronto's professors and lead collaborators of Mapping Ararat: An Imaginary Jewish Homelands Project, Melissa Shiff, lead artist and project director, and Louis Kaplan, chief historian and theorist, overviewed the project to the audience of University of Miami geography, history, and Judaic studies students and scholars during a presentation co-sponsored by the Art & Art History Department and Judaic Studies Program of the UM College of Arts & Sciences , and the UM Leonard Miller Center of Contemporary Judaic Studies. Mapping Ararat was envisioned as work of historical fiction, typically a literary genre, using digital means through world-making and global positioning, Shiff explained. "Mapping Ararat uses Augmented Reality to conjure the Jewish ghosts which are haunting Grand Island and its history," Shiff added.