Hololens

Today we tried the Hololens at Microsoft in Mississauga Ontario ( about a 40 minute drive west of Toronto). I went in feeling quite skeptical about all the hype I had heard but left feeling like this might be the perfect HMD ( Head Mounted Display) for our project especially if we can use it in situ on the very land that Steinberg proposed for a Jewish refugee settlement. I couldn't help but get excited about travelling to the Kimberleys, donning the Hololens and seeing all of our models in situ. The perfect device on which to view all of the content we've been making over these last two years. Unlike the HTC Vive, this device allows you to see reality with added virtual content- true mix reality. For our purpose this is really fantastic, however, there are a ton of questions to be answered. Will the device work outside? Theoretically is should if it can scan trees or some other visible marker in the landscape that allows it to position you in the world. One major problem is that it won't work in daylight- liken it to how hard it is to work on a laptop or other device while in sunlight. However, we could use it at dusk. A lot to think about... The beauty of it is that it is untethered and we can do video capture of exactly what our eyes are seeing. The field of view doesn't include peripheral vision so there's still a letter box that augments appear within but with the right lighting the rectangle does seem to vanish, or at least it diminishes. We'll see if this is the one to use or if the HTC Vive is the way to go. In either case it will take a fair amount of development in Unity. More as it happens...

Australia, Summer 2017

We've plotted our trip to Australia this summer. We'll arrive in Melbourne on July 16th, head up to Darwin on July 20th, then head to our research site in the Kimberleys which is a town called Kununurra with a population of about five thousand. This is the centre of Durack cattle country, the seven million acres which was to be sold to the Freeland League. We'll stay in the region for two weeks to document the landscape, making 360 video for the backdrop of the virtual reality world,  test out some augmented reality and of course to meet some of the residents of Kununurra. I wonder how many have heard of the plan to turn this region into a Jewish refuge during WWII. We'll find out! After our leg in the Kimberleys we return to Melbourne to do research at the Victoria State Library and then we travel to Hobart, Tasmania to do further research on Critchley Parker Jr. and his idea to settle the Jews in Port Davey. More as it happens...

 

Go to Google Map of Australia Itinerary

Imaginary Jewish Homelands Contribution to be included in collection Introduction to Digital Humanities: Religion

We are pleased to announce that Imaginary Jewish Homelands will be one of the featured projects in Introduction to Digital Humanities: Religion edited by Professors Chris Cantwell (Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Kristian Petersen (Nebraska) to be published by De Gruyter in Berlin in 2018.

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.

Digitizing the Archive

Here's John Earle who is helping me photograph thousands of documents from the I.N. Steinberg archive. We're working at the offices here at YIVO ( Yiddish Institute for Social Research) at the Centre for Jewish History on 16th street in New York City. I feel as if I've stepped back in time to when my grandparents were alive since Yiddish is the primary language here. 

Green Light to Photograph RG366

Good News, the archivists are allowing us to photograph Steinberg's archive for a nominal fee. Our project will digitize part of I.N. Steinberg's archive and thereby preserve it from further decay- when we were in the archive the news clippings were literally crumbling in our laps as were the pamphlets and other gems. Every day I was covered with fine dust and specks of decaying paper. We should be paid for our digital preservation work not the other way around!

We'll be photographing thousands of documents ranging from the hundreds of letters he penned to his family during the four years he was based in Australia to the official Memoranda that was sent to the office of Prime Minister Menzies and later to Prime Minister John Curtin. There are also a few documents to Prime Minister Forde who held the office for a very brief period but who ultimately caused the plan to fail. There are hundreds of letters of support ranging from Deans of Australian universities, businessmen, Trade Union leaders, the Australia Council of Jewish Women as well as from members of the clergy, including the Archbishop of Australia reverend Pilcher. There are the photographs that Steinberg made on his expedition to the Kimberleys to survey the land. There are maps demarcating the 7 million acres of land that was to be purchased from the cattle ranching family the Duracks for the area of refuge ( see image above). All in all a ton of material. This overwhelming archive has given me the idea for how to shape the project. More as it happens...

Tackling the Archive..

New York, Monday June 29th: 

We started our research at The Center for Jewish History in which the voluminous I.N. Steinberg collection is held at YIVO; the Yiddish Institute for Research. The archive doesn't allow us to photograph any material and you can only request black and white photocopies--it is not designed for artists! We'll see if I can push them to digitize this part of the archive.

Before coming to New York, I read Steinberg's "Unpromised Land" about his four years in Australia when he single-handedly rallied the entire country/continent to get on board his Jewish Territorialist endeavor. Much of the country including heads of Australian Provinces were supportive of his scheme to turn East Kimberley into a Jewish colony. However, the Federal Govenment refused to change their immigration policy in the end.  Now I'm reading his hand written notes and the original manuscript version of this incredible Australian travelogue. Why hasn't a biography been written on this guy? Perhaps because he worked and thought in five languages and the archive reflects this.

Yesterday, I read Steinberg's correspondence with Robert Cosgrove -- the Premier of Tasmania; today I read the Freeland League's periodicals and learned that Steinberg was trying to resurrect the Suriname plan well into the 1950's. I never knew that even after the establishment of the State of Israel the Territorialists wouldn't give up. They were never convinced that Zion was the Promised Land.

What is striking is how much time and effort he spent on the Kimberley Plan while the Tasmania scheme was but a footnote and really the brainchild of Critchley Parker Jr.  More on this later.

Here are some of the YIVO people we've encountered so far at The Center for Jewish History:

Fruma Mohrer,  Senior Archivist
Lyudmila Sholokhova, Head Librarian and Acting Chief Archivist
Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor for the Max Weinreich Center at YIVO and curator of The Jewish Fight Club

Skyping with Adam Rovner

We are very lucky to have the territorialist trailblazer Adam Rovner as a consultant for our researches into Imaginary Jewish Homelands.  We talked over the best strategies for doing archival work in the I.N. Steinberg Archives at YIVO in New York.  We discussed how no one has yet written a biography of this polyglot in part because one would need mastery of Russian, Yiddish, German, English, and Dutch to do it right.  There are two hundred folders devoted to Steinberg's efforts in Australia alone and another fifty on the Saramacca plan in Suriname so we need to work efficiently.  Then there are the files that contain maps, photos, geographical surveys and data.  These materials will be vital given the extent to which our augmented reality project relies on visualization and geo-location.  Adam is not only an amazing tour guide through the archival and bibliographical materials but he also seems to know every key person (whether academic scholars, Jewish community members, or Steinberg descendants) with whom we need to connect when it comes to the topic of Jewish territorialism and imagined Jewish homelands in Suriname, Western Australia, and Tasmania.