Our proposed essay will review the development, technical specifications, and the results (both realized and in process) of our two research-creation projects in digital art and humanities that use the emergent technologies of augmented reality and virtual reality to stage counterfactual histories and to explore failed Jewish homeland plans that arose in response to religious persecution. In the first project Mapping Ararat (2011-14), we created an AR walking tour to take visitors on a journey that images and imagines what would have happened if Major Mordecai Noah’s 1825 plan to transform Grand Island New York into a “refuge for the Jews” had succeeded. In this current phase, we are exploring the so-called Kimberley project of I.N. Steinberg and the Freeland League that took place against the backdrop of World War II and the Holocaust (1939-1943). We review how this charismatic leader (who was a religious Jew) almost succeeded in securing a homeland for Jewish refugees in Western Australia. Tapping into Steinberg’s collection at the YIVO archives in New York, we are using these materials to texture the 3-D architectural models of our virtual Jewish homeland (from its refugee tents to its institutional buildings/structures) that one can navigate using the Unity gaming platform.
