MELISSA SHIFf (1967-2025)
A retrospective exhibition will be announced.
Mapping Ararat
Welcome to Mapping Ararat: An Imaginary Jewish Homelands Project. Using augmented reality, this project animates Major Mordecai Noah's 1825 unrealized plan to transform Grand Island, New York into Ararat,
a "city of refuge for the Jews." Explore.
Click on the circles below to view selections of the AR walking tour, vernacular culture and images of site visits.
In September 1825, Major Mordecai Noah founded Ararat, “a city of refuge for the Jews” on Grand Island, New York. This turned out to be the first of many failed projects in modern history that sought to carve out a nation for the Jewish people. Mapping Ararat offers the user/participant the tools to imagine an alternative historical outcome for Noah’s Ararat and to navigate through an imaginary Jewish homeland.
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Utilizing cutting-edge digital media technologies such as augmented reality and simulated cartography, this project gives Ararat a virtual chance to become the Jewish homeland that its founder had envisioned over one hundred and eighty years ago. The project consists of an on-site augmented reality walking tour that haunts the contemporary landscape of Grand Island. In addition, Mapping Ararat generates the vernacular artifacts common to all modern nation-states: money, postcards and newspapers.
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“Ararat AR” is an augmented reality public art project constructed at the very location where Mordecai Noah intended to found Ararat, “a city of refuge for the Jews” in Grand Island, New York.
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With smart phones in hand, visitors are able to take an onsite augmented reality walking tour of Ararat. This project allows people to imagine Ararat while experiencing the actual place it would have existed.
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Exhibitions
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Mapping Ararat: Globally Positioned Sites
Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
April 4 - April 7, 2013
Project for the American Comparative Literature Association Conference
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Where To?
Israeli Centre for Digital Art, Holon, IL
April 28 - July 15, 2012
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Anthrovision Essay by Shiff and Kaplan
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Melissa Shiff
Lead Artist and Project Director, Research Associate, Sensorium Centre for Digital Art and Technology, York University.
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Louis Kaplan
Chief Historian and Theorist, Professor, University of Toronto.
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John Craig Freeman
New Media Artist and Augmented Reality Specialist, Associate Professor, Emerson College Boston.
Sarah James - Graphic Design
Reena Katz - Soundscape
Elizabeth Hirst, Ultan Byrne - 3D Modelling
Niki Sehmbi - Photoshop
Stev’nn Hall - After Effects
Shiff and Kaplan are interviewed in this video feature called "Eretz Niagara Falls" in Forward online edition edited by Martyna Starosta.​​
Mapping Ararat is made possible through a generous grant from the Insight Development Grant Program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
