Abstract
This article reviews Mapping Ararat: An Imaginary Jewish Homelands Project that utilizes augmented reality (AR) to create a walking tour that envisions what would have happened if Mordecai Noah’s 1825 plan to transform Grand Island, New York into a city of refuge had succeeded. Using mobile devices, tourists interact with Ararat artifacts and monuments created using 3D modeling software and inserted into the Grand Island landscape. The article reviews Mapping Ararat as a new form of mediated and virtual Jewish tourism and its implications for such fields as sensory ethnography, counterfactual history, and Jewish cultural studies. It also contextualizes the project in terms of augmented reality art and its extension of site-specific installation using locative media. The final section highlights four electronic monuments on the AR walking tour (flag, cornerstone, gravestones, and synagogue) with documentary video clips.
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