Hart Island, 3D virtual environment (2007)

From the active Rikers Island prison complex and the Wards Island asylum, to the defunct mental hospitals and quarantines of Roosevelt Island and Rat Island, New York City has an enduring history of using its many small atolls to isolate and punish people.

Hart Island, an approximately one mile long landmass situated at the western end of Long Island Sound, is less known than Rikers or Wards Islands, yet has played an extensive role in New York City’s history of exile. Since being purchased by the Dutch from the Siwanoy tribe in 1654, Hart Island has been the site of a series of POW camps, prisons, and quarantines. Hart Island also serves as a potters field for New York City in which close to one million men, women and children are buried.

As Hart Island remains closed to the public, the Hart Island virtual environment allows for an investigation of the layers of history that comprise a tradition of exile for wayward, ailing and unclaimed New Yorkers. Users may wander through prison camps, burial sites and the many medical and correctional buildings found on the island, occasionally encountering the island's former inhabitants.