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.