Excerpt from Louis Kaplan and Melissa Shiff's essay "Mapping Ararat: An Augmented Reality Walking Tour for an Imaginary Jewish Homeland," 

published in Anthrovision, 2016

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"The visit of some of the descendants of Noah’s youngest son Lionel to Grand Island in May 2014 captures the poignancy of our project. In this field trip to “Ararat”, Mordecai Noah’s great-great-great-great grandchildren (both of whom are Christian) pose in front of their ancestor’s virtual grave. In this speculative manner, Noah’s actual descendants occupy the space of contested memories and imagine an alternative history for themselves. Such an image raises the question of the “what if?” directly allowing us to peer into the contingencies of history. One senses the affective power and the emotional quality involved in bringing Noah’s descendants on the augmented reality walking tour as well as their uncanny and haunting presence on Grand Island. All in all, this family functions as the ethnographic subjects of Ararat in the subjunctive mood."