Augmented Temple, 2017

Aug­mented Tem­ple is a media in­stal­la­tion that makes it pos­si­ble to ex­pe­ri­ence Jerusalem’s Hero­dian Tem­ple be­tween 20 B.C. and 70 A.D. The core of the in­stal­la­tion is an ar­chi­tec­tural model of the vast com­plex which once sat on the Tem­ple Mount and at­tracted up to 10,000 vis­i­tors daily to re­li­gious fes­ti­vals. The model is aug­mented with a pro­jec­tion that shows the dif­fer­ent areas of the tem­ple, re­veals how peo­ple moved through the com­plex, and in­tro­duces in­di­vid­ual, typ­i­cal vis­i­tors.

Four ‘view­ers’ point­ing at the model offer im­mer­sion in re­al­is­tic scenes. Short, an­i­mated films take vis­i­tors on a vir­tual cam­era tour through the crowds for events such as Yom Kip­pur and the pil­grim­age fes­ti­val. The scenes offer a lively im­pres­sion of the spe­cific rit­u­als and cus­toms per­formed at the site: the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals, their prepa­ra­tion and of­fer­ing, the trans­fer of sins to a ram, women’s round dances, and cur­rency ex­changes by those who trav­elled from far away. The de­sign of the de­tailed scenes is based on sci­en­tific find­ings and re­quired the mod­el­ling of ap­prox­i­mately 3000 in­di­vid­ual fig­ures.

Aug­mented Tem­ple was de­vel­oped for the “Wel­come to Jerusalem” ex­hi­bi­tion at the Jew­ish Mu­seum Berlin.