Augmenting Histories

Augmenting Historiography: The Case of Wadi Salib

Seminar on the use of virtual reality for historical research

2020-2022

Instructor:

Eytan Mann

Material Topology Research Laboratory

Technion - Israel Institue of Technology


Instructor:

Eytan Mann

Reenacting the Archive | 2020 - 2021

Students:

David Keselman

Dima Tannous

Dor Nakash

Julie Habib

Liz Elmakais

Michal Orevi

Ofek Raz

Omer Ittah

Or Shainer

Orya Ben Moshe

Yael Leibovitch

Speaking Spaces | 2021 - 2022

Teaching Assistant:

Dor Nakash

Students:

Aldona Obrara

Carol Talhami

Dor Peled

Fouad Salaime

Gabriela Koifman

Hadas Geva

Hadas Zilber

Leen Bsul

Linor Gorelik

Noa Einhorn

Noam Parienty

Orr Kalati

Sean Afota

Sean Keren

Tamar Rosen

Tohar Schwarts Buchnick

Yarden Rivkin

Acknowledgements:

MTRL Research Lab, The Azrieli Foundation

Prof. Aaron Sprecher

Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning,

Technion Israel Institute of Technology

Graphic Design and editing:

Roni Hillel

Dor Nakash

Fouad Salaime

Foreword

VR as Critical Historiography .......................... 5

Eytan Mann and Aaron Sprecher

Reenacting the Archive, 2020 - 2021

60 Minutes ................................................

36

David Keselman & Omer Ittah

Voices of Ruin ............................................ 44

Dima Tannous & Julie Habib

DEmmersive | VR Planning ........................... 54

Dor Nakash & Or Shainer

A Requiem to Wadi Salib .............................. 74

Liz Elmakais & Orya Ben Moshe

Reenacting the 1959 Riots............................

88

Michal Orevi & Yael Leibovitch

Time Machine .......................................... 102

Ofek Raz, Sagiv Hemo & Abed Atamna

Speaking Spaces, 2021 - 2022

Retracing A Fading Memory . ....................... 114

Carol Talhami, Leen Bsul & Fouad Salaime

Pray, Space, Time ...................................... 138

Sean Afota, Sean keren, Hadas Zilber & Tamar Rosen

Between The Lines .................................... 150

Yarden Rivkin & Noam Parienty

Transition ................................................ 162

Tohar Schwarts Buchnick & Linor Gorelik

Fill In The Blanks ....................................... 178

Orr Kalati, Hadas Geva & Dor Peled

Spiritu(re)ality .......................................... 196

Noa Einhorn, Gabriela Koifman & Aldona Obrara


4

Foreword

VR as Critical Historiography – The case of Wadi Salib in Haifa

Eytan Mann and Aaron Sprecher, MTRL, Technion.

This paper presents the work conducted during an experimental design research course

within the Material Topology Research Lab (MTRL, Technion, Israel) at Wadi Salib, an

evacuated neighbourhood amid the city of Haifa. Taking Wadi Salib's historical complexity

as its archive, students developed and designed virtual reality experiences stemming from

archival collection and digital twining of the site. The projects followed a collective

methodology that aims to build a generative engine that can potentially produce multiple

experiences based on various evidence. The efforts presented here provide epistemological

and experiential cross-sections and challenge traditional historiography in favor of

immersive yet critical representations of Wadi Salib. The paper discusses the critical

questions that arose from the course work: can the archive be witnessed or, furthermore,

reenacted within the detailed context of the site's materiality? And what possibilities and

pitfalls do this framework offer for conveying the complexity of the site for other similarly

complex sites?

Keywords: VR, critical historiography, archive, materiality, reenactment

Introduction:

As a research tool, virtual reality (VR) is developing rapidly, with researchers of various

disciplines calling for a better understanding of its potential. In the field of architecture, VR

has been largely focused on exploring new possibilities of immersive visualization of

architecture or simulating interactions with architectural space. In the context of

architectural history, VR is still mostly limited to reconstructing sites that have been lost or

are otherwise inaccessible. With VR, We can enter a Neolithic tomb, walk through La

Corbusier's villa or explore an unbuilt Hindu temple. 1 However, the use of VR in the context

of architecture's broader concerns remains quite limited, the reasons being the lack of

technological know-how, the limited reach of the technology in classroom settings, and

logistical difficulties. But beyond such 'real-life' challenges that can surely be improved upon

in the future, the general intellectual question of how VR can be used in the context of critical

historiography of architecture, that aims to question and undermine stable representation of

sites and their histories, remains in its infancy and is, in fact, hampered precisely by the

technology's general promise of simple, faithful realism.

1

For example, Lithodomos is company founded by a team of archaeologists and artists that produced in 2018 a

realistic reconstruction of ancient Jerusalem. This is a seamless depiction of Jerusalem in the time of King David

(1010–970 BCE). The VR production “smooths” archaeological and historical speculation, often derived from

political agenda, to appear as absolute reality. Lithodomos produces other urban environments such as London,

Rome, Athens and other cities.

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VR as a critical tool embraces the limitations of what can be understood as 'real' within the

VR platform but enables new engagement with actual sites and pasts. For us, employing VR

to study the site of Wadi Salib, located in downtown Haifa, was not a tool that provides an

additional layer of realism to what is being studied, but rather a medium that allows us to

work between various epistemological registers to create something that is just as much a

part of architecture as it is of a study of cultural significance within architecture. In other

words, through the research presented here, we wanted to create something that is not just a

personal statement but can be leveraged to become a working tool to examine difficult pasts

in their physical context and offer empathy and even some reconciliation. Attempting to do

so, it is essential to discuss the new possibilities and caveats of using VR for critical

historiography of built sites.

In this paper, we discuss, first, the notion of critical historiography of contested places and

the use of VR as a medium of such historiography. VR raises critical questions on the

mediation of historiography: can we be immersed in historiography? While we see examples

of immersive history, such as in using VR to experience a Neolithic Tomb, or while playing

historically based games, we are rarely immersed in the research setting, in which that same

Neolithic Tomb is reconstructed, in the "behind the scenes" of its making. 2 The reason might

be that historians tend to be suspicious about highly sensorial and impressionistic history.

Impressions are the longtime adversaries of objective knowledge, and so the historianscientist

should work to remove the interference of subjective sensory impressions. 3

Immersion is a state of mind that encourages impression, and that is why it is often labeled

as unscientific, as it can manipulate the mind rather than provide a clear and rational image

of the past. Moreover, computer graphics employed to visualize built environments from the

past often lack the required tools to identify their overall accuracy while simultaneously

carrying a sense of truth. Borrowing from the concept of hyperreality introduced by

Baudrillard, reconstructions intermingle the real and hypothetical without any means of

2

An exemplar project attempting to use the advantages of VR for representing a contested sites while

foregrounding the problem of representing narratives, is a project by Georgios Artopoulos and Panayiotis

Charalambous, showing the Paphos Gate in Nicosia. The medium of VR is used to visualize the historical

palimpsest of the urban environment and engage users and local communities in the creative aspects of these

environments’ management. Its shows a capacity of VR to enhance understanding of and engagement in

architecture and its historical context, renewing cultural identity, and fostering civic participation of diverse sociocultural

groups. (Artopoulos, 2019)

3

Plato is famous for a distinctive view of objective reality. He asserted roughly that the greatest reality was not in

the ordinary physical objects we sense around us, but in what he calls Forms, or Ideas. Ordinary objects of our

sense experience are real, but the Forms are a “higher reality,” according to Plato. Having the greatest reality,

they are the only truly objective reality, we could say. In epistemology, Plato accordingly distinguishes the highest

knowledge as knowledge of the highest reality, the Forms. Our modern usage of the terms “objective knowledge”

and “objective reality” seem to fit in reasonably well here. Aristotle, by contrast, identifies the ordinary objects of

sense experience as the most objective reality. He calls them “primary substance.” The forms of things he calls

“secondary substance.” Hence, Aristotle’s metaphysics seems to fit better than Plato’s with our current

understanding of objective reality.

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Foreword

distinguishing the two (Baudrillard, 1983). At the same time, images carry a sense of realism

and legitimacy that automatically leads users to believe them to be truthful.

In such, we ask if immersion in reconstructed environments allows a higher definition of

historical facts, or rather, does it enable new modes of questioning the notion of facts? For

this, we need first to frame historiography not in terms of factual reclamation but instead as

an active construction, animation, and recombination process of historical events and the

locale of history- the site. In short, what does VR offer for critical historiography of sites, and

what is at stake?

These epistemological questions are urgent as VR becomes more pervasive and permeates

design fields and the humanities, including architecture schools. We suggest a methodology

to explore the use of VR for critical investigation of contested sites while overcoming some of

the caveats of using such a medium in this context. Using computation and digital

technologies for historiography can potentially underline opportunities and problems in the

process. The methodology was developed at the Material Topology Research Lab (MTRL) 4 ,

and tested during a semester-long course at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in

Haifa, Israel. During the course, students studied Wadi Salib, a ruined neighborhood in

downtown Haifa that bears the scars of the whole region: wars, displacement, nationbuilding,

and disillusion. Wadi Salib stores multiple narratives embedded within its streets

and houses. Through the encounter with Wadi Salib, we developed the strategy of critically

mediating the site and its history through fieldwork and archival research. The course

outcomes were VR experiences that deal with different event spaces, generated using the

methodological pipeline we assembled. As the investigation is ongoing, we have reached the

assessment phase to review the work and discuss what is at stake in mediating history

through immersive VR as a critical instrument to allow the voicing of multiple voices. Can we

take advantage of the realistic illusionary capabilities of VR to teleport us in space and time

while not losing touch with our role as critical thinkers?

Critical Historiography

Historiography most often considers history an invisible phenomenon, something belonging

to the past. The wars fought in the past; major decisions made to change the course of

events; and the inherited written documents from various periods of history could all fall

into the oblivion of the invisible. And yet, writing (and visualizing) history in a particular

time and place, George Simmel writes, contribute to our historical knowledge only when " it

4

The Material Topology Research Lab (MTRL) is a transdisciplinary research group, part of the Faculty of

Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), working in the field of

computational design, robotics, and spatial simulation, exploring unique visualization, simulation, and fabrication

tools that are changing the way we imagine, make, and inform our physical and cultural environments.

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can be oriented in relation to other events." Access to history is through material conditions

and the context of the historiographer. (Simmel, 1905) A book, a monument, or an archival

material differs from the historical event itself: they hold a presence that demands a different

historiographical consideration. The event itself is not reducible to an empirical experience

but unfolds through a representation of history. In this process of reproduction- the act of

writing the past does not occur in a void; rather, it unfolds in its present. "The now of the

present is imbued with the past", writes Hartoonian, while the present is neither seen as the

continuum of the past nor separated from it (Hartoonian, 2020, p. 1). Writing history in

modernity considers the past to be a chain of events, the total of which is called progress.

This approach sees the technology of historiography as an integral role in shaping the past.

Technology shapes our perception of the past, as was claimed by Benjamin in' The Work of

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,' where he unpacks the impact of technologies

such as montage in film. Benjamin articulated the idea of "wish-images" in conjunction with

the loss of aura; that is, the magical and ritualistic origin of the work of art where space and

time are intermingled, and on the other hand, the new objectivity introduced by photography

and film (Benjamin, 1979). Benjamin describes a dialectic image between the desire of the

subject and a new objective scientific image.

Critical historiography is a space of operating between the pulls of objectivity and

subjectivity, especially productive in places of conflict histories and the question of their

mediation (Jarzombek, 1999). Jarzombek asks where the historian-subject in the mediation

of history is? To this question, there can be various answers, one of them is Dominic

Lacapra's "Secondary Witnessing" – that mediating evidence of the past ought to include

oneself as a second-order witness, an active agent of mediation. The opaqueness of the

historian sheds light on the inherent problem of the historian's positionality when witnessing

destruction and violence: as Dominic LaCapra articulates, "experience involves affect both in

the observed and in the observer. For the observer, the experience problem leads to the role

of empathy in historical understanding (LaCapra, 2014). This critical stance invites us to

write history actively. This position introduces new intimacy and sensitivity to history

instead of absolute relativism that might cause a detached distancing from the materials and

evidence of record (Jarzombek, 1999).

'Secondary Witnessing' echoes Poststructuralist history and overcoming the need for

scientific objectivity; different communities value different pasts– not a monumental,

national, or global history, but a more personalized history that empowers the perspective of

ordinary people (Lowenthal, 2015). The work of the historian has never been merely the

transliteration of a pre-existent past into a documentary medium. Instead, history is

constituted by employing historical information into recognizable narratives and literary

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Foreword

tropes (White, 1978). Rather than getting caught up in dichotomous thinking such "as past as

real" versus "past as constructed," we should focus on history as a continuum, identified

through moments of mediation: the generation of documents, the collation of documents

into an archive, the retrieval of facts from files, and the construction of historical narrative

(Trouillot, 2015). Focusing on these moments is critical to understanding the intersection of

power and knowledge and how history is written and how silences are created; to locate,

contest, and interpret archival materials made accessible and the gaps and

underrepresentation of particular objects such as communities, locations or events. To locate

such gaps, historians ought to adopt strategies that focus on key moments of historical

mediation. In Trouillot's terms, historiography is implicated by technologies of collection of

documents, their structuring into narratives, and how interfaces of their dissemination

culminate in a historical infrastructure, not always visible but very impactful on how heritage

is formulated (Trouillot, 2015). Following this poststructuralist position, we should look

closely at the epistemological and institutional frameworks that produce history and heritage

in contested sites. For example, we might ask how the institutional narratives of heritage

have played a role in fossilizing some representations of the past while silencing others

(Rajagopalan, 2012). A critical investigation of history preservation practices, in writing or in

architectural design is deeply embedded within and produced by complex power structures.

According to this critical turn, history is not a "total fact," but is a constructed knowledge

involving a selection of narratives (Rico, 2008), challenging the notion of ownership of

heritage and the conditions for making the definitions. Such a critical approach calls for

focus on media and mediation, on the technologies of historiography.

Technologies of Historiography

Critical historiography foregrounds the mediation of history – the technologies by which we

collect, organize, and disseminate history. Along with mediations of the past, such as

manuscripts, photographs, and maps, historians can search for clues about how history is

constructed and engaged through cultural products, memories, myths, and politics. While

historical uncertainty and disputation are sometimes viewed as the enemy of a respectful

attitude toward the lived past, consensual histories run an even greater risk of becoming

polite fables, the kind of cultural narratives that lead to rituals of remembrance rather than

critical thinking and political agency (Zadeh, 2016). Media theorist Steve Anderson invites us

to consider the myriad "technologies of history" and how media practices broadly conceived

help us think about the world, the past, and our potential to act as historical and political

agents (Anderson, 2011).

Today, digital technology allows us to record and store architecture in digital form, and

computational tools open new access to the analysis and organization of cultural heritage

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data. As we show here, the methodology we suggest deploys both computer graphics and

natural language processing to establish new links between the site and stories. It is

potentially a way to weave vast information about places and their histories and develop new

modes of storytelling. The methodology presented here attempts to move toward a critical

adaptation of what Anderson refers to as "database histories"—that is, "collections of

infinitely retrievable fragments, situated within categories and organized according to

predetermined associations, offer users, whether they are artists, gamers, or geeks, both

the materials and structures by which the past may be conceived as fundamentally mutable

and reconfigurable" (Anderson, 2011, p. 122). Taking advantage of the logic of remix and

computational culture and the kinds of repetitions and modifications built into video games,

"database histories" projects rest along a continuum, moving from serious artworks to popculture

hacks; however, they share a staunch refusal of the stability of a single "history," and

instead offer us a relation to the past that is always already open to continual revision and

reinterpretation. In practical terms, the implications of digital technology for archiving have

primarily focused on technical questions of how to best preserve and disseminate historical

data using rapidly expanding networks, notoriously transient file formats, and unstable

storage media.

The promise of "database histories" may lead to the false notion of a "total archive." The

philosopher Arthur C. Danto coined the term "Ideal Chronicler" in 1965, describing a

hypothetical model for history-writing before the advent of computers (Danto, 1982). In his

view, a perfect historian would be able to account for every historical event, analyzing their

significance from multiple perspectives at the moment they are being recorded. Though

initially proposed to demonstrate the impossibility of an objectively perfect form of

historiography, Danto's ideal of comprehensiveness, multiple perspectives, and immediacy

resonates with the promises of today's searchable databases and digital distribution

networks. Historiography in the digital age seems destined to continually promise a direct

and easy relationship to the past, awaiting only the technical apparatus capable of rendering

it in its entirety. A critical conception of historiography we wish to adopt does not recover or

preserve an objective factual history but instead engages actively in the conflicts and

uncertainty of the past and present. Digital technologies' fragmentation of knowledge in the

correct constellation can reinforce a critical historical study. Shifting from viewing "history"

as a grand, totalizing narrative to a splintered conglomeration of subdisciplinary

investigations, each emerging from, and self-consciously subjected to, their own rules of

formation, as Foucault describes in 'The Archaeology of Knowledge'. This shift entails a

movement away from a single "history" toward fragmentary histories as an essential step

toward acknowledging the chaos of the past and the unruliness of human thought. Discrete

statements, Foucault argued, must always be analyzed within a field of discourse and

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Foreword

considered in relation to disruptions, discontinuities, thresholds, mutations, and limits

(Foucault, 1972, p. 5).

Works of history once understood to comprise an expanding field of collective historical

knowledge are thereby repositioned as raw material in an infinitely reconfigurable revision,

remixing, and recontextualization patterns. The work of the historian must now contend

with the construction of open-source and accessible databases and the accretion of vast

volumes of data referencing historical events, facts, and images. The question of digital

media's ultimate role in what we remember and how we view ourselves concerning the past

remains the subject of an ongoing debate. This is because tools for visualizing history

proliferate across platforms, networks, consoles, and screens. While the materials of

historiography are computationally stored, analyzed, segmented, tagged, rendered, and

processed into information, we see new, increasingly engaging digital interfaces through

immersion 5 . Moving from "database histories" to immersive interfaces with such

information, entails moving from abstract information to increasingly spatialized historical

materials, towards their becoming a virtually inhabitable space. As opposed to the striated

world of the database, where knowledge is grouped into discrete data packets, the immersive

and real-like representation of VR presents a smoothness, unified by the senses into a

continuous world. 6

Early VR theorists already spoke of the smooth quality of virtual environments, often

referring to literary writing's capacity to create a coherent narrative that creates an illusion of

immersion. Michael Heim, for example, claimed that "a world is not a collection of

fragments, nor even an amalgam of pieces. It is a felt totality or whole." It is "not a

collection of things but an active usage that relates things together, that links them ...

World makes a web-like totality… World is a total environment or surround-space"

(Michael, 2000, pp. 90–91). For Heim, moreover, worlds are existentially centered around a

base we call home: "Home is the node from which we link to other places and other things...

5

September 1955 - A Virtual Documentary of the Istanbul Pogrom, shows the some of the potntial of VR

storytelling, and the use of cutting-edge computational methods to offer new access to history through immersion.

September 1955 is a 8-minute virtual-reality documentary of the Istanbul Pogrom, a government-initiated

organized attack on the minorities of Istanbul on September6-7, 1955. This interactive installation places the

viewer in a reconstructed photography studio in the midst of the pogrom, allowing one to witness the events from

the perspective of a local shop-owner. The experience of the space induced by participating in the mundane

activities of the photography studio aims to generate unique historical narratives that are reproduced and enacted

by the viewer. See: http://virtualxdesign.mit.edu/storm/76o0ihlgsph3n3iwtaniz7gttv01d0

6 Deleuze and Guattari’s smooth and the striated architectures are adopted from biology: smooth muscle

consists of seemingly undifferentiated surfaces of single spindle-shaped cells whose contractions undulate and

flow; striated muscles are regular, ordered, organized into strands of fibers forming a musculature which

contracts and relaxes under voluntary control. Striated space claim Deleuze and Guattari, consists predominantly

of “closed intervals”, smooth space of “open intervals”. Striated space “closes off surfaces”; smooth space

consists of “distributed' surfaces”. These definitions promote architectural images, one being rigid, and the other

more dispersed, open-ended and free-formed. ( Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A thousand plateaus:

Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing, 1988.p.500, quoted in: Buchanan, Ian, and Gregg

Lambert, eds. Deleuze and space. University of Toronto Press, 2005).

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Home is the point of action and node of linkage that becomes a thread weaving the

multitude of things into a world" (Michael, 2000, p. 92). In the context of historiography,

the "web-like totality" that Heim suggests entails an augmentation of the database through

sensibility and an ability to position ourselves within data. A world with an experiential

quality that allows narratives to come forth. The craft of designing such event-spaces is

essentially architectural and is complementary to historiography in designing such an

inhabitable home.

Historical museums deal which such challenges: weaving a multitude of things into a

concrete spatial experience and designing an interface for historiography. The museum

space demands a spatial order, direction, linearity, and progression, all of which produce a

"narrative landscape" (Ryan et al., 2016). Museum planners and designers arrange text and

stories along circulation paths that direct the movement of visitors and invest museum space

with a sense of sequential, narrative order. Indeed, some contemporary museum buildings

have been designed around the stories they intend to tell. This means that a museum's

interior (and sometimes exterior) form provides an environment where text "comes off the

page" can be arranged in novel spatial configurations. Museums allow complex narratives to

be told with the assistance of artifacts, text (on inscriptions, labels, and signs),

reconstructions, audiovisual aids, and human guides in a carefully controlled setting

explicitly designed for this purpose. Notably, storytelling in museums is not constrained by

linear time or continuous geography but allows spatiotemporal leaps through curation. VR,

too, provides curation of event spaces.

The metaphor of the museum is not rare in digital heritage VR projects. As architects, we

wish to push this metaphor further and imagine the design of a VR experience as a drawing

plan for a museum without walls, defining an interactive environment to present historical

materials as well as expose the manufacturing of political narratives. VR curation offers the

opportunity to approach the site, and the archive about the site, with no apparent

prioritization between their material presence and their non-material discursive mediation

(Hodder, 2012). In this materialist approach, both language and physical materials hold a

reciprocal relationship in which "the symbol cannot exist without the substance, and the

material reality of the substance holds a symbolic role"(Renfrew & Malafouris, 2013, p. 59).

Drawing inspiration from materialist thinkers such as Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and

Karen Barad, we embrace the idea that there are stratified epochs of revolution-based

history, with new developments eradicating old systems. These approaches rethink how an

archaeological object is conceived and suggest to "record and represent the grain and

patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the

contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual; the conflation of

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Foreword

oral testimony, anthology, memoir, biography, natural history and everything you might

ever want to say about a place" (Pearson & Shanks, 2001, pp. 68–69). To record everything,

however, is, of course, impossible, and futile. Nevertheless, capturing a flood of information

can enable further "curation" in various ways, and the production of multiple presentations.

Wadi Salib

To examine a method of VR as Critical Historiography, we studied the site of Wadi Salib, a

neighborhood in downtown Haifa that tells a painful story of violence and destruction during

the early years of the founding of the state of Israel. It is a landscape inflicted by wars and

turmoil caused by grand ideologies of the first half of the twentieth century that caused a

displacement. First, during the Arab-Israel war of 1948, the Palestinian inhabitants fled the

city in the name of the Palestinian 'Nakba' (the displacement of the Palestinian population

during the 1948 Arab-Israel War); then, in 1960-1980, a second displacement occurred when

the state of Israel systemically "cleaned" the neighborhood of its Moroccan Jewish

inhabitants that settled in the abandoned Palestinian homes. Since the evacuation of Wadi

Salib 's last inhabitants, most of the neighborhood's houses were leveled, with some still

standing empty, as part of a strategic plan to "modernize the city." 7 Today, Wadi Salib stands

in ruins empty amid Haifa. It is an urban-archaeological site stratified by narratives

embedded within the dilapidated walls of houses. Slowly, several urban renewal projects are

now underway.

In a semester-long course (spring 2021) for graduate architecture students at the Material

Topology Research Lab at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), we sought to

develop and test a methodology for critical historiography of Wadi Salib using VR. Following

a series of preparatory lectures, ranging in topics from history, interactive design, and realtime

rendering techniques, we toured the neighborhood of Wadi Salib extensively,

accompanied by various guides, ex-habitants of Wadi Salib, who shared their stories about

life there, now gone. A former inhabitant of Wadi Salib, who belonged to the second

generation of residents, shared with the class his memories from his life at this place, mixed

with historical anecdotes from multiple eras: "(…) When the shooting happened, I was

standing right there at this very spot (he points towards the steps going uphill). I heard the

shot. By the way, this is just around the corner from where Haifa's mayor's son Ibrahim El

Khalil was murdered twenty years before that (1939)." The guide opens his brown folder to

show a photograph of Ibrahim El Khalil. "Then, later, the Israeli prime minister came to

visit the neighborhood of Wadi Salib before she gave the order to level the houses (1970). At

first, there was an Arab family in this house; then we came in, then there was nothing. It's

7

Wadi Salib Strategic Plan, 1953, Ministry of Housing, State of Israel. Haifa Municipality Archive.

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all gone now. Today, they preserve the buildings that remained; they want it to be an "old

city center," to attract outsiders to come in." This short story touches on several of Wadi

Salib's difficult pasts: the Palestinian displacement in 1948, the shooting incident that

triggered an uprising of Jewish-Mizrahis in 1959, and the gradual demolishing of Wadi Salib

during the 60s and 70s by the state of Israel. More than other historical information sources,

the tours provided uniquely contextual storytelling that was already immersive, as we were

standing at the exact location of events. Such a guided tour triggers the imagination as it

builds a "landscape narrative," constructing a story embedded in the site. The tour weaves a

network of spaces and times into a spatial experience. We attempt to reproduce landscape

narratives by using immersive and interactive design of critical VR experiences. We aimed to

design landscape narratives from a vast foundation of information using digital tools. A

"database historiography" is mixed and remixed from a data repository that aims to move

beyond a singular spatial experience and construct an engine capable of plotting multiple

and diverse VR scenes.

Our work included footwork and archive research: walking through the ruined houses of

Wadi Salib and digging into public and private collections of historical materials. The

simultaneous investigation of the actual site and its archive blurred our clear-boundary

understanding of what is tangible and what is an intangible history of the site. The houses

are empty and frozen in time; the stories and memories seem to cling to the remains. The

conventional dichotomy of Tangible and Intangible Heritage, promoted by UNESCO seems

futile in Wadi Salib. 'Tangible Cultural Heritage' refers to physical objects in varying scales -

from monuments such as "architectural works, monumental sculpture and painting,

elements or structures of an archaeological nature", to whole sites (UNESCO, 1972). The

various definitions provided by UNESCO and other organizations encompass material things

as more concrete evidence and the presence of the past. UNESCO's 'Intangible Cultural

Heritage' refers to the "practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills that

communities, groups, and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural

heritage" (UNESCO, 2003). These definitions are manifested in the domains of "oral

traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural

heritage; performing arts; social practices, rituals, and festive events; knowledge and

practices; and traditional craftsmanship"(UNESCO, 2003). Intangible heritage demands a

participation component, an active way of knowing, and an embodied experience. While

tangible heritage practices closely examine concrete materials, intangible involves a tacit way

of knowing by doing (Ingold, 2013). The intangible entails a process rather than an object.

Its appearance is temporal and often involves narratives.

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To avoid too rigid conceptual compartmentalization of the materials we collected from the

site itself and from archives, we suggest an in-between definition that lives in the liminal gap

between these definitions, a 'quasi-tangible' cultural heritage. By using the term 'quasi,' we

echo Bruno Latour's conception of quasi-objects: not static things to be preserved but "made

to act by a large star-shaped web of mediators flowing in and out of it... [that] is made to

exist by its many ties" (Latour, 2013, p. 217). Antonino Griffero, too, is drawn to the quasiobject

as it is "responsible for one's feeling well (or not) in a space that is an "in-between" -

between perceiver and perceived" (Griffero, 2016). A quasi-tangible cultural heritage model,

then, acknowledges the agency of the perceiver as an active part of cultural heritage, Dominic

LaCapra's "Secondary Witnessing." Thus, the quasi-tangible follows a critical historiography

approach by blurring boundaries between the tangible and intangible, object and subject,

fiction and fact, and by undermining the modernist foray into irreconcilable binary

oppositions (Ekbia, 2009).

With this, we can capture the interaction between a spectator, a historian (ourselves as

designers), and the place as a "landscape narrative." These are narratives organized "on the

ground" that involve issues relating to the spatial form of text that is somewhat different

from those involved in telling the story on the pages of a book, e-book, or video screen.

Configuring accounts in real-life settings can pose considerable challenges.

Methodology

As a first step, a digital model of the entire area was produced using drone photogrammetry.

This model served not just as a 'site' for the interpretations by the student teams but also as a

type of portal for the student projects. In each project, the site, its various interlocutors, and

its archival resources are all composed in the service of the narratives constructed by the

students, through which Wadi Salib's complex histories can be seen anew. The efforts, which

were then exhibited, provide epistemological and experiential cross-sections through the

problematics of the site in the manner of critical historiography.

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Figure 1: Drone photogrammetry model of Wadi Salib, produced during the course. MTRL, 2021

Students' work undertaken culminated in VR projects that posit a spectator inside a "sitearchive":

a virtual environment that synthesizes the site's built environment with archival

materials is not unlike a guided tour. We attempted to design a data pipeline that generates

these historiographical-synthetic VR environments. The methodology included: (1) collecting

data about and from the site of various types and media, which would then function as a

foundation for further processing of the data. (2) We then employed computational methods

(NLP, LDA) to remix data, linking segments of text and images into new narratives. (3)

Finally, we rendered the newly composed narrative to a VR HMD. Such a data pipeline,

outputting experiential historiography, intends to unfold multiple, sometimes overlapping,

spatial narratives—a collage-image that includes architecture and oral or written stories

about the site.

1. Data collection:

Physical site:

Direct collection included 3D scanning using drone and ground

photogrammetry of the whole site laser-scanning 8 for selected interior spaces,

which produced a digital clone of the site on changing scale. The models were

then implemented as a foundation layer for the design of VR scenes.

Capturing the present state of ruination meant introducing a "present layer"

to the VR projects that would curate past scenes.

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8

For drone photogrammtery we used a DJI Mavic Pro, and for scannng the Trimble X7 scanner.

12

Foreword

Indirect collection entailed employing computational techniques to extract

3D spatial data about the site from archival materials, such as photos and film

segments. 9 Unlike the direct collection, we attempted to use computational

methods to extract space 3D information from historical photographs and

reconstruct scenes. Transforming 2D photos into 3D space was proven limited

using automated techniques since the photographs mostly lack the resolution

and color range to allow spatial reconstruction. We combined computational

analysis with manual modeling to overcome reconstruction limitations.

Figure 2: Reconstructing depth from 2D photograph, using monocular depth estimation 10

Stories:

To collect oral and written history, we employed direct and indirect approaches:

Direct collection included interviewing individuals intimately acquainted

with the site, such as former inhabitants and experts. The interviews included

a series of questions about their memories and experience of the place: who

are you? When did you reside in Wadi Salib? What do you remember from

this place? Can you recall the physical appearances of the houses?

We located former inhabitants through various networks, including Facebook

groups. The interviewees included Jewish-Mizrahis, Palestinians, and

hobbyist urban historians who were all asked about their memories of Wadi

Salib, their homes, and the social life in the neighborhood.

9

Techniques for extracting spatial information from images are: photogrammetry reconstruction, depth-mapping,

availble machine-learning models trained to identify architectural components in photographs.

10 Towards Robust Monocular Depth Estimation: Mixing Datasets for Zero-shot Cross-dataset Transfer. René

Ranftl, Katrin Lasinger, David Hafner, Konrad Schindler, Vladlen Koltun https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.01341v3

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Indirect collection: Collection of archival oral and written stories from

available archives and literature. Historian Yfaat Weiss's dense book 'A

Confiscated Memory: Wadi Salib and Haifa's lost Heritage' (Weiss, 1951)

offered us an archival navigation map which we followed towards original

documents such as 'The Commission of Inquiry Into the Wadi Salib Events,

the evidence of David Ben-Harush, July 26, 1959', and the 'Provisional Arab

Committee to the director of the Minorities Ministry, September 8, 1948',

stored at the State Archive. We also assisted in Haifa Municipality's

Department for Long-term Planning Archive.

Testimonies from reports, newspaper articles, films, and other sources that

recount events from various eras were collected as well. These are primarily

organized around two main events – the 1948 Arab-Israel War and the 1959

Wadi Salib Riots of the Jewish-Mizrahi community were translated and added

into the same database.

Figure 3: Simultaneous direct and indirect data collection and organization in a data repository allowed us to mix

various data types, representing multiple epistemological registers

2. Data analysis and remixing

The second phase of the methodology builds on the previous one and entails analyzing and

remixing the data collected. We employed techniques to analyze natural language content

(from interviews and literature) to identify and tag mentioning names of places, people, and

keywords. Working with spatial data produced by 3D scanning (geometry and point cloud

file formats), we labeled segments of 3D digital models, introduced metadata to the initially

collected raw data, and enabled semantic connections between data segments 11 . This data

11

The label 3D scanning data we manuualy segmented the point cloud data and labeled layers with the known

historical information such as names of houses, owners, and architects. We used LDA topic modelling as a way

to draw unexpected semantic connections between various data types stored within the database.

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14

Foreword

analysis phase was crucial for connecting data segments such as textual descriptions to their

physical locations within the site.

Figure 4: Labeling data prepared the materials for plotting new compositions.

3. Immersive generative storytelling

The third phase of the method explored the plotting and rendering of the structured data to a

VR HMD (Oculus Quest 2). For this, the students gained entry-level skills in designing

interactive applications with Unity Game Engine, working with various media inside Unity,

rendering in real-time from a database to the screen, and optimizing the projects for a VR

render pipeline. The pipeline was designed to connect data segments according to various

parameters – weaving together 3D models and components of text into a sequence of

immersive scenes.

Figure 5: From data analysis to new data compositions rendered via VR HMD.

Breaking the work into these three phases, we planned the methodology to be a continuous

sequence that aims to allow the content of the VR experience to evolve and transform,

potentially closing a cycle between information and the site. This sequence was employed

partially or fully in the student projects.

For example, the project '60 Minutes' focused on the first defining event of Wadi Salib as a

neighborhood within the historical center of Haifa. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War caused the

evacuation of Wadi Salib from its Arab residences by Israel's armed forces of the 'Hagana'. In

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her book, historian Yfaat Weiss describes how Arab Haifa "faded instantly, in the blink of an

eye, within just a few days in April (1947), no more" (Weiss, 1951, p. 11). A curial moment

occurred at noon on April 21, when the 'Haganah' armed forces began their operation to take

control of Haifa. Between April 21 and 22, a panic-stricken flight started on the Arab

residents toward downtown Haifa and Wadi Salib. The fleeing crowd infected residents with

panic as it passed through the neighborhood, and they joined in the escape. Arab delegation

was convened to control the panic and decide whether to surrender or fight.

Figure 6: The Arab residents of Haifa fleeing the city during the 1948 war. Source: Hrant Nakashian, 1949 UN

Archive

The VR project, designed and produced by David Keselman and Omer Ittah, both graduate

architecture students, focused on these early events and followed the methodology above.

First, the collection phase started with an archival investigation into the documents

recording the events hours before the fleeing, as recorded in the 'Provisional Arab

Committee to the director of the Minorities Ministry, September 8, 1948', at the 'State

Archive,' and in historian Walid Khalidi's report from 1959, as referenced in Weiss's book

(Weiss, 1951, p. 20). Also, in the memoirs of the British observers, they noted that the

position taken by the Jewish side was conciliatory and generally flexible. The meeting in the

town hall between the Arabs and Jews lasted approximately an hour and a half, and upon its

conclusion, the Arab representatives requested twenty-four hours for deliberation. This

request was rejected, and they were asked to decide within an hour. The project focused on

the 60 minutes in which the Arab delegation was assembled in a Khayyat's house in Wadi

Salib, on what happened in that house during this time; an event spotted with uncertainty

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16

Foreword

since there lacks a record of the negotiations, and historians' interpretations regarding this

hour are divergent in their outlooks 12 .

The students first located the house that today stands in ruins. Over the years, the house's

interior had become a shelter for the occasional homeless and a favorite location for graffiti

artists. This ruined interior was 3D scanned using photogrammetry to produce a realistic

simulation of its current state. The students then collected the available evidence on the

occasion of the Arab delegations' discussions and transcoded the record from the

conversation they could locate in which the two sides discussed the terms of surrender to the

Israeli Hagana, some of which were disputed.

The 3d model outcomes from the scanning were then overlayed with sentences from the

conversation, which were arranged in approximation to spatiotemporal order according to

the house's rooms and order of occurrences. The scene was rendered to a VR HMD, allowing

a user to walk through the ruined house and move between rooms while reading the

segments of manuscripts from that night, that hour. Moving between the main room and the

two adjacent rooms, the user can choose which discussion to participate in the Christian

delegates sitting in the Northern room or the more militant Muslim representatives sitting in

the Southern room. 13

The lack of evidence on how events unfolded and the full transcript of the conversations does

not exist or could not be recovered due to archival policies. The project embraced these gaps

by introducing indistinct talking sounds inside the VR experience that cannot be deciphered,

hinting at missing pieces in the record. By allowing users to become "secondary witnesses" to

the lost event-space, to witness the discussions as well as the lack of record, the VR project

employs a critical approach to historiography.

12

The historical versions of this event are told by the Palestinian Walid Khalidi, son of Jerusalem, and the Jewish

Ephraim Karsh, born in Haifa and generally identified with the right, are quite similar. Khalidi asserts that

acceptance of the terms drafted by the Haganah would have relieved the English of their responsibility for the

city’s Arab residents. Were the local Palestinian representatives to have done so, they would in fact have put

their fate in the hands of the Zionists. Karsh, on the other hand, maintains that since Haifa had been included in

the territory of the future Jewish state according to the partition plan, acceptance of the terms in this city would in

principle have denoted tacit acceptance of the principles of the partition plan, namely, acquiescence to Jewish

sovereignty. (Karsh, 2001; Khalidi, 1959)

13 According to historian Walid Khalidi’s article “The Fall of Haifa”, some thirty local residents, among the most

prosperous in the city, reconvened in despondent mood at Khayyat’s home in an attempt to formulate a policy

with regard to the new situation that had arisen. They decided to dispatch a seven-man delegation to the town

hall in the hope of ameliorating the conditions set by the Haganah. In his account, Walid Khalidi notes that British

general Stockwell warned the Arab delegates that, should they fail to sign the document, he would not be held

accountable for the possible deaths of three hundred to four hundred more Arabs on the morrow. Khalidi goes on

to relate that Khayyat replied: “What are you trying to do? We know Shabtai Levy, Ya’akov Salomon and all these

people. We are old friends.” Stockwell took this as an invitation to leave the room and to leave the two sides to

themselves. When they failed to reach agreement, the Arab delegates were given a short extension of one hour.

The Arab delegation returned to Khayyat’s home, where the other committee members had been waiting all this

time. In all probability this was the moment at which those present agreed upon a position, stating that they had

no right to sign the terms of surrender.

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Figure 7: VR experience inserting a witness into the interior of a historic house, now abandoned. The

transcription of negotiations of the Arab delegate is overlayed onto the rooms where they occurred. David

Keselman, Omer Ittah, Course: Virtual Real Environments, Instructor: Eytan Mann, MTRL, 2021)

In another project titled 'The Wadi Salib Riots,' designed and produced by graduate

architecture students Michal Orevi and Yael Leibovitch, the historical framing is of a later yet

related event: the Wadi Salib Riots. Immediately after the fleeing of Wadi Salib's Arabs

(1948), the new state of Israel directed newcomers - Jewish immigrants from Moroccans

towards the empty houses of Wadi Salib. The transition of Wadi Salib from Arab to Jewish

was swift. 14 When new residents– Jewish North African immigrants- settled in the emptied

Arab houses, it seemed that there was nothing left of the previous inhabitants. The former

14

One of the last to document the vanishing of the Arab Wadi Salib and the emergence of the Jewish

neighborhood was Binyamin Halfon, head of the Jewish Agency's Department of Jewish Affairs in the Middle

East, upon being summoned toward the end of 1948 to visit the living quarters of the North African immigrants in

the eastern section of Haifa's downtown. Although the war had come to an end, its ravages were still evident in

the city. These are Halfon's "impressions and observations of the visit":

"I left Haifa several weeks ago, and the old city was at the time a closed area that resembled a bubbling rubbish

dump on which clumps of garbage, carcasses of pet animals, and remnants of unwanted articles were rotting at

the mouth of the sewers. It was difficult to imagine that in these streets—between mounds of rubble no one knew

when or how would be removed, in houses whose windows and floors had been ripped out, in buildings half of

which were designated for demolition and the remainder still standing by some miracle—people would soon be

living. But hither, in fact, immigrants were indeed sent, and it is these buildings that they, of their own accord,

invade."

(Binyamin Halfon, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Middle East, Visit to

the North African Immigrants ’ Quarters (Haifa, End of December), Impressions and Observations of the Visit (in

Hebrew), Central Zionist Archive (hereafter CZA), S20/10/41.)

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Foreword

Arab inhabitants were entirely forgotten (Weiss, 1951, p. 11). What occurred in Wadi Salib

after 1948 was compressed by historical memory into a single event, the 'Wadi Salib Riots'.

These consisted of a chain of events during July and August of 1959, triggered by the tension

between members of the North-African community residing in Wadi Salib and the Ashkenazi

central government. The VR project focused on the event that triggered the riots: the

shooting of a member of the Jewish-Mizrahi community by the Ashkenazi-controlled police

on a summer evening of July 9, 1959. The shooting happened after the victim Ya'akob Akiva

El-Karaiif, living in Wadi Salib at the time, entered one of the neighborhood's coffee bars and

asked for a glass of beer; the owner refused to sell him a beer, claiming he was already too

drunk. Akiva responded by grabbing bottles and breaking them, which triggered a sequence

of events. According to the report of the 'Public Commission of Inquiry Into the Wadi Salib

Shooting', after the bar brawl, a Jewish-Ashkenazi police Sargent Israel Walk felt under

threat and shot Akiva in his stomach, leaving him disabled for the rest of his life. As the

report recounts: "Events unfolded rapidly. A policeman leaped from the patrol car while

Akiva threw bottles at them, one after another, and hit, among other targets, the

windshield of the patrol car. The police officers took cover behind the patrol vehicle, and

then several shots were fired from Sergeant pistol through a hole in the windshield into the

coffee bar. Akiva was hit and lay recumbent on the bar with a bleeding wound." 15

Wadi Salib riots began the following day, triggered by this singular event, but propelled by

years of systematic inequality and injustice against the Jewish-Mizrahi community of Wadi

Salib, living in the emptied Palestinian houses. The Ashkenazi hegemony viewed the

Mizrahim as passive recipients in Israel's then young Zionist state. In contrast, the

Ashkenazim were seen as active contributors to creating the Zionist vision of a Jewishnational

community in Israel. The demonstrators, members of this community, flood the

streets in angry protest, waving black flags and placards with slogans such as "Where is

justice?", "The police have killed an innocent man!", breaking windows of businesses in

Haifa. The shooting incident sparked a wave of disturbances across the country and gave

notice to the potential national repercussions of the local event.

15

The Commission of Inquiry Into the Events at Wadi Salib, evidence given by David Ben-Harush, July 26, 1959,

State Archive, vol. 7253/1.

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Figure 8: Wadi Salib Riots, 1959; Source: State Archive, photographed by Israeli Police, July 9, 1959

The 'Wadi Salib Riots' VR project collected available evidence about the shooting incident by

directly interviewing individuals related to the events and identifying locations of the scenes,

such as the bar where Akiva was shot and the city square to which the crowds assembled to

protest that night. Simultaneously, the students engaged in archival work that included

locating the original report on the event and viewing video interviews with witnesses. 16 The

data was then segmented and tagged according to locations at the crime scene. Modeling the

bar's interior where Akiva was shot and augmenting the model with superpositioned audio

segments allowed a spatial narrative to be told in-situ. Like in the previous project, gaps

appeared in the story as "blind spots" in the archive. In such gaps, the design team manually

produces a low-resolution model of the built environment – the street and houses' facades

according to maps, intentionally presenting them in a game-like graphics.

16

“People are Everything”, Israeli documentary TV series, 1990, interviews with witnesses of the riots

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHUCRmZ0FnA&t=309s)

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Foreword

Figure 9: Diagram showing the reconstructed sequence of event spaces along the streets of the neighborhood,

localizing the record as depicted in 'The Commission of Inquiry Into the Wadi Salib Events, the evidence of David

Ben-Harush, July 26, 1959' (Yael Leibovitch, Michal Orevi, Course: Virtual Real Environments, Instructor: Eytan

Mann, MTRL, 2021)

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Finally, the VR experience was designed for a user to become a protagonist in the riots the

incident; to walk along the path of the marching men and women that day, supposedly on

the night of July 9, 1959. As users walk inside the virtual reconstruction of the street, they

witness a synthesized narration of the events from various sources. As they approach the

shooting location, they are positioned inside a virtual environment made partly of a 3D scan

of the current location and partially a white abstract model of the bar as it possibly was that

night. As they hear a narration of the events, they are invited to reenact them, to become the

protagonist as described in real-time. During the scene, users are prompted to grab-hold

bottles behind the bar (using the VR hand controller) and follow the narration's pace as it

recounts the events that evening when the victim of the shooting is upset and starts to throw

bottles toward the street, smashing them on the pavement. In another scene, users are

prompted to pick up a pistol from the pavement outside the bar, aim towards the bar, and

fire, this time inhabiting the character of the Sargent Isreal Walk, who shot the victim. By

encouraging participation in the events, the project attempts to transcend beyond witnessing

and into the realm of reenactment of both the victim and the offensive police Sargent. The

reenactment attempts to create new engagement and empathy with Ya'akob Akiva El-Karaiif,

who got shot that night, allowing viewers who might not identify with the victim and

renewed perspective. It aimed to provoke a sense of urgency and crisis visceral, allowing the

user to "inhabit" the dry and laconic police reports. The possibility of assuming both

opposing characters – Akiva inside the bar and the policeman standing outside attempted to

provoke a sense of Rashomon, not taking a clear ethical stance, but rather questioning a

determinism, historical events that unfold in response to split-second decisions of

individuals.

VR as critical historiography

Today, Wadi Salib stands mostly in ruins awaiting urban renewal. Here and there, new highrise

housing compounds are starting to appear instead of the ruined house. Digitally

capturing the ruined historic houses and their histories is urgent in Wadi Salib since this

landscape is on the cusp of changing. The methodology presented aims to go beyond digital

preservation of the architectural ruins, develop a pipeline to collect archival data, and link

this data back to the site. By employing a computer-generated remix of the collected data, we

attempt to produce a tool to generate multiple VR narratives that can alter and develop

according to the parameters by which the information is organized. We created an engine for

multiple, potentially endless narratives using this method, minimizing prioritization between

historical periods or political identities. Overlaying a digital snapshot of a ruined site with

historical materials echoes William Faulkner's character in the book 'Requiem of a Nun,'

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Foreword

proclaiming "the past is not dead, it's not even the past" (Faulkner, 1951). This approach to

historiography sees the past as not to be understood as severed from the present, so much as

continually remade in the present through complex subjectivities. Society's relations to its

past may be impoverished if they are confined to narrowly epistemic questions. Instead, VR

as critical historiography aims to expand our understanding of the past through various

entangled relationships that are political, aesthetic, material, and emotional. Not history as

fiction, but as sometimes fictional storytelling (White 2009, Curthoys and Docker 2005)

For architecture students, the method deployed in Wadi Salib entails considering the site

and the archive as materials of a landscape narrative while asking what is at stake when we

act "inside" historiography? And how does VR help reconcile the difficult pasts of Wadi

Salib? Inhabiting historiography entails what media historian William Uricchio defines as

moving away from representation to active real-time and interactive simulation. Uricchio

observes that the mediation opportunities through participation pose new and challenging

questions about narrative authority. "What happens," he asked, "if we push the notion of

mediation beyond language to the domain of game, enactment, or simulation? Does this

allow us to slip out of the well-critiqued trap of representation? And if so, where does it

land us?" (Uricchio, 2005, p. 338).

The projects underline the affordance of VR as a medium to introduce a new participatory

agency in the reading and writing of historical materials. To engage in a reenactment that

constitutes a break with more traditional forms of historiography. Reenactment within a

heritage context can demonstrate the uncanny, peculiar way we relate to the past and

undermine the controlling and disciplining claims of an all-encompassing, authoritative

historical mainstream. Reenactment as a motif, practice, or genre is increasingly part of

mainstream culture, from art with artists such as Carey Young, Marina Abramovic' and

Jeremy Deller to music with the recent trend for musicians re-touring their seminal albums,

from Sonic Youth to Primal Scream.

As a form of affective history—i.e., the historical representation that both takes affect as its

object and attempts to elicit affect— reenactment is concerned with events and the

individual's physical and psychological experience. This sort of affective history holds the

potential to encourage sympathetic identification with the past, what Collingwood

(Collingwood, 1946, p. 215) called the "precondition for historical understanding." As an

offshoot of affective history, reenactment, specifically, seems to offer a framework within

which multilayered and often contradicting narratives of contested sites, such as in the case

of Wadi Salib, may be reduced to a comprehensible scale and historical grievances redressed

in the present. Suppose critical VR historiography as a reenactment medium aims to gain

legitimacy as a historical genre, it will be necessary to determine the extent to which affect

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can indeed be considered evidentiary. Reenactment tends to collapse temporalities, which

implies forms of historical continuity that are potentially inaccurate and exploitable for

ideological ends. Such risk will continue as long as reenactment ignores Walter Benjamin's

insistence that historical empathy brings with it the question of perspective. Specifically,

Benjamin's seventh thesis on the concept of history reminds us that empathizing with

history's victors produces a corresponding kind of historical narrative (Benjamin, 1973) 17 . If

reenactment is to posit a genuinely new form of historical representation, it must remain

open-ended, allowing expressions of minor stories rather than grand narratives. VR as a

medium of critical historiography can offer a common ground for historical empathy,

inferring meaning in historical thoughts and actions based on evidence (Brooks, 2009).

There is an inherent bias in this technique of historical inquiry due to the historian's position

in the present and limited access to information about the past, acknowledging that bias and

exploring its impact on interpretation is key to engaging in historical empathy (Blake, 1998;

VanSledright, 2001).

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of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(12), 2554–2566.

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There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a

document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner

to another. A historical materialist therefore dissoci ates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his

task to brush history against the grain. (Benjamin 73)

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Karsh, E. (2001). Nakbat Haifa: Collapse and Dispersion of a Major Palestinian Community. Middle

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PREFACE

30

The methodology we used included

environmental scanning during the production

of projects to capture segments of the real

site. During the work, we combined collecting

techniques such as ground and drone

photogrammetry, and lidar scanning (Trimble

x7), to reconstruct high-quality pointcloud and

mesh models of the site. The produced models

were then optimized (using open-source mesh

optimization software) in order to allow their

rendering in real-time, inside a gaming engine

(Unity3D). This meant to question the realness

of these representations inside a virtual reality

design environment.


Ground Photography

Point Cloud Model

Drone Footage

Mesh Model

Lidar Scanning

Optimization For Real Time

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Projects presentations, spring 2022

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Wadi Salib tour, spring 2022

33

Inuvik, NW

REENACTING THE ARCHIVE

2020-2021

The seminar (2020-2021) explored the theoretical

and practical potentials of VR as historiography.

The proposals explored different approaches to

Wadi Salib’s history, historical archival materials

about the site, and digital and computational

tools to examine both. Each project attempted

to augment the site’s history by engaging with

an archival object - governmental reports,

photos, planning documents, and other modes

of evidence. Each project included the physical

environment - segments of the site brought into

a virtual environment by deploying 3D scanning

techniques.

One of the most significant challenges was

implementing VR as a storytelling medium. This

included the affordances of interacting with

virtual environments and injecting an active

spectator into historical evidence.

Most of the projects were produced in groups

reflecting a vision of architectural design

and historiography as a collaborative field of

knowledge creation.


Inuvik, NWT, Nov 1961, DND/RCN photo, www.forposterityssake.ca/SE/SE0051.htm

Wadi Salib, 1959, Source: Haifa Municipal Archive

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60 Minutes | The House of Khyat, Ma’ale ha-Shikhrur St. 15

David Keselman & Omer Ittah

On April 22, 1948, members of the Arab Emergency

Committee in Haifa faced a crucial dilemma, whether to

surrender to the Hagana and accept the establishment

of the Jewish state and the partition plan or to fight with

the understanding that the chances of victory are nil. The

committee members came to the City Hall building to

discuss with the Hagana mediated by the British on the

terms of surrender, when they did not reach an agreement

the committee members were given one hour to make

a decision. Seven families based in Haifa gathered at the

home of Kiat, who was one of the leaders of Arab society

in Haifa. For 60 minutes, they discussed all the options

available to them, understanding that any decision they

make will be crucial to the continuation of Arab society in

the country. At the end of the discussions, the committee

disbanded into two groups, the Muslim representatives did

not agree to the surrender and decided to continue fighting

while the Christians returned to the city hall, announcing

that in light of the decision they could not control the

troops of Arab military forces and decided to leave Haifa.

The discussions in Kiat’s home are not documented and

the feelings and conversations are open to interpretation

from both sides.

This project attempts to enter the mind of each party,

attach a representative figure, and return to 1948. Our

presence in the room as a spectator will allow us to

listen to each side and try and understand the fears,

feelings, emotions, and concerns they expressed. By

wandering between dialogues in space, use of sound, the

viewer’s field of vision, and dynamics (disintegration and

movement) we created a connection between the viewer

to the narrative.

Sources:

• Khalidi, W. (2008). The fall of haifa revisited. Journal

of Palestine Studies, 37(3), 30–58. https://doi.

org/10.1525/JPS.2008.37.3.30

• Weiss, Y. (1951). A confiscated memory: Wadi Salib and

Haifa’s lost heritage. Columbia University Press.

37


Sabtai Levy

Sabtai Levy

Sabtai Levy (Weiss, Yfaat. A confiscated memory: Wadi Salib and Haifa’s lost heritage. Columbia

University Press, 2011.)

Victor Aziz Khyat (Weiss, Yfaat. A confiscated memory: Wadi Salib and Haifa’s lost heritage.

Columbia University Press, 2011.)

Victor

Victor

Aziz

Aziz

Kiat

Kiat

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Scene reconstruction from lidar scanning.

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What occurred during these 60 minutes?

“

”

”

”

“

”

40

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Main Room Pointcloud

Back-Room Pointcloud

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Voices of Ruin

Dima Tannous & Julie Habib


During the British Mandate period, the neighborhood was the largest residential

and institutional area, lively, and highly desirable, especially to workers, due to

its proximity to the railway station and port.

However, Wadi Salib today is an abandoned and neglected neighborhood while

the remaining stone buildings are standing still as witnesses of the Nakba.

As Yfaat Weiss mentions in her book “A Confiscated Memory”, the neighborhood

witnesses a policy of erasure and obliterating its Arab Palestinian landmarks

and distorting its location, whether that is by demolishing existing homes and

building new buildings in their place, building roads, or changing the names of

its Arab streets. A process of Judaization of the area.

Our primary tool in the project is graffiti because we noticed how prevalent it is

in Wadi Salib and how important it is worldwide for expressing people’s pain and

outrage. As a matter of fact, graffiti is the voice of the silent ruins of Wadi Salib,

and by creating virtual reality with different graffiti art experiences, we try to

paint back the erased story of the Arabic Wadi Salib, to reflect the overwhelming

emotions of the journey in Wadi Salib, and to highlight the ongoing Nakba.

Those who are experiencing this virtual reality have the opportunity to add

their own graffiti and voice their own opinions, emotions, and views. The

project includes texts describing this story as well as graffiti taken from today’s

neighbors.

This project takes place in one of the tallest alleyways in Wadi Salib. Our choice

of the stairs as the project’s location was based on its important role as a “path”,

“process” and “passage”, providing an experience that changes a passer’s feelings

and awareness.

Through the use of Oculus VR, a 360-degree experience can be provided along

the stairs in three phases: the stairs are the main scene, and there are three

additional “sub-scenes”. During Phase I (in the main scene), a user experiences

a “museum” where graffiti from the neighborhood is displayed. By transiting

between the main scene and scenes for each graffiti, the second phase allows

you to experience each graffiti in its original neighborhood site. The final phase

involves intervening with the collected art in the main scene as an interpretation

of what you take from the site itself, its history, and the collected street art in

it, giving the participant the opportunity and the platform to participate with

his own voice and express his own experience. As a dedicated place for street

art, this wall aims to enhance the experience and atmosphere of graffiti and

emphasize the uniqueness of the spot.

Sources:

• Memory of the Nakba in the Palestinian Public Sphere, Michael Milshtein

2020

• Retauring to Haifa, Ghassan Kanafani 1969

• Movements of Resistence, Grinberg 2014

• Weiss, Y. (1951). A confiscated memory: Wadi Salib and Haifa’s lost heritage.

Columbia University Press.

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Global protest graffiti

Berlin Wall, Seperation Wall-West Bank.

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Graffiti in Wadi Salib

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Voices of Ruins in Wadi Salib, Haifa

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49


scene 1

“Marge Simpson”

Graffiti can be perceived as public art and an effective tool of

social emancipation.

The usage of graffiti that is evident in Wadi Salib today, is

a tool for expressing peoples’ voices – ranging between

showing artistic artworks, and between expressing pain

and outrage especially from a sovereign suppression and

inequality.

scene 2

“Present Absentee”

Present absentees are Arab internally displayed persons

(IDPs) who fled or were expelled from their homes in

Mandatory Palestine during the 1947-1949 Palestine War but

remained within the area that became the state of Israel.

Some 274,000 Arab citizens of Isarel – or one in four in Israel –

are internally displaced.

IDPs are not permitted to live in the homes they formerly lived

in, even if they were in the same area, the property still exists,

and they can show that they own it.

scene 3

“Returning Home”

song by Fairouz

“We will return some day

We will return one day to our neighbourhood

and drown in the warmth of the hopes

We will return, no matter how much time passes

and how much distance will separate us

50

So, oh heart, slow down and do not throw yourself

on the road of our return exhausted

So, oh heart, slow down and do not throw yourself...”

Section


Facades

Plan

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Stairs of Wadi Salib

Main Scene

Main Scene

Phase 1 Phase 2

A museum for the collected graffiti grafitis from the neighborhood

Experiencing the graffiti grafiti in its it’s origin

Transition between scenes

Scene 2 Scene 3

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lib

iti in its it’s original site\scene -

enes

Main Scene

Phase 23

A possibility of interpretation and intervention

Scene 3 Scene 4

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DEmmersive | VR Planning

Dor Nakash & Or Shainer


The project suggests an interactive planning tool for

architects, town planners, and designers, which provides

a total planning experience. The format allows users to

scale their models and transform them according to their

spatial perception, in parallel with planning, as part of an

immersive design methodology. Globally and socially, the

planning tool can serve both individuals and teams. It can

be used for any plan type- from the micro-scale - to the

single unit through the macro-scale - town planning.

We chose to focus on the Wadi Salib Regional Plan for

Artists’ Quarter, a preservation plan from 1985, drawn

by the Haifa administration planning department. They

claimed that an artists’ quarter, combined with commercial

programs and restaurants, promenades, and residential

for both families and artists, would restore the place to

its former glory. This would revive the area financially

and socially. However, the preservation plan was never

completed due to bureaucratic disputes.

The project started with a drawing showing different

opening types. We analyzed them and cross-referenced

historical images with architectural drawings. The

analysis we conducted revealed that different openings

serve different purposes - for bolding entrances, exits

for balconies, and windows for both private and public

use. Those different openings were translated into

modular cubes, and the users were invited to explore the

different openings and the architectural language that

characterizes Wadi Salib and generate their expression of

the preservation plan.

VR users can move back and forth between different scales

and change their planning according to their insights,

design attempts, feelings, and the atmosphere they wish

to create.

Source:

• Artists Quarter, preservation plan from 1985, Haifa

Municipal Archive.

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“Artists Quarter”, preservation plan from 1985, Haifa Municipal Archive.

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Identifying openings typology from photographs

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Reconstruction modeling of basic units

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Identifying openings typology from photographs

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Reconstruction modeling of basic units

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Modular typology of openings of Wadi Salib

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Walk in | 1:1

Short walk by | 1:2

Ultimate Planning | 1:50

?

Costum scale

Using VR to alter scales

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Positioning| 1:20

?

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Renderings from VR experience

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Plan Thorough

Trees and Plants

Scale changer buzzer

Different modular units

Stationery

People

Background images

Elements Index

Architectural Planning tools in VR experience

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Preservation plans for Wadi Salib's artists quarter

An urban model of Wadi Salib and its surroundings

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Wadi Salib, 1950s. Credit: Amiram Arav

A Requiem to Wadi Salib

Liz Elmakais & Orya Ben Moshe


Wadi Salib ruins became a recurring motif in works by

artists from different generations. They address the

defamiliarization of the home against the background

of the deep rift that characterizes the Israeli place.

Artworks show abandoned environments that hold

secrets, immersed in mystery as if suddenly abandoned

or invaded by a power that has upset their order.

“Requiem to Wadi Salib” is the name chosen for the

project, inspired by the works of art that we picked

to present. These works, to our eyes, delivered

architectural consequences in the most meaningful

way. The works also helped us develop a scene within

which we could convey emotions and history - a scene

based on the past and the present.

Regarding video games, we intend to settle the

player into a situation that reflects the atmosphere

represented in the works while functioning as an active

factor within the scene. In doing so, he will have to

complete particular tasks under non-ideal conditions.

In this case, he will have to find his belongings inside

a catastrophic scene while doing a symbolic act of

creating the ruins that have been made after he had

left.

The scene was chosen to be designed as an FPS game

that is very popular for combat scenes. These are

classic three-dimensional computer games in which

the player acts as a first-body player. There, he has a

task to complete, which mainly relates to a territory

and home conflict.

Reviving the works of art in this way may restore the

two-dimensional images to reality and allow the user

to experience the events of Wadi Salib uniquely.

Source:

• “Requiem to Wadi Salib” / [curator of the

exhibition and artistis[sic] editor, Gershon

Knispel ; literary editor, Natan Zach ; English

translations, Susan Rose and Michael Zalkind

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An imaginary scene reconstructed from a real one

Requiem to Wadi Salib

Ruth Schloss

Wadi in Flames 1987

Oil on Canvas 116 x 98 x 2

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Preservation of ruins as ruins

Requiem to Wadi Salib

Shimon Palombo

Yehuda’s Courtyard 1982

Oil on Canvas 80 x 110

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Reviving an Art Form in Video Games

Many game designers use the technique

of reviving works of art by famous artists.

In this way, they can restore the culture

and put the player into an explicit reality

in the way the game designer wanted.

One example out of many is “The Bridge,” a

video game released in 2013 and designed by

the American developer Ty Taylor.

The game is a logic puzzle that forces

you to reevaluate your preconceptions of

physics and perspective. It is based on the

art of M.C. Escher, one of the most known

artists who made mathematically inspired

woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Escher

manipulated gravity to redefine the ceiling as

the floor while venturing through impossible

architectures - so does the game. The player

controls an Escher-like character and the

rotation of the 2D environment, which affects

gravity based on the changing orientation of

the landscape. Each level unfolds in grayscale

with hand-drawn illustrations.

The bridge | Video game | Released in 2013

The bridge | Video game | Released in 2013

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FPS Video Games Based on Ruins

First-person shooter (FPS) is a subgenre of

shooter video games centered on guns and

other weapon-based combat in a first-person

perspective, with the player experiencing the

action through the eyes of the protagonist

and controlling the player character in a threedimensional

space. The primary design focus

is combat, mainly involving firearms or other

types of long-range weapons.

One example is the game, “Counter Strike”,

which is set in various locations around the

globe, players assume the roles of counterterrorist

forces and terrorist militants

opposing them. The game is based on

different maps, most of them represent an

abandoned authentic urban environment,

ruined and empty of life.

“Games are obsessed with ruins

because they are products of

a technology always trying to

delay its inevitable crawl toward

obsolescence.”

Kill Screen Publications | killscreen.com

Counter-Strike | First-person shooter video game

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Augmenting Historiography: The

Case of Wadi Salib

Prior to the actual scene development using

Unity program, we illustrated our ideas using

a diagram. The diagram contains the main

ideas that we wanted to express in the scene:

The Ruins of Wadi Salib - The scene will feature

real parts of Wadi Salib and the original walls

alongside the original ruins.

Fire effect - Inspired by the painting, the actor

will be imprisoned in a burning scene. Such an

interest increases the tension and motivates

the player to save the remaining items.

VR - The scene will be designed in an FPS style

so that it allows the use of Oculus binoculars,

a matter that will enhance the player’s feeling

and put him into the scene fully.

Collecting items - The player should have a

mission in the game. This is to collect artifacts

extracted from works of art. The objects

will be randomly scattered in space, and an

algorithm that allows the player to pick them

up would be needed.

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Collecting Items


All the items that are in the game are items

extracted from the pictures. The precise use of

items reinforces the connection between the

image and the game. In order to collect the

items it will be necessary to build a system that

will allow the accumulation of points within the

game. In this way, the player can meet the task

and produce a beginning and an end.

Collecting the items is a symbolic act that

signifies how possibly the painter of the picture

looks at history. The painter gave great value

to the objects which he sees as an integral

part of history. The objects represent the life

that was once in Wadi Salib. They also draw the

personalities of the people who used to live

there.

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Scripts Development | Shooting system

The scene’s model relies on Wadi Salib’s

actual environment and represents a

particular section of it. Parts of it were

designed using Rhino software, and part

of them was scanned as photogrammetry

objects and located in their exact place.

The player’s action is to break the wall and

restore the history that has led to the existing

situation in Wadi Salib.

The broken walls are also located

within the existing damaged houses.

The exploding action using the gun is a

symbolic act of the player and not part of his

goals in the game. However, it emphasizes the

importance of architectural ruins as a crucial

factor in drawing a historical narrative.

Braking walls | The wall before breaking

Braking walls | The wall after the player broke it

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Scripts Development | Pick up system


+1

+1

The pick-up items system is the actual

goal of the game. It is the player’s mission

through the game and allows to build a

start and an end to it when it is completed.

The items are colored in red to distinguish

them from the chaotic environment, under the

ruins and the burning fire. Each time the player

is touching one of the items, he gets one point.

an undeveloped system in the game is to check

all the items, which allows the user to see what

he had collected and what he had left. to

complete the mission, the player should bring

all the items to a safe place, and so, to “save”

the remains that dictated the history.

Collecting items | The item before been picked up

Collecting items | The item after been collected

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Reenacting the 1959 Riots

Michal Orevi & Yael Leibovitch

Wadi Salib began to develop in the late 19th century

as Wadi of the Cross. It was named after a large cross

engraved on a rock in one of the caves at the wadi.

The neighborhood was located close to the Higazi railway

station and, at the beginning, provided housing for railway

workers, who were then planned to reach Mecca.

After the discovery of oil in Iraq, the railway changed its

direction towards Iraq, and Haifa’s importance as a port

city increased. Therefore, new workers were required for

the port and the refineries. The majority of those who

settled in Wadi Salib came from the Arab rural periphery

and from the poor.

At that time, Hadar HaCarmel developed just uphill from

Wadi Salib. It was essentially a Jewish neighborhood

designed by the Garden City principles for residential

purposes only. All the other facilities were located in

downtown Haifa, but the riots in 1929 created fear among

the neighborhood residents, leading them to open new

commercial areas near their neighborhood. This action

increased segregation between Jews and Arabs.

The British approach to informal imperialism separated the

two even further, thus enhancing the differences between

them. Eventually, in the 1948 war, the Arab residents of

Wadi Salib fled the city and the vacated real estate was

soon inhabited by the great wave of Jewish immigration.

Source:

• The Commission of Inquiry Into the Events at Wadi

Salib, evidence given by David Ben-Harush, July 26,

1959, State Archive, vol. 7253/1.

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The Commission of Inquiry Into the Events at Wadi

Salib, evidence given by David Ben-Harush, July 26,

1959, State Archive, vol. 7253/1.

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The 1959 Wadi Salib Shooting:

“Maman and Akiva meanwhile entered the coffee bar belonging to

Shlomo Rozolio at 24 Wadi Salib Street. As the patrol car approached the

establishment, Karol Segal recognized Ya’akov Akiva, whom he knew from

the time he had served as a policeman in the criminal section, some three

to four years previously. Then, Segal recalled, Akiva had been a “pimp of

prostitutes.” Akiva was sitting with his back to the entrance and to the

police patrol vehicle, which was now parked at the front of the building. Sergeant

Goldenberg pointed in the direction of Akiva. Maman, sitting opposite

Akiva, leaped toward the policemen. Sergeant Goldenberg said to him,

“Not you, the other one.” Maman approached Goldenberg and said to him,

“I promise I will take Akiva home safely; I’ll calm him down.” Goldenberg

was unmoved and insisted that Akiva accompany him, “after what had happened.”

Akiva rose to his feet, came out, and leaned on the patrol car, asking

Sergeant Goldenberg, “What do you want?” Maman, as Hayek, the driver

of the patrol vehicle, recalled, tried to persuade Akiva in Moroccan, saying

to him, “Go back to your place, they will not take you.” Akiva said, “I’m

not afraid, twenty policemen won’t take me. I want to die, but not alone.”

Meanwhile, Hayek testified, “other people, Moroccan citizens known to

Akiva, came up to him and tried to persuade him and move him away from

the patrol vehicle.”

From this point onward events unfolded rapidly: Akiva jumped onto

the bar counter, took hold of a full bottle, and smashed it. The policemen

leaped from the patrol car, Akiva began throwing bottles at them, one after

another, and hit, among other targets, the windshield of the patrol car. The

policemen took cover behind the patrol vehicle, and then several shots were

fired from Sergeant Goldenberg’s pistol through a hole in the windshield

into the coffee bar where, at that moment, Akiva was standing some meter

and a half to two meters from the door next to the bar. Further shots were

fired from a different pistol. Akiva managed to say, “You are shooting at me,

go on, shoot,” continued to throw bottles, and then collapsed. The shooting

stopped. Akiva lay recumbent on the bar, a bleeding wound open on his

left hip. “We lifted him up,” testified Hayek, “put him in the car, and immediately

sped off in the direction of the hospital. We arrived at Rothschild

Hospital and the policemen took him inside. I saw that he was still breathing.”

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Scenography |

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Using 3D modeling, animations, and sound effects, we created an immersive

environment that explained the riots.

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Animated Interactions

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Time Machine

Ofek Raz, Sagiv Hemo & Abed Atamna

This project reflects both sides - the potential connection

of Wadi Salib to the city through the pavilion, something

that could help fight the abandonment and the bad

impression of the neighborhood, and on the other side,

the project seeks to explain what could have happened to

Wadi Salib if we keep ignoring its existence - by the rise

of sea level.

The project uses AR (Augmented Reality) technology

in order to represent speculation of the space - what

could happen? how will it feel like? Part of the problem

with AR technology is that it can take over the area and

show the user a different reality. Sometimes this reality is

nothing more than a wild thought that has no connection

to reality, therefore it puts the real story of the place at

risk. I decided to use AR in order to help Wadi Salib from

complete extinction inflicted by the rise of sea level, and

help people understand what could have happened to

this place.

In order to do so, I created two scenes of before and after

the disaster. The first shows nowadays, the neighborhood

today. The user can walk around and try to remember

where everything is placed and feel the vibes of the

neighborhood. This scene contains scans of the buildings

of Wadi Salib at the site we chose, textures of the road,

plants, and birds singing. It also contains the pavilion (that

is actually a time machine) and shows how it’s architecture

influence the neighborhood.

The second scene is a real “problem”. The user enters a

sunken world of the same place he had been before and

needs to swim in order to move forward. If the user had

stopped swimming, he will be floating.

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Aquarium dome structure | The time machine architectural concept

The design aims to trace the structure of the arches and to preserve the neighborhood with a building that

is reminiscent of traditional but more modern construction. In this way, I will be able to present the nature

of the architecture of the neighborhood and its existence. The structure scheme consists of a number of

“fingers” that are being sent forward, creating a park on the upper level (Even Gvirol st.) by widening the

narrow street. From the fingers, you can get full exposure to the abandoned neighborhood, its colors,

and its buildings, as well as to the port of Haifa. In this way, the past is revealed through the fingers of the

future, and the neighborhood will receive an incentive for future preservation and development thanks

to the opportunity given to it and the fact that it will now be more visible and approachable. The building

is a real-time machine that can launch you to the future. then, it turns out to be an aquarium because the

future of the neighbor-hood is underwater.

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Aquarium dome structure | Time machine

Scenes in Wadi Salib


The project uses AR technology in order to explain the speculation on top of the real site, in contrast

to VR technology which means replacing the whole physical environment. Nevertheless, it uses VR to

help create that impact. By using oculus quest 2, we created a copy of the reality of Wadi Salib today (by

scanning the building and textures of the place) and a second, similar place, ruined by the rise of sea level.

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Scenes | Assets and raw materials

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SPEAKING SPACES

SPRING 2021-2022

This section of the book is dedicated to students’

projects from a design seminar given in 2022.

The seminar explored the theoretical and

practical potentials of VR spatial reconstruction as

historiography. The proposals explored different

approaches to extracting spatial features from

oral testimony about the site and reconstructing

memory spaces. In doing so, each project closely

studied a testimony by an ex-habitant of Wadi

Salib and designed a rigorous method for spatial

extraction and reconstruction.

The projects were produced in groups, which

tackled the challenge of reconstructing from

testimony at one or more of these entry points:

Language Analysis:

Examining and analyzing language descriptions

as reconstructive entry points.

Spatial Anchoring:

Identifying historical architectural elements still

identifiable as reconstructive entry points.

Atmospheric Extraction:

identifying emotional, affective, and

impressionistic terms in testimony.


Retracing

A Fading

Memory

Before 1948, when Wadi Salib - a town in Haifa - was vibrant

and full of life, a young boy and his family owned a house

of its dwellings and had the hope of growing up in their city

just like any other family. Until this day, this dream has never

left their imagination as they grew apart and were forced to

leave their hometown, the traced memory of this family is

told by its witness: Adeeb Jahshan, who was born in 1943, in

his forgotten hometown in Wadi Salib, he grew up there until

the age of five when all the acts of alienation and occupation

were conducted, forcing him and his family out of their house.

Adeeb’s fading memory of a lost and erased hometown is

commemorated in our methodology.

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Carol Talhami | Leen Bsul | Fouad Salaime


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Adeeb Jahshan

Born in 1943 in Wadi Salib, Haifa.

Adeeb Jahshan was born in 1943 in his hometown, Haifa,

in Wadi Salib; he grew up there until the age of five. When

all the acts of alienation and occupation were conducted,

due to the shooting and intimidation, they left their house

seeking refuge in the city of Akko, except for his father

who insisted on staying in their home. After a short period,

they returned to Wadi Salib, hoping life would return to

its previous course; unfortunately, upon their return, they

were shocked to find their house empty and vacant due

to acts of theft and vandalism. After a while, they were

transferred to the adjacent neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas.

Today, Adeeb is considered one of the most significant

figures in the Arab field of art, being an important pillar

of theatrical art in the country. A distinguished project in

his career is the Saraya Theatre in Jaffa – Tel Aviv, which he

established in 1998.

From the Testimony Video of Adeeb Jahshan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hgKU3wkgP0

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Recording Jahshan’s testimony in Wadi Salib, April 2022.

Adeeb Jahashan, Fouad Salaime, and Eytan Mann, Photographed by Carol Talhami

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Eytan Mann, Adeeb Jahashan & Leen Bsul

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Spatial Extraction Method

Spatial Anchoring, Hands Gestures & Language Analysis [Atmospheric Extraction]

Our method relies on three main stages:

1. The Site at Macro-Level: Expansion in Field and Spatial

Anchoring - Throughout the testimony, the spectator

mentions numerous places in a fragmented and,

occasionally, a random way. To formulate a basic outline plan

for the space described in the testimony, one must follow

the three phases mentioned below each time a different or

new place is mentioned and elaborated on in the general

and overall space described throughout the testimony.

2. The Masses at Semi-Macro Level: Volumes, Transition, and

General Movement of the Outline of Masses - At this stage, we

will focus on extracting all the quantitative and volumetric

descriptions in the testimony using three approaches.

3. Micro-Level Detailing: At this stage, we will be focusing

on the verbal content and trying to express each word in

the testimony in the reconstructed spatial environment.

At each stage, we are dealing with a different scale,

starting with the macro-level of the neighborhood (site)

and then diving into the micro-level of smaller-scale

elements. The product of each stage serves as the basis

of its subsequent. The whole process of spatial analysis

and decipherment will be based on disassembling the

testimony’s video’s components into text according to the

audio and, simultaneously, the physical placement, body

language, and facial expressions from visual imagery in

the video.

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Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

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Retracing a Fading Memory

Methodology Workflow | Stage 1 | Macro-Level

The product of stage 1 | A basic master plan is marked with the area defined for this structure

Min 7:52 | The first time the building is mentioned

Stage 1 | The Site in Macro-Level | Expansion in Field and Spatial Anchoring

Throughout the testimony, the spectator mentions numerous places in a fragmented and occasionally,

a random way. To formulate a basic outline plan for the space described in the testimony, one must

follow the three phases mentioned below during each time a different, or new place is mentioned and

elaborated, in the general and overall space is described throughout the testimony.

Placement – Adeeb’s location (the black dot). Orientation – The direction (the grey V mark for the field of

view). Referral & Directing – The directions of movement of the arms and head that defines and determines

the building area (the red mark).

122


Min 10:26 | The building is mentioned for the second time

Min 11:00 | The building is mentioned for the last time

Those three criteria should be set every time a different space is mentioned, in order to anchor each

location of each space from the past to a present and existing space today. In doing so we weave the “past”

plan according to the spatial terrain characteristics of the present. In which we receive a two-dimensional

product that presents the layout of the basic outline plan of the testimony space that forms the basis of

the following steps.

123



Methodology Workflow | Stage 2 | Semi-Macro Level

The original frames | 6 images displaying the movement sequence

Min 7:52 | “There was a big building”

Stage 2 | The Masses in Semi-Macro Level | Outline of Masses

At this stage, we will place the emphasis on extracting all the quantitative and volumetric descriptions in

the testimony using two approaches : (1) Language - Emphasize any spatial expression or description that

provides quantitative or numerical information, (e.g., one floor), Considering all prepositions that reflect

a connection between objects, (e.g., the building next to the grocery store), and Indicate whether there

is a repetition of certain descriptive words to emphasize or weaken an adjective, (e.g., a big, big building).

(2) Hand Gestures - hand movements are responsible for transmitting volumetric three-dimensional

information that describes scale, shape, and proportions.

124


Min 10:26 | “Here there was a big big building”

Min 11:00 | “It was a big building similar to the traditional Arabic buildings, it had several floors”

After completing this stage, we will obtain a schematic and simple volume model, in which the openings

(mainly passages and entrances) and distinguished elements in the circulation as in ascents, stairs... etc.,

will be expressed.

125



Methodology Workflow | Stage 3 | Micro-Level

The Product of Stage 1

A basic master plan is marked

with the area defined for this

structure.


The mass is shown as a

derivative of the boundaries

of the built area that we set

in stage 1; the heights of the

building are according to the

hand scribbles in the air.


Adding texture, material, and

design to the façade according

to the remains of existing

façades at the site.

The three outputs of the three stages | The big building

The product of stage 3 | The detailed model

Stage 3 | Micro-Level Detailing

At this stage, we will be focusing on the verbal content and try to express each word in the testimony in

the reconstructed spatial environment, by analyzing language and non-Verbal communication as Facial

expressions, physical movement, and emotions. In this final stage, we will sculpt the volumes we have

created. We will begin to give an identity and characteristics to the overall mass: texture, material, façade

form, etc. At this stage, the objects, furniture, and restoration of the interior spaces of expected threshold

places will also appear.

126



Description

The condensed diagram | The big building

Our methodology is composed of three stages that create a condensed diagram. In this final diagram,

the columns represent each stage while the rows show each moment’s set of outputs. By generating the

inclusive diagram for each place, we could reconstruct the testimony’s spatial space.

127



Applying The Methodology | Adeeb’s House

The product of stage 1.

The product of stage 2. The product of stage 3.

The three outputs of the three stages | Adeeb’s house

The product of stage 3 | A detailed model

Reconstructing Adeeb’s house with high detailing resolution.

128



The condensed diagram | Adeeb’s house

The method’s three stages of reconstructing Adeeb’s house.

129



Applying The Methodology | Adeeb’s House

Description

Spatial hands description of the interior.

The description of the interior of Adeeb’s house, between min 11:16-13:42.

130



Description

131



The product of stage 1 | Anchored site map

The product of stage 2 | Masses extrusions

The three stages of reconstructing the environment that is described in Adeeb’s testimony. Stage 1 -

placing all the mentioned nodes, such as the bakery and the main street. Stage 2 – extruding the 2D

anchored map according to the hand gestures and the literal descriptions of each node.

132


The product of stage 3 | Detailed model

Atmospheric photomontage of Adeeb’s testimony space | Adeeb’s neighborhood

Stage 3 - Sculpting the volumes according to verbal content. The photomontage – an attempt of

completing the atmosphere of Adeeb’s narrative.

133



Description

Recreating one of Adeeb’s most vivid memories.

After running away from Wadi Salib to Acre, Acre was occupied two months later. Adeeb’s family returned

to their home in Wadi Salib to find that the house had been sabotaged, and everything had been stolen.

“The home was empty. They stole everything from the home. They left nothing but my father. They left my father

with a small, worn-out mattress to sleep on, without a cover, without a pillow. I remember this thing like seeing

you now. He used to sleep and put his shoes under the mattress, and that was his pillow. And he was covered

with a coat like a British army jacket, thick brown, and that was his blanket. No sheets, no quilts, nothing. That’s

what we found. The home was empty.”

134


Description

Atmospheric photomontage of Adeeb’s testimony space | Adeeb’s neighborhood

135



Final Presentation

136


137


Pray,

Space,

Time

The project aims to take the visitor on a tour of the demolished

history of the Wadi Salib neighborhood through the ruin of

the Abu Hatzira synagogue. These relics are used as a physical,

architectural anchor of the past atmosphere in the building.

Join with a testimony of Yechiel Maman, a witness who

experienced the Synagogue before it was demolished. This

architectural atmosphere is restored by virtual spatial means

to make a semi-physical experience of going back in time to a

memory of a community that was destroyed by force.

138

Sean Afota | Sean keren | Hadas Zilber | Tamar Rosen


139


Yechiel Maman

Yechiel is a past resident of the Wadi Salib neighborhood.

His family used to live in the neighborhood between the

years 1952 and 1959, and today, he lives in Haifa with his

family. Maman’s family is part of the Moroccan Jewish

community in Tefilath, a mountain region in Morocco.

Abu Hatzira synagogue is Yechial’s childhood synagogue.

As he describes it, the synagogue was one of sixty others

in the downtown area of Haifa and his uniqueness was

the sounds and costumes of his own small community of

Tefilath. He remembers the space from the location of the

ark to the wood texture of the benches in front of it.

140


Abu Hatzira synagogue

141


Reconstruction of synagogue building

142


Entrance to Abu Hatzira Ruin, 1952, Unknown Photographer, Haifa Municipality Archive.

143


Aerial photograph 1947, Haifa Muni. Archive.

Wadi Salib, Haifa, 2020. Screenshot from Simplex.

144


Point cloud from Lidar scan

Entrance

User path

145


To create varying atmospheres between present and past, we switch between point cloud and textured

mesh rendering.

146


147


Between

The Lines

Visually expressing the lifestyle of the people of a place is our

goal. By using testimony from a resident of Wadi Salib in the

1950s, we will construct a model that describes a space that

no longer exists. Space is created through the connection

between visual images and text. A three-dimensional model

of the place, as it is today, will be used to model the spaces

described in the testimony. Keywords allow the viewer to

focus on specific spaces in the model that are linked to the

same words. A reading of the written testimony relates the

spatial descriptions to everyday experiences in the world.

They are expressed by the multiplicity of layers of information

that make up a scene that conveys the experience of the

place. The layers include the use of historical maps, archival

photos, newspaper publications, and photos that are not local

but match the descriptions in the testimony. For example, the

residents of the neighborhood in those days were immigrants

from the Maghreb lands. Therefore, the Arab buildings in

which they were housed were close to the culture from which

they came. The parallel in the testimony between the Arab

structure in the country and the Arab structure in Morocco

allows us to use the elements that characterize the Moroccan

structures to complete the scene. In this way, we can preserve

a spatial memory that contains the lifestyle of the people who

it is. We can also do it. We can also bridge the gap between

how space is experienced today and how it was experienced

in the 1950s.

148

Yarden Rivkin | Noam Parienty


149


Minka Rivkin

Minka Rivkin was born in 1960 in Israel, and her family

emigrated from the city of Rashida in Morocco. Her family

first lived in the transit camp and later moved to Haifa

in the Halisa neighborhood. Halisa was characterized by

Arab-style buildings abandoned by the Arab population

during the events of 1948. In her testimony, she describes

life in the neighborhood as crowded but communal, and

shares similarities to the way of life practiced in Morocco. In

addition, she brings a historical perspective to her family’s

stories about the period before her birth and about the

days in Morocco. With the help of the same descriptions, it

is possible to pinpoint the spatial atmosphere that existed

in the neighborhood in those days. We strive to represent

the same atmosphere visually.

150


151



Language Analysis

We classified the testimony text into words that describe

places and words that describe the actions done in

those places. Each part of the testimony will appear in

the relevant scale, places will appear in the large model

and actions will appear in a zoom-in area of the model.

The diagram shows a sequence of actions that creates

an activating code. The code will enable the interface to

highlight selected words and areas when the user hovers

over them and move between different scales when the

user clicks on them.

152


User Action

Scale

Highlights

Screen View

MAP

When the user havering above Wadi Salib (model) area

BORDER

LINE-AREA

When the user clicking inside the border area

Zoom In- neighborhood

the big mesh model appears &

the text testimony

When the user havering above the

bold written testimony’s words

When the user havering above the

model spaces like roofs and stairs

The matching object in the big

model are highlighted in the

same color as the bold words

The matching words in the written

testimony are highlighted as well as

the object in the big model

When the user clicking above the model

object/the bold word

1.Big model display as a vector model

2. Roof and Stairs are display with texture -small model HOME

3. The displayed testimony downsized to the relevant parts which describe the spatial object

IF clicking on the stairs

IF clicking on the roof

Zoom In to stairs scene with textures,

additions of Moroccan objects, sound

and the testimony parts that describe

the action in the scene

Zoom In to roof scene with textures,

additions of Moroccan objects, sound

and the testimony parts that describe

the action in the scene

The zoom range need to be defined in each step

Optional – wandering inside the scene

153



Storyboard

zoom in

“...The houses were built in the Arab style, stone houses with roofs. They connected

the houses to each other, so everything was so crowded. I would go up to the roof,

and from there, I could go down to the neighbors, talk to them, and go down to them

through the roof. They were a part of life. It was a significant part of the Arab lifestyle,

because it is characterize the Arab villages. the roof is an integral part of the everyday

life. Flat roofs, not sloping. My mother told me that in Morocco they had the same

houses...”

“...The houses were built in the Arab style, stone houses with roofs. They connected

the houses to each other, so everything was so crowded. I would go up to the roof,

and from there, I could go down to the neighbors, talk to them, and go down to them

through the roof. They were a part of life. It was a significant part of the Arab lifestyle,

because it is characterize the Arab villages. the roof is an integral part of the everyday

life. Flat roofs, not sloping. My mother told me that in Morocco they had the same

houses...”

154


zoom in

“...The stairs linked between the houses, between their entrances, so on Saturdays, all of

these passages were used for places to sit, crack nuclei, and meet with neighbors and

anyone who went or came back from the synagogue...”

“...They hung laundry on them, sat down, dried fruit in them... I remember

Grandma told me that they slept on the roof outdoors at marocco in the

summer because it was terribly hot there...”

The storyboard demonstrates a sequence of actions of the interface - moving from the urban scale, which

is presented as a map, to the neighborhood and finally, the house. At the same time, the text is telling the

story of the space in the fifties and linking between the different scales. The user is choosing the space he

is interested to see and arrives at a specific scene that tries to show the life that once existed in the same

space, preserving the life of the community living in the neighborhood.

155


Fieldwork

Sense of Place

Wadi Salib Houses

The area we chose to focus on is the urban fabric of Wadi Salib is the stairs connecting the streets and the

crowded rooftops that create opportunities for movement between the houses, preserving a traditional

way of life.

156


Ajlun stairs, Haifa Wadi Salib alleys, Haifa, 1955-59

Photogrammetry model

157


Life Preservation

Layered Storytelling

158

jpg‏.חומרים

5/13/22, 11:49 PM jpg‏.חומרים


159


Interactive Environment

Building a virtual scene using layers of data, including text, photos, and maps.

Photogrammetry model of the site with testimony

Highlighted words describe space

160


Zooming in to a typical roof scene

Adding music and getting a look at the activities happening on the roof

161


Transition

The project is based on Shmuel Sharvit’s testimony regarding

his childhood neighborhood - Wadi Salib, Haifa. It began with

the analysis of the written testimony using the NLP method.

Through diagrams for text analysis, a certain connection is

found between the Wadi Salib neighborhood and the Hadar

neighborhood. The stairs connecting the neighborhoods have

been mentioned several times in the testimony and therefore

constitute an important component in the connection

between the two. This relationship was classified as ‘Transition’.

Wadi Salib is described as a neglected and crowded

neighborhood. It is presented in the VR scene as a scanned 3D

model to illustrate Sharvit’s description. Hadar, on the other

hand is described as a prestigious and rich neighborhood

and is therefore illustrated accordingly through a designed

3D model. The experience of transition in VR is expressed in a

physical and graphic course and allows a connection between

the two scenes. The walking experience is accompanied by

quotes and audio from the testimony.

162

Tohar Schwarts Buchnick | Linor Gorelik


The stairway to Hadar

163


Shmuel Sharvit

Shmuel was born in February 1955 in wadi Salib and grew

up there until the age of 15. He studied at the Ahiezer

school until the eighth grade, it was a religious school.

His father was a shoemaker there. They lived at the end

of Shivat Zion 25 street, Homia Alley, right in front of the

“steps of the prophets”, and right on the fork of Wadi Salib

up the Liberation Street.

164


165



Language Analysis

The place was very crowded, built in a special way. Upstairs is Hadar, which for us was

the place of the rich and noble. Here was a neighborhood, crowded, what it looks like

exactly I cannot draw exactly in my mind, because it is very farway, but what I can

remember are alleys, small stairs, it was built in such a way that as you walked, you

went upwards. Whether it’s a ramp or whether it’s stairs. here was an ascent upwards,

houses here, houses here, and between every few groups of houses there were stairways

upwards into the neighborhood.

Houses shared toilets. Also kitchens. As if you were coming to the house, going into

some foyer, everything was attached with the Arabian flooring. The houses were all

low. There was just one floor with a roof. Now, you could hike all over the Wadi on

rooftops alone. We had a rooftop world. There were no gardens here, no trees here, no

environmental developments here. Lots of alleys. There were alleys with dirt. All of this

wadi was built upwards with reference to the terrain conditions.

From here, started houses, arranged, plaza, houses, stairs, paths, small plazas, stair

paths and stairs and what exit stairs you ascend to Hadar. In any case, you could

reach Hadar. Imagine a comb, from which ascended to Hadar, which ascended the

liberation, further forward ascended to Sirkin, further forward ascended to Talpiot

market it reached as far as Khalisa, until The Heroes. That’s why we once did a show

about the City of Stairs. Hadar Cinema was one of the most beautiful cinemas in the

world. Everything there was very luxurious. There were VIP booths and they were very

fancy booths. the fabrics are all velvet, neat, with a place to put a glass, upholstered

chairs.

This is the entrance to the synagogue, the stairs were railings with concrete on the

sides. There was a beautiful plaza here. the door was a beautiful wooden door, there

was a synagogue sign in the name of Rabbi David Abuhatzira. Too bad they did not

save it, too bad. But today, it’s just neglected. Nothing will be done here, we have a

mayor who does not move and nothing moves here. People are giving up.

words describing Wadi Salib

Words describing Hadar

Words describing height

166


167


Language analysis

Haneviim

stairs

Talpiot

market

Hadar

The rich and noble

2 meters distance between houses

Shared toilet and kitchen

Arabian flooring, colorful tiling

very luxurious

Paradise cinema

Fancy VIP booths

Neat velvet fabrics

upholstered chairs with a

place to put a glass

Hadar

Cinema

Residential

neighborhoods

Wide court

Neighborhoods inside

neighborhoods

Low houses, one floor with a roof

Roofs without railing

Ceilings 3.5 meters high

Huge wooden doors

Narrow and curved stairs

Wooden shutters with metallic elements

Very crowded

Special

Construction styles; Ottomans,

Turks, Germans and English

Churches

David Abuhatzira

synagogue

Concrete railings

Large and beautiful plaza

wooden door

Sign of the David Abuhatzira Synagogue

Mosques

Flea market

Alleys

Small stairs

Ramps

Lack of gardens, trees and

environmental

Not even asphalt, prickly mud

Wadi Salib

Neighborhood

Rosilio's cafe

Wadi Salib uprising

In front of my dad's shoemaker's shop

Steep ascents

A world on the roof

Alcohol

The city of stairs

Comb

Small plazas

Cafe Aviv

Women, dances and belly dancers

Nasty things going on inside

Built for the English soldiers

Wadi Salib

Street

Many shops and businesses;

Merchants, spices, cafes, upholsterers,

confectioneries, carpentry shops, blankets

168


Spatial text mapping

169


Mapping stairs connecting Wadi Salib and Hadar

170


Talpiot Market

Hadar

The rich and noble

Hadar Cinema

very luxurious, Paradise cinema, Fancy VIP

booths, Neat velvet fabrics, upholstered

chairs with a place to put a glass

Haneviim stairs

Cafe Aviv

Alcohol, Women, dances and belly dancers, Built for

the English soldiers, Nasty things going on inside

Rosilio's cafe

Wadi Salib uprising , In front of my dad's shoemaker's shop

Wadi Salib Street

Many shops and businesses; Merchants,

spices, cafes, upholsterers, confectioneries,

carpentry shops, blanketsMany shops and

businesses;

Residential neighborhoods

2 meters distance between houses, Shared toilet and kitchen,

Arabian flooring, colorful tiling, Wide court, Neighborhoods

inside neighborhoods, Low houses, one floor with a roof, Roofs

without railing, Ceilings 3.5 meters high, Huge wooden doors,

Narrow and curved stairs, Wooden shutters with metallic

elements

David Abuhatzira synagogue

Concrete railings, Large and beautiful

plaza, wooden door, Sign of the David

Abuhatzira Synagogue

Very crowded, Special, Churches, Mosques, Flea

market, Alleys, Small stairs, Ramps, Not even

asphalt, prickly mud, Steep ascents, A world on

the roof, The city of stairs, Comb, Small plazas,

Lack of gardens, trees and environmental

development, Construction styles; Ottomans,

Turks, Germans and English

Wadi Salib

Neighborhood

171


Fieldwork

Gathering fragments

Rosilio’s Cafe

Wadi Salib stairs leading to Hadar

The first scene represents the crowded and steep Wadi Salib neighborhood. It shows some of the existing

buildings that are mentioned in the testimony. The viewer is able to climb the stairs leading to Hadar.

172


Transition

173


Model of Hadar street and Hadar cinema

Model of Hadar Street

The second scene represents a typical street at Hadar neighborhood that is characterized with modernist

style architecture. It represents the bourgeois lifestyle in comparison to Wadi Salib.

174


End point - Hadar

Transition stairs

Start point - Wadi Salib

The complete scene has three main stop points followed by text and sound from the testimony, explaining

the different situations. The first stop is located by Rosolio’s cafe building, the second at the beginning of

the stairs, and the third is located at the end of the stairs, viewing Hadar neighborhood.

175


Virtual Environment

Transition through memory

The begining of the virtual experience in Wadi Salib

Continuing the movment towards the stairs

176


Transition - Approaching the stairs connecting the two scenes

Reaching the luxurious Hadar neighborhood

177


Fill In The

Blanks

‘Fill in the blanks’ is a VR experience that creates new

connections between subjective memories of Haifa’s Wadi

Salib and the physical remains that we can observe. The

project utilizes those tangible remnants of the neighborhood

as anchors of memory and attempts to fill in the gaps between

them by the non-tangible, Shmuel Sharvit’s subjective

conception of the place.

Represented by folly-like visual 3D modules we’ve created, the

user can re-build a memory of Wadi Salib, re-build the spatial

relations between those anchor spaces and create a subjective

memory of his own.

The project’s concept relies primarily on textual research using

pictography, one of the most ancient and primitive forms of

communication, in order to simplify the testimony and come

up with a more abstract conception of the place.

178

Orr Kalati | Hadas Geva | Dor Peled


‘Fill in the Blanks’ VR environment

179


Shmuel Sharvit

Shmuel Sharvit was born on February 1955. He grew up

in Wadi Salib as a child and until the 70’s, when the family

was evacuated from the neighborhood. By then he was 15.

His childhood holds the story of the Wadi Salib and

through his memories one can recreate the vision and the

feeling of the place as it once was.

Through his memories, Wadi Salib is percepted as a place

of its people, a dense and crowded yet a warm tempered

place, filled with colors, noise and smells; Exposed

households: laundry and stuff on the roofs that were

his playground, markets stands and craft makers shops,

lots of narrow alleys and staircases walking paths - a

neighborhood that is a beautiful mess.

Sharvit studied in Ahiezer School, a building that is

today called ‘The Pyramid’. It was a religious school, as

all of the public schools in Wadi Salib back then, and

one of the first modern style buildings that were built in

the neighborhood. The school is appearing as one the

meaningful places his childhood was about, alongside

his home, his father’s shoemaking shop and the local

synagogue. This is his personal piece of history that

reflects the local culture and heritage of a historical place.

180


181



Pictography: Language Analysis and Spatial Anchoring

Pictography is the use of graphic symbols to convey

meaning through pictorial resemblance. By using

pictography, the project attempts to translate Sharvit’s

verbal testimony into an abstract graphic language

that compiles the main essence of the different parts of

the testimony. We use the new visual 2D language as

a mediator between the written testimony and the 3D

world and create 3D modules, each representing a word.

We suggest a conceptual division of the text into two

different typologies we recognize:

The first one is stories and memories that are based on

a specific physical place, one that is documented or

preserved.

The second is memories that are a subjective ‘feeling

of place’ that generally describe spatial environment

characteristics in the eyes of the storyteller.

A 3D experience is created by combining those two

types of memories and using two different techniques:

3D scanning of the physical place and 3D modeling of

repetitive components.

182


TESTIMONY TEXT

PICTOGRAPHY

[synagogue]

[rosilio Cafe]

[school]

[Objective]

Site Specific

Events and Places

Storytelling

Tangible

[SCANNED]

Transformation to

3D environment

[Subjective]

General Subjective

‘feeling of place’

Storytelling

Related

[MODELED]

[houses]

[roofs]

[stairs]

[market shops]

[rewritten by the subjective experience of the player]

Anchor

Places

everyday-life

typologies:

repetative elements

Static

Grabbable and

Controlled by Player

183




Here was Rosilio’s cafe. In front of my dad’s shoemaker’s shop. In

Rosilio’s cafe, the Wadi Salib uprising began. There, the shootings

occured, Akiva was shot at by police, he became disabled, a criple.

I dragged Akiva on a cart all over Stanton Street at least a thousand

times in my life. Every time he would see me he would not be

able to say K., he would get A. Instead of saying ‘Motek’ he would

say ‘Mutia’. I would take him all the way up, all the way down, to all

sorts of places, and he would tell me stories. This is where the revolt

began. And I was not involved in the uprising for some reason,

even though I was too small, I remember the uprising very well, I remember

the events around the uprising, I remember the Pashkvils

that were here, I remember the organizations, I remember Begin’s

speech, I remember a lot of things . My father opposed the revolt,

he did not want to be involved at all, and if he had some conflicts

with people who wanted him to be in the organization, making a

connotation of a mafia. So he did not want to and when the uprising

started he just closed the store and we just locked ourselves in

the house until the next day.

This is the entrance to the synagogue, the stairs were railings with

concrete on the sides, concrete, you know. There was a beautiful

plaza here, the building looked good, there was no such vegetation

on it, the windows were windows, the openings were open, the

door was a beautiful wooden door, there was a synagogue sign in

the name of Rabbi David Abuhatzira. Inside the synagogue, as far

as I remember, should be on this side of the building. Maybe I’m

wrong. But anyway it’s one of the glorious synagogues that were

here.

That, is a building that was built during the establishment of the

state in the 1950s using the method used to build housing. And

Walla they did good, built this building. Why not build another 50

such? People would live well. Build it as a school, because what?,

the religious parties of Agudat Israel, the Ashkenazi Lithuanian current,

got the mandate for the slums in the country, so they planted

religious schools here and there, with a Lithuanian current, with

a Lithuanian system. A Moroccan boy growing up in a Moroccan

home grew up on the street bordering on crime and grew up in

a school with a Lithuanian education. What do you expect him to

get out of it? Unclear mixture. All the people here, as if or were educated

in schools in Tel Aviv from Zionism, Jabotinsky and Herzl.

It does not interest anyone here. Nor have these materials been

taught in our schools. We were all taught and raised in a bubble,

so that when I reached the age of fifteen I was ingnorant. One who

knows nothing.

‘Objective’ Text Typology

Site-specific events and places

storytelling

184


here, everything was shops, shops, shops, all this street - Stanton / Wadi Salib had shops, merchants,

spices, cafes, upholsterers, confectioneries, carpentry shops, blankets, carpenters, all

the professions a man needs. There were no lawyers here, no doctors, no dentists. Only trade.

Spices, mint, ash, food, blacksmiths, they were unanimously called ‘Haimil’, Haimil in Moroccan is

a welder, one that would weld pots with lead wehn an aluminum pot accumilate holes. We would

go to the haimil. This compound was like a Casba, like that, there were shops here and then you

went into some pavilion and you came here, the shops behind you. If we go there I’ll show you

the example of what I mean. from here, started houses, arranged, plaza, houses, stairs, paths,

small plazas, stair paths and stairs and what exit stairs you ascend to Hadar. In any case, you could

reach Hadar. Because it is a wadi from the beginning of Wadi Salib to the end at least there are, I

have not counted, at least 20 stairs, from which, imagine a comb, from which ascended to Hadar,

which ascended the liberation, further forward ascended to Sirkin, further forward ascended to

Talpiot market it reached as far as Khalisa, until The heroes. That’s why we once did a show about

the City of Stairs. These stairs were not only used as stairs but also getting through them where

you wanted to get. Each staircase is another staircase.

‘Subjective’ Text Typology

General ‘feeling of place’

storytelling

185




Anchor Points on Map

Placing anchor pictography scenes

that are actual locations.

186

Pictography Scenes

Anchor Points: Real Locations

The In Between Environment


Tangible and related

Creating game objects inspired by the

symbols of pictography to fill-in the inbetweens.

Grid Square

Anchor Points

187


Virtual Reality Method

From pictography to 3D environment

The Use of 2 Different Techniques

The VR environment is consists of scanned meshes and

modeled parts, representing the feasible and the percepted

188


Grabbable parts

Missing model

The Missing Parts

The model is missing parts for the

player to re-build the story of the place

Re-built model

189


Virtual Reality Method

From pictography to 3D environment

This compound was like a Casba,

Spotlight

were shops here and then you w

pavilion and you came here, the

you. If we go there I’ll show you t

what I mean. from here, st

arranged, plaza, houses, stairs,

plazas, stair paths and stairs and w

you ascend to Hadar. In any ca

.reach Hadar

{full model is constantly tilting right a left, up to 20 de g

}

{Text}

Floating

up and

down

Only (scanned) anchors are appearing on a Solid colored Background

Rest of the model is appearing

+ full model constantly tilting right and left

+full model constantly floating up and down

+spot light on model

Inventory an

This compound was like a Casba, like that, there

were shops here and then you went into some

pavilion and you came here, the shops behind

you. If we go there I’ll show you the example of

what I mean. from here, started houses,

arranged, plaza, houses, stairs, paths, small

plazas, stair paths and stairs and what exit stairs

you ascend to Hadar. In any case, you could

.reach Hadar









.reach Hadar

This compound was like a Casba,

were shops here and then you w

pavilion and you came here, the

you. If we go there I’ll show you t

what I mean. from here, st

arranged, plaza, houses, sta

small plazas, stair paths and stairs

stairs you ascend to Hadar. In

.could reach Hadar

Grab

Stairs

! Click

Snap

to place

if : user grab {stairs},

then: {Stairs} {Snap} spots are highlighted

if: user release {stairs} in place {snap},

then: click {sound} is heard

All of the 3 phases are applied to each type of object in the inventory

if: user relea

then: Word i

The Game Storyboard

Creating the flow of the VR environment interface

190










.reach Hadar









.reach Hadar

{sound source}

{Text}

{Inventory}

{sound source}

{sound source}

Floating

up and

down

Inventory and Text Reference Appears

3 sound origins spots are starting to play: one from each anchor






arranged, plaza, houses, stairs, paths,

small plazas, stair paths and stairs and what exit

stairs you ascend to Hadar. In any case, you

.could reach Hadar

Snap

to

place

Levitating

if: user releases {stairs} in place {snap},

then: Word in text is highlighted in color

if: all parts are assembled

then: model is levitating up

inventory

191


Key locations offer tangible anchors:

Rosilio Coffee Shop

‘Rosilio cafe’ used to be frequented mainly by new immigrants from Morocco. On July 9th 1959, police

officers arrived at the cafe following a fight and used excessive violence. Following this, one of the

residents of the cafe who was drunk went on a rampage, was shot in the leg, and was left paralyzed in

his lower body. A rumor spread in the neighborhood that the man had been killed. The rumor served as a

catalyst that caused an outburst of anger and frustration among the residents of the neighborhood, over

the economic hardship and their claims of discrimination and deprivation on the part of the government.

Today the remains of the building exist, but it is no longer used as the historical ‘Rosilio cafe’.

192


Ahiezer School (also: The Pyramid)

David Abu Hatzira Synagogue

In 1954 the school was established by the Ministry of Education as a religious state school - “Ahiezer”,

which served the children of immigrants to Israel mainly from North Africa and Romania who lived in

Wadi Salib neighborhood. Over the years it was abandoned until a group of artists came to it and started

working and exhibiting there. Today, the place is managed by an association called ‘Pyramid’ and serves as

a gallery and a venue for contemporary art workshops; The synagogue is named after David Abu Hachira.

Throughout the 70’s and early 80’s when people from the neighborhood were evacuated, the houses

around the synagogue were destroyed and only the synagogue remained standing. Today, it is subject

to preservation when there are plans as part of urban renewal, designed to turn it into a public building.

193


Fill in the Blanks between the anchors:

What is known, and what can be interpreted?

Intro Scene

194


Grabbing and Placing

The players fill-in the missing parts of the model according to the faded

blue areas, and each time a new word is revealed a word

195


Spiritu

(re) ality

Spiritu(re)ality is a VR experience that seeks to convey a

spiritual experience. According to the testimony of Shmuel

Shavit, who grew up in the neighborhood, one of the main

events in the community were the “Bar Mitzvah processions”

– the community used to accompany the bar mitzvah groom

through the neighborhood’s alleys, to and from the synagogue.

We have chosen that procession as our virtual experience, with

new interpretation – procession that conveys the spiritual

experience of a person. The synagogue and its cantor serve as

an anchor to reality, and as the “player” progresses along the

path of the procession, the realistic elements diminish and he

enters a much more personal experience, detached from time

and place.

196

Noa Einhorn | Gabriela Koifman | Aldona Obrara


197


Shmuel Sharvit

In the late 1950s, more than 20,000 people lived in the

wadi, praying in over sixty synagogues that were sorted

by city of origin. One of them was the synagogue named

after Rabbi David Abuhatzira at 13 Omer al-Khatab Street,

headed by the cantor, bard, writer and legendary reader

Rabbi Massoud Shmol and his brother, Rabbi Shimon

Shmol, who led the synagogue. Most of the community in

Wadi Salib was religious and the synagogue and the events

related were a big part of their life. Shmuel Shavit, who

grew up in the neighborhood emphasis in his testimony

the importance of the synagogue in the community life

and told a lot about the synagogue itself and the related

events.

198


199


Atmospheric Extraction

“This is Omar al-Katab Street, which starts from there, from

the flea market down below, and it was in a straight line,

here it would be curving like this, and they made a change

here, made a path, here was a synagogue named after David

Abuhatzira, one of the great and respected synagogues

here, there was here an excellent cantor, Rabbi Shmul. There

were events here. Lots of events. All the bar mitzvahs

that were in Wadi Salib were bar mitzvahs with

processions, from the house to the synagogue and after

the synagogue, back to the houses...” “This is the entrance to

the synagogue, the stairs were railings with concrete on the

sides, concrete, you know. There was a beautiful plaza here,

the building looked good, there was no such vegetation on

it, the windows were windows, the openings were open, the

door was a beautiful wooden door, there was a synagogue

sign in the name of Rabbi David Abuhatzira. Inside the

synagogue, as far as I remember, should be on this side of

the building. Maybe I’m wrong. But anyway it’s one of the

glorious synagogues that were here. The company that built

the building here received a concession to preserve it. The idea

is to make an art gallery and a cafe here..” “Look on Saturday

for example, if you were going on a Friday night in Stanton,

during prayer, you would hear dozens of prayers. “Leha dodi,

lekrat kala, Bnei Shabbat nekabla” ... all the synagogues. You

hear, the same tune too. It starts here, it starts there it starts

there....”

200


201


Reality to Spirituality

Spirituality is an abstract term, which received over the

years countless different interpretations. Some see a

connection between religion and spirituality, some see

a complete contrast between the two. We chose to see

the connection and create a transition between different

types of spirituality. The Bar Mitzvah procession, and the

Bar ceremony in general is a symbol of a boy coming of

age.During our virtual experience we try to create the

experience of a Bar Mitzvah groom - a process of growth,

maturing, a certain spiritual search. In order to express this

abstract experience through physical means, we based

our Scene on three main components - environment,

sound and color, each receives a different appearance

according to the stage in which the player is on, between

reality and absolute spirituality.

202


Testimony

Atmospheric Extraction

Reality

Religous life

Judaism

Bar mitzvahs processions

Religion

Environment Color Sound

spirituality

203


“Here was a synagogue named after David Abu Hatzira, one of the great and respected

synagogues here” (Shmuel Sharvit)

Synagogue named after Rabbi David Abu Hatzira

204


Synagogue 3d scanned model

Wadi Salib alleys

To create the procession VR environment we tried to adjust the descriptions from the testimony, using a

laser scan of the synagogue in its current state and also searching for historical pictures from of Wadi Salib.

205


Environment

The scene begins in a realistic environment - the

synagogue, the focus of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Upon

exiting it, the procession begins, when the realistic signs

are increasingly undermined. The walls seek to simulate

the alleys of the neighborhood, while the lighting and

the people already receive an expression that is far from

realistic. As the player continues to advance, those people

made of dots but still recognizable as human characters

- begin to “disintegrate” into an unrecognizable cloud

of dots. The environment also changes when the walls

are replaced by an “abstract cave”, which eliminates the

external environment and brings the player into an inner

world.

206

Reality


Spirituality

207


Color

The use of color is a means of expressing the spiritual

level at which the player is at. To create an experience

that is detached from religion and connects to a much

more personal and internal spirituality, we chose to use

colors based on their spiritual interpretation as “chakras”.

According to the chakras, colors like green and yellow

are “physical” colors. Yellow symbolizes liveliness and

joyful energy, while green symbolizes love and devotion.

Therefore, we chose to represent the crowd of the

procession with these colors - as the external support that

the player receives during his process. Colors like purple,

blue and light blue are colors that represent “spirituality”.

Purple symbolizes mysticism, imagination, connection to

one’s intuition, blue is calmness and peace, and light blue

signifies high spirituality and connection to higher worlds.

208

Reality


“physical” colors

represent “spirituality”

Spirituality

209


Sound

At the beginning of the scene, it is another anchor to

reality - you hear the cantor’s voice saying a prayer. It is

a connection to reality, to Shmuel’s testimony, and a

connection to the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, which is the

core of our experience. Upon exiting the synagogue,

the sounds of the crowd intensify the experience of

walking through the alleys, the real procession which

was a bustling and joyful event. As the player progresses,

while his environment becomes less and less realistic, the

human voices are replaced by sounds and gentle music

which, according to the same spiritual interpretation

of the chakras, awakens and “opens” the most spiritual

chakras.

210

Reality


Spirituality

211


212


213

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the Technion MTRL laboratory, Prof.

Aaron Sprecher, and the Azrieli Foundation for their generous support

of this research.

Augmenting Histories - The Case of Wadi Salib

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