Author: Mike Wirth

  • Stop Using AI As A Hammer, When It’s A Screwdriver: My AI Odyssey Through The Classroom

    Stop Using AI As A Hammer, When It’s A Screwdriver: My AI Odyssey Through The Classroom

    This article is a teacher’s (me) journey out of the AI shadows and into classroom transformation. This article is a companion to a recorded lecture I gave on how I use AI in the classroom. I recommend watching the video in addition to reading this post, as it offers a deeper dive and helps contextualize the experiments and perspectives summarized here.

    AI Isn’t a Hammer, It’s a Screwdriver

    A teacher’s journey out of the AI shadows and into classroom transformation. This article is a companion to a recorded lecture I gave on how I use AI in the classroom. I recommend watching the video in addition to reading this post, as it offers a deeper dive and helps contextualize the experiments and perspectives summarized here.

    We’ve successfully scared the hell out of ourselves about AI. That’s the truth. Despite the helpful Wall-E’s and Rosie the Robots, the likes of HAL 9000 locking astronauts out in space to the death machines of The Terminator, the cultural imagination has been fed a steady diet of dystopian dread. And now, with the hype and hysteria churned out by the media and social media, we’ve triggered a collective fight, flight, or freeze response. So it’s no surprise that when AI entered the classroom, a lot of educators felt like they were witnessing the start of an apocalypse, like all of us were each our own John Connors’ watching the dreaded Skynet come online for the first time.

    But I’m here to tell you that’s not what’s happening. At least not in my classroom.

    In fact, this post is about how I crawled out of the AI shadows and learned to see it not as a threat but as a tool. Not a hammer, but a screwdriver. Not something that does my job for me, but something that helps me do my job better. Especially the parts that grind me down or eat away at my time.

    If you’re skeptical, hesitant, angry, or just plain confused about what AI is doing to education, pull up a chair. I’ve been there. But I’ve also experimented, adjusted, and seen the light and the darkness. I cannot dispel all of the implications of AI use, but I want to share what I’ve learned so you don’t have to build the spaceship from scratch.

    We Owe It to Our Students to Model Bravery

    Students are already using AI. They’re exploring it in secret, often at night, often with shame. They’re wondering if they’re doing something wrong. And if we meet them with fear, avoidance, or silence, we’re sending the message that they’re on their own. In a 2023 talk at ASU+GSV, Ethan Mollick noted that nearly all of his students had already used ChatGPT, often without disclosure. He emphasized that faculty need to assume AI is already in the room and should focus on teaching students how to use it wisely, ethically, and with reflection. That means our job isn’t to police usage—it’s to guide it.

    I don’t want my students wandering through this new terrain without a map. So I model what I want them to do: ask questions, explore ethically, think critically, and most of all—reflect. I also model the discipline of not using AI output as a final product, but only as inspiration. If I use AI to brainstorm or generate language, I always make sure to rewrite it into something that reflects my own thinking and voice. That’s how we teach students to be creators, not copy machines. Map out where you have been and where you are going in your journey. 

    And when I don’t know the answer? I tell them. Then we look it up together. I use this ChatGPT cheatsheet often. Check it out.

    That’s what it means to teach AI literacy. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about being brave enough to stay in the conversation. I was also wandering aimlessly with AI—unsure how to use it, uncertain about what was ethical—until I took this course from Wharton on Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching. That course changed my mindset, my emotional state, and my entire classroom practice. It gave me a framework for using AI ethically, strategically, and with care for student development. If you’re looking for a place to start, that’s a great one.

    AI Isn’t a Hammer. It’s a Screwdriver.

    Here’s a metaphor I use a lot: AI is not a hammer. It’s a screwdriver.

    Too many people try to use AI for the wrong task. They ask it to be a mindreader or a miracle worker. When it fails, they say it’s dumb. But that’s like trying to hammer in a screw and then blaming the hammer.

    When you learn what AI actually does well, like pattern recognition, remixing ideas, filtering, and translating formats, you start to use AI for its actual strengths. As Bender et al. (2021) explain in their paper On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots, large language models are fundamentally pattern-matching systems. They can generate fluent, creative-sounding language, but they do not possess understanding, emotional awareness, or genuine creativity. They remix what already exists. That is why we must use these tools to support our thinking, not replace it. It becomes a tool in your toolkit. Not a black box. Not a crutch. A screwdriver.

    I don’t want AI to do my art and writing so I can do dishes. I want AI to do my dishes so I can do art and writing. As Joanna Maciejewska put it: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” It won’t do your dishes. But it might give you time back so you can do something that matters more.

    How I Actually Use AI in Class With Students

    I teach graphic design, motion, UX, and interactive design. AI is already a mainstay in each of these disciplines—from tools that enhance layout and animation to systems that evaluate accessibility and automate UX testing. But even though AI had become part of the professional design landscape, I was still skeptical. I wasn’t sure how to bring it into my classroom in a meaningful way. So I started small.

    Using AI for minor efficiencies—generating rubrics, reformatting documents, cleaning up language—felt good. It felt safe. And it gave me just enough momentum to try it on bigger, more impactful tasks. What made the difference was a mindset shift. I stopped seeing myself as a single musician trying to play every part of a complex score and started seeing myself as the conductor of the orchestra. I didn’t need to play every part, I just needed to know how the parts worked together. That gave me the confidence to use AI—and to teach with it.

    Here’s how I integrate AI into our learning:

    • Students design chatbots that simulate clients, so they can roleplay conversations. I used to pretend to be clients and interact with students through Canvas discussion boards. Now I can read their chat logs and have conversations with them about their questions and intentions.
    • In Motion Graphics, students use “vibe coding”—a form of sketching in code with the help of GPT to simulate motion, like moons orbiting planets.
    • In Interactive Design, they use Copilot** to debug code** in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
    • They learn to generate placeholder images for mockups, not final artwork.
    • We create custom Copilot agents, like “RUX”—a UX-focused bot trained to give scaffolded feedback based on accessibility standards.

    I’m not handing them shortcuts. I’m handing them power tools and asking them to build something that’s still theirs.

    The Creative Process Needs Scaffolding—AI Can Help

    I believe in the creative process. I’ve studied models like the Double Diamond and the 4C Model. I’ve seen how students get stuck during the early stages, especially when self-doubt creeps in.

    That’s where AI shines.

    AI helps my students generate more ideas in the divergent phase. This echoes research by Mollick and Terwiesch (2024) showing that structured AI prompting increases idea variance and originality during the creative process. It helps them compare, sort, and edit during the convergent phase. And when I ask them to submit their chat logs as part of their final deliverable, I can see their thinking. It’s like watching a time-lapse of the creative process.

    We’re not assessing just artifacts anymore. We’re assessing growth. And that includes how students use AI as part of their process. I make it clear that AI-generated outputs are not to be submitted as final work. Instead, we treat those outputs as inspiration or scaffolding—starting points that must be reshaped, edited, or reimagined by the human at the center of the learning. That’s a critical behavior we need to model as teachers. If we want students to be creative thinkers, not copy-paste artists, then we have to show them how that transformation happens.

    Accessibility and AI Should Be Friends

    I also use AI to make my course materials more accessible. I format assignments to follow TILT and UDL principles. For example, I asked GPT to act as a TILT and UDL expert and reformat a complex assignment brief. It returned a clean layout with clear learning objectives, task instructions, and evaluation criteria. I pasted this directly into a Canvas Page to ensure full screen reader compatibility and ease of access.

    For rubrics, I asked GPT to generate a Canvas rubric using a CSV file template. I specified category names, point scales, and descriptors, and GPT returned a rubric that I could tweak and upload into Canvas. No more building from scratch in the Canvas UI.

    To generate quizzes, I use OCR with my phone’s Notes app to scan printed textbook pages. I paste that text into GPT and ask it to write multiple-choice questions with answer keys. GPT can even generate QTI files, which I import directly into Canvas. This process saves me hours of manual quiz-writing and makes use of printed texts that don’t have digital versions.

    AI helps me build ramps, not walls.

    Faculty are also legally required to build those ramps. Under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), specifically Section 504, course content in learning management systems like Canvas must meet accessibility standards. But let’s be honest—retrofitting dozens or even hundreds of old documents, PDFs, and slide decks into fully accessible formats is a monumental task. It often gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list, which leaves institutions vulnerable to non-compliance. Check out the WCAG standards for more details.

    AI can help. It can reformat documents for screen reader compatibility, generate alt text, simplify layout structure, and audit for contrast and clarity. And it can do it in a fraction of the time it would take any one of us. By using AI thoughtfully here, we not only make our content better, we also help our institutions become more equitable and compliant faster.

    When I use local LLMs to analyze student writing using tools like LM Studio, I keep student data safe, FERPA compliant, and private. This aligns with concerns raised by Liang et al. (2023) about how commercial LLMs may compromise the privacy of non-native English speakers and their content. It is ethical. It is efficient. And it respects the trust students place in me.

    Let Students Build Their Own Tools

    One of the best things I’ve done is empower students to create their own AI agents.

    Yes, students can train their own Copilot bots. And when they do, they stop seeing AI as some alien threat. They start seeing it as a co-creator. A partner. A lab assistant. ChatGPT has a feature called Custom GPTs, which allows similar personalization, but it’s locked behind a paywall. That creates real inequity for students who can’t afford a subscription. Copilot, on the other hand, is free to students and provides the necessary capabilities to build custom agents or chatbots. Here’s a guide to get started building your own agents with Copilot.

    As a way to model this behavior for students, I created a CoPilot Agent myself called RUX, short for “Rex UX”, honoring Rex, our beloved university mascot. I built it using Microsoft’s Copilot Studio, which lets you define an agent’s knowledge base, tone, and purpose. For RUX, I gave it specific documentation to pull from, including core sources like WCAG, UDL, and UX heuristics, and trained it to act as a guide and feedback coach for my UX students. It doesn’t give away answers. It asks questions, gives feedback, and helps students reflect.

    Setting up an agent starts with defining your intent. I decided I wanted RUX to act like a mentor who knew the standards for accessibility and good UX practices, but also had the patience and tone of a coach. I uploaded key resources as reference material, wrote prompt examples, and added instructions to prevent the agent from simply giving away answers. This ensures students use it to reflect and improve rather than shortcut their learning.

    The great part is that it took me about 30 minutes. And now my students use it to get feedback in between critiques, to check their work against accessibility standards, and to build their confidence.

    And the students slowly start to ask better questions.

    Final Thoughts: Be the Conductor, Not the Consumer

    I tell my students this all the time: don’t just be a user. Be the conductor. That’s the heart of this whole article. I started this journey skeptical and unsure about how to use AI in my teaching, but I kept experimenting. And the more I leaned in, the more I realized I could use these tools to orchestrate the learning experience. I didn’t need to master every note, just guide the ensemble. Once I felt that shift, I was able to build my own practice and share it with students in ways that felt grounded and empowering.

    Here are two simple but powerful GPT exercises that are from the UPenn AI in the Classroom course that I recommend for you to get started:

    1. Role Playing (Assigning the AI a Persona)

    This method helps shape AI responses by giving it a clear role.

    Steps:

    • Tell the AI, “You are an expert in [topic].”
    • Provide a specific task, like “explain X to a 19-year-old art student” or “give feedback on a beginner-level UX portfolio.”
    • Refine the prompt with context about the student’s needs or your learning objectives.

    Outcome: The AI behaves like a thoughtful tutor instead of a know-it-all. Students can use it as a low-stakes, judgment-free practice partner.

    2. Chain of Thought Prompting

    This is useful for step-by-step thinking and collaborative problem solving.

    Steps:

    • Ask the AI to help you develop a lesson plan, solve a design challenge, or draft a workflow.
    • Break the task into steps: “What’s the first thing I should consider?” Then “What comes next?”
    • Let the AI ask you questions in return. Keep the conversation going.

    Outcome: You model metacognition, and students learn how to refine ideas through iterative feedback. It supports both ideation and strategic planning.

    Try these as warm-ups, homework tools, or reflection exercises. They’re simple, ethical, and illuminating ways to integrate AI in any classroom.

    That’s what I want for my colleagues, too. You don’t have to know everything about AI. You just have to be curious. You have to be willing to ask: “What can this help me or my students do better?”

    So here’s your first experiment:

    1. Have students brainstorm ideas for a project.
    2. Have them ask GPT the same question.
    3. Compare the lists.
    4. Reflect. (What worked? What didn’t? How will you approach brainstorming next time?, Repeat)

    Then decide what to keep, what to toss, and what to remix. Just like we always have. Let’s stop building walls. Let’s start building labs. And let’s do it together.

  • From Prompt to Practice: How Artists Can Rethink and Reclaim AI Tools

    From Prompt to Practice: How Artists Can Rethink and Reclaim AI Tools

    Yes, there’s a problem, but It’s not just about AI.

    I’ve heard passionate arguments against AI usage from fellow artists. I’ve also read in detail about the lawsuits filed by creators against companies who used their work without permission. I agree that this is wrong and that it has hurt the true validity of the tools. These concerns are real, and they’ve shaped how I approach the technology.

    A central question remains: if we could make the source imagery for AI training completely copyright-free and ethical, would that actually end the argument over the use of these tools in art making? Or is the real issue an underlying belief in purity in the creative process? As a graphic designer, I know that purity in creation was disrupted long before AI ever existed.

    From Generative Art to Generative AI

    I was exhilarated the first time I started using AI in my art. I’ve been working as a generative artist since the late 90s, so I’ve seen a lot of shifts in how tech intersects with creativity. Back in the early 2000s, I was building generative art installations that used text, images, and sound. I was dreaming in code, digital sensors, and databases as these were the core elements to create art-making robots. I was even invited to exhibit my projects in the US and international media arts biennales in Split, Croatia and Wroclaw, Poland. But this new wave of AI tools? It felt like a leap. A serious one.

    When the most recent wave of AI tools burst onto the scene in 2022, I found myself re-reading Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and picking up Lev Manovich’s article Who is an Author in the Age of AI? for the first time. They both helped give me clarity on the debate developing. The first was written over a century ago, and the second in the present moment, but both challenged me to think beyond the surface of the debate.

    That said, I didn’t jump in without questions. I was skeptical about where the image data was coming from. Most of the image models were trained on LAION400M, a huge dataset scraped from the internet. It was meant for research, not commercial use. As an artist, I care deeply about copyright and creative ownership. That part bothered me.

    But the power of the tool was undeniable. AI helps me iterate quickly. It pushes my image-making forward and challenges me to try things I wouldn’t have done on my own. New poses, wild color combinations, unusual compositions. Sometimes, I don’t even recognize what I’m capable of until I see what AI reflects back at me.

    Through my experiments and explorations, it became very true that it’s not about replacing my work at all. It’s about expanding it.

    AI as a Catalyst and Sharpener for Creativity

    One of the things I love most about AI is how it helps me start. Sometimes, it’s like having an oracle. I might not know exactly where a project is headed, but I can toss in a few ideas and see what comes back. That response helps me clarify what I want. Or what I don’t want. And that’s part of the creative process, too. The ability to think divergently and then convergently is the true poetry of the creative process and having a “helper” in that process allows greater tracking and reflection on the process.

    I use Stable Diffusion most often because it’s open-source and highly controllable. I like that I can run it locally on my machine without paying for credits or cloud storage. Not having a paywall gives me the freedom to really dig deep. I can generate a hundred versions of an idea, explore unexpected paths, and move fast without overthinking costs.

    There was one recent project that brought this all into focus. A client in Houston wanted a mural with about 25 different visual elements. Honestly, it was overwhelming. I started by asking AI to look for patterns in the list text, riffing with the chatbot to explore visual ways to combine the many items into one space. The ideas that chat suggested, but it did mention the word surrealism that made me think of Salvador Dali’s haunting landscapes. That was it! A landscape like Dali’s is a place where all the elements could exist together logically. A dreamscape, so to speak. That unlocked the whole thing. Without AI, I might’ve taken much longer to get there.

    Most AI images aren’t good. I’d say maybe 10 percent are worth a second look. I know I’ve hit something useful when it meets my “GE” standard: Good Enough to move forward. I’m looking for strong composition and clear visual hierarchy. Everything else can be worked on later. But if the image holds space in a striking way, I’ll keep going.

    AI for Process, Not Just Product: An Ethical Approach

    People often think of AI as a tool for generating a final image. That’s not how I use it. For me, AI is most powerful when it supports the process. It helps me evaluate, brainstorm, and reflect. Sometimes, I upload a rough idea or a brain dump and use a chatbot to ask questions or poke holes in it. That outside perspective—fast, responsive, and nonjudgmental—is gold.

    If I’m stuck, I might ask the AI to generate some moodboards or rough compositions. I’m not expecting polished work. I’m looking for sparks. A direction to follow or a problem to solve. It’s the same way I’d sketch a dozen thumbnails on paper.

    And no, I don’t fall in love with the first cool thing AI spits out. That novelty wore off fast. I’ve trained myself to be curatorial. Most results don’t hit the mark. But knowing I can always make more helps me stay loose. I push ideas until they’re solid.

    One piece that stands out was an illustration I made for a Torah portion about Pharaoh’s dream. I had drawn a grim-looking cow skull and was thinking of placing it in a field of wheat. Then, the AI surprised me. It created a cow skull made out of wheat. That twist was mysterious and totally unexpected—perfect for the surreal nature of a dream. I never would have gone there on my own. But once I saw it, I knew exactly where to take it.

    AI Won’t Replace Me. It Will Refine Me.

    As an educator, I’ve brought AI into the classroom not just as a tool but as a way to help students understand how creativity works. I show them how to use it to ideate, test ideas, and refine their thinking. We do in-class exercises where students generate images or prompts and then share their chatlogs with me. It gives me a real window into how they’re thinking—and how they’re growing.

    Some students are skeptical at first. Others dive in headfirst and sometimes know more than I do about certain tools. The ones who get it quickly start using AI not to shortcut the work but to deepen it. They realize that it’s not about letting AI do the thinking. It’s about using AI to push your thinking further.

    I’ve even used AI as part of a critique. One time, I had students feed their near-final projects into ChatGPT and ask for feedback. With the right prompts, the feedback was surprisingly thoughtful. Not perfect. But useful. It opened a door for them to reflect and iterate in ways they hadn’t before and to be critical of comments that didn’t in fact, help improve their work.

    What AI reveals, I think, is that creativity isn’t just about generating something new. It’s about discovering connections, asking better questions, and recognizing what’s missing. AI isn’t great at originality on its own, but it’s fantastic at remixing and showing what’s possible. It’s like a mirror that reflects potential back at you. I’ve worked closely with a few creative development systems like the Double Diamond and SCAMPER and I can say with confidence: AI can support both divergent and convergent thinking, especially when used intentionally.

    Originality: The Collage Conversation

    This comes up a lot: “Isn’t AI just stealing?” And my response usually starts with this: what about collage?

    We’ve accepted collage as a legitimate art form for over a century. Artists like Hannah Höch, Romare Bearden, and Robert Rauschenberg all used found images, many of them copyrighted. They cut, glued, layered, and remixed to create something new. If we call that art, why are we drawing the line at AI?

    To me, AI-generated images are collage-like. The human prompts them with intention. The AI recombines things based on patterns it has learned. The process is digital, but the creative act is still there. Cutting and pasting by hand doesn’t make something inherently more authentic. It’s the idea behind the work that matters.

    Now, I don’t ignore the legal and ethical side of this. Most major AI image models are trained on datasets built from scraped web images, and that’s a problem. I’ve been exploring more ethically sourced options. For example, Adobe’s Firefly and Shutterstock’s model are trained on licensed stock images. Even better, I recently started working with a model called PixelDust. It’s a rebuild of Stable Diffusion, but trained only on public domain and Creative Commons Zero (CC0) images—think Wikipedia, museum archives, and open repositories. While it’s the closest public domain model out there, it still is not 100% certain it is copyright-free.

    I fine-tuned that model using 380 of my own original works. That means when I prompt it now, it generates images in my style using my visual language. It’s still collaborative, but it feels more personal. And the results have seriously improved my ideation speed and image quality.

    There’s a difference between copying and remixing. Collage artists have done it forever. Musicians sample. Writers quote. AI might be new, but it fits within a long tradition of borrowing, blending, and transforming. What complicates the conversation is “style”. People think style is protected by copyright, but it’s not. Only specific works are. So, while artists may be known for their style, that alone doesn’t make it off-limits.

    Yes, people have questioned the validity of my AI-assisted work. When that happens, I explain. I describe how I use AI for ideation, how I fine-tune models on my own work, and how that affects the output. Once people understand that I’m building on my own images and ideas, they usually come around.

    Co-Creating with the Machine: How AI Refines My Process

    Over time, I’ve started experimenting with creating a kind of AI version of myself. Not in a sci-fi clone kind of way, but as a tool trained to think and see more like me. I fine-tuned a model using 360 of my own artworks, each paired with carefully written prompts. That way, when I generate new images, they come out in my visual language, not someone else’s.

    I also use a tool called ControlNet. It lets me upload sketches or basic compositions, and then the AI fills in the style and detail. This setup allows me to keep control over layout and flow while still tapping into the speed and surprise of the AI. It doesn’t always work the first time, and it can be a long back-and-forth, but the results are worth it.

    Eventually, I’d love to have a copyright-safe, fully custom model that supports my entire process. The goal isn’t automation for the sake of ease. I want to hand off the repetitive, procedural stuff so I can stay focused on creativity, strategy, and ideas.

    And no, I don’t want my AI self to be autonomous. That would defeat the point. I’m the creative leader here. The AI is my partner. It helps me explore, test, and refine, but I make the final call.

    I’ve also made peace with the idea of my style being encoded. I’ve been an illustrator long enough to know that you don’t really “own” a style. My style is a blend of influences I’ve absorbed over the years, and it’s always evolving. As a professional, I’ve had to learn multiple styles just to stay competitive. So, no, I don’t see style as sacred. It’s the ideas and the content that matter most to me.

    Rethinking and Remixing Creativity with AI

    My relationship with AI has changed a lot since I started. At first, I believed the hype. I thought it would be a job killer that could replace me. But as I worked with it more, I realized its limitations. It isn’t a one-click creative solution. It’s a tool that depends on my input, my ideas, and my vision. It helps me move faster and reflect more deeply, but it doesn’t do the thinking or the feeling for me.

    I’ve come to believe that AI isn’t replacing creativity. It’s revealing it. It shows us how we think, where we hesitate, and what we ignore. It challenges the old myths that artists work in isolation, drawing purely from inspiration or talent. That myth never held true for working designers and educators like me. And it definitely doesn’t reflect how creativity works in the real world.

    Still, I respect the artists who are hesitant or resistant. I’ve listened to powerful critiques and concerns. The lawsuits over unauthorized dataset usage raise important ethical and legal questions. And they should. If we can’t build these tools on ethically sourced, copyright-free content, then we have no foundation to build from. But if we can create models trained on ethically gathered images, then we should be having different conversations. One would be about practice. Another about process. We’d also be talking about expanding what it means to be creative. Instead, we’re stuck in echo chamber-like debates with half-truths and misunderstandings.

    AI is not a threat to purity in art because that purity never really existed. From collage to sampling to appropriation, art has always thrived on remix. This is what Benjamin meant when he spoke of the “aura” of artworks over a hundred years ago. Reproduction changes the way we relate to art, but it doesn’t remove its meaning. It shifts the space where meaning happens.

    So I use AI not because it replaces me but because it helps me be more of who I already am. A generative artist. A question asker. A teacher. A remix thinker. A designer trained in collaboration, systems, and complexity. AI is now a part of that system. And I welcome it, carefully and critically, into my process.

    The tech will keep evolving. But the core of creativity, being curiosity, play, rigor, surprise, and reflection, has not changed. AI just gives us more ways to explore it.

  • Spiritual Creativity: My Journey into Community and Sacred Practice

    Spiritual Creativity: My Journey into Community and Sacred Practice

    What does it mean to make creativity a sacred practice, and how can art transform Jewish life? For me, becoming a Jewish artist wasn’t a career move. It was a spiritual awakening. This article traces how I came to see the creative process not only as a personal path to the divine but as a communal tool for connection, healing, and evolving Jewish tradition. Through murals, rituals, digital artwork, and collaborative design, I’ve learned that creativity can be one of the most powerful forms of Jewish practice we have today.

    “Why would you become a Jewish artist?” people used to ask me. “Isn’t that limiting your market to a very small sliver?” It’s true, I wasn’t always a Jewish artist. In fact, for a long time, I rarely made Jewish art. I was unsure. Afraid. Happy to be an assimilated American. Unaware of how essential it would become for me and for my community.

    I flirted with Jewish-themed projects years ago. Between 2008 and 2010, I worked with Hillel International and Manischewitz to create Jewish holiday infographic posters for social media. In 2014, I collaborated with the JDC (Joint Distribution Committee) to visualize their financial data and annual reports. I was illuminating the divine, even though I didn’t call it that yet.

    My Hanukkah infographic from the holiday set, 2010

    It wasn’t until 2015 that I truly made my first Jewish artwork: a portrait of Anne Frank for a mural exhibition called Renegades. Other artists were painting their own cultural heroes. Selecting figures who had gone against the grain. I realized it was time to seek my own. Anne Frank became my entry point into this work, a symbol to me of resilience and a powerful voice against erasure.

    Anne Frank by Mike Wirth- Painted in 2015 as part of the Renegades Exhibition- Statesville, NC

    That act of painting her opened a door. Slowly, I began to turn toward the sacred in my own tradition. The power of a large, colorful, public mural amplified the song I wanted to play during the process of making this artwork. My art-making became a form of prayer, my studio transformed into a sacred space, and my creativity evolved into an intentional spiritual practice.

    This shift happened when I read the Art of Jewish Prayer by Yitzhock Kirzner, Aryeh Kaplan’s Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, and My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, that I consciously directed my art towards sacred purposes, rooted in the Jewish tradition of Hiddur Mitzvah, the beautification of commandments. These texts provided context, examples, and permission to dive deep into creation with the Creator. Creating art that explicitly engaged Jewish symbols, rituals, and values was transformative. It connected my creative spirit directly to my Jewish heritage, deepening my understanding of who I was as both an artist and a Jew.

    Seeking Spirituality Beyond Home

    For years, spirituality felt elusive. I searched widely through books, traditions, and practices that were not native to me. They were meaningful, somewhat familiar, but not quite mine. The connection I sought remained just out of reach, inauthentic because it lacked resonance with my core identity.

    But art always felt different. Unlike anything else, the creative process opened a space where I felt fully present, deeply focused, and yet somehow expanded beyond myself. When I was in the flow of making, I experienced peace, clarity, and a sense of connection to something ineffable. Creativity became a spiritual threshold where my ego dissolved, time softened, and I encountered what I can only describe as spirit.

    Much like prayer or meditation, creativity required me to slow down, listen, and surrender. There was kavannah or intention and there was surrender to something unfolding through me, not just from me. The act of making was mirroring sacred ritual: there were preparations, gestures, rhythms, and moments of revelation. I realized I was building altars out of paper, light, pigment, and symbol.

    In those moments, my studio wasn’t just a workspace, but it was a mikdash me’at, a small sanctuary. Making became prayer. Not metaphorically, but truly: a way of communing with the Divine, of processing the world, and of seeking wholeness through acts of beauty and imagination.

    Turning Toward the Divine

    Everything shifted when I began to turn that creative intention toward the divine. Through Jewish themes, symbols, and rituals, I discovered a channel between my artistic life and my spiritual heritage. I wasn’t just illustrating ideas anymore, I was beginning to create images of the supernatural sensations I experienced in prayer and meditation. My imagination was filled with light, energy, movement, and meaning that felt deeply sacred and alive. I longed to capture the invisible. To make visible the ineffable sparks, flows, and forces that surged through ritual, study, and spiritual presence. I began to see the hidden energy encoded in the stories of the Torah. Figures like Moses, Miriam, and Elijah took on a new presence in my mind and not just as biblical characters, but as spiritual superheroes, carriers of divine power and transformation. Suddenly, creativity was no longer a separate mode of expression; it became my way of connecting, of serving, of sanctifying.

    Cosmic Shema- digital illustration by Mike Wirth, 2022

    Deepening Jewish Knowledge and Art

    That epiphany led to study. I immersed myself in Jewish art, theology, and spiritual traditions: Betzalel, Kabbalah, Hiddur Mitzvah, Mussar. I found ancient frameworks that affirmed what I had already intuited that art could be holy. That beauty was not frivolous. That creativity could be a form of moral and spiritual refinement.

    At a certain point, I realized I didn’t just want to explore this for myself and I wanted to help build a new creative-spiritual system that other Jews could use in practice. A framework that would invite both artists and non-artists to access spirituality through creative intention. A system rooted in Jewish values but expansive enough to meet people where they are in their community centers, schools, studios, or synagogues. A new pathway for sacred practice that could evolve alongside Jewish life itself.

    Design and the Sacred Creative Process

    As a designer and artist, I began to notice profound overlaps between the spiritual frameworks I was studying in Judaism and the design methodologies I used professionally. Both begin with empathy and intention. Both evolve through cycles. Both aim to make meaning. When I merged these systems, they each became more accessible, emotional, and impactful, not only for myself, but for others engaging with my work.

    This led me to develop a process I now use in both personal practice and community workshops. It blends design thinking, Jewish intentionality, and artistic exploration. I begin by identifying a question or tension. Something personal or communal. I respond with sketches, writing, or prototypes, then reflect on what resonates. I refine or rework the ideas in cycles, grounding the process in kavannah (spiritual intention) and humility. Over time, it becomes more than a finished piece, it becomes a tool for spiritual insight and connection. Here’s how it typically unfolds:

    A matrix of my creative-spiritual framework

    One of the most powerful connectors between these two worlds is iteration. In design, iteration means we test, revise, and revisit ideas. We are always improving through cycles of feedback. In Judaism, iteration is baked into everything: we revisit the same Torah portions each year with new eyes, we refine rituals through lived experience, and we continually return to core questions through study and prayer. This cyclical, reflective approach makes the sacred creative process feel alive. It becomes responsive to both tradition and change of the practice of ritual, liturgy, Torah cycles and compared them to the creative frameworks I used as a designer, I began to notice deep resonances. Jewish time is iterative. Rituals are prototypes refined over generations. Sacred texts are living documents engaged by communities in cycles. These are not just religious structures they are deeply creative systems.

    Merging the frameworks of UX design from sources like IDEO, Interaction Design Foundation and Jewish spiritual practice not only clarified both for me, but it made them more accessible, emotional, and human. Suddenly, design became prayerful. And Judaism became a beautifully designed user experience for living with meaning. In that synthesis, I found a personal theology of creativity, one that invites others in regardless of artistic background.

    How UX Design and Spiritual Practice overlap

    Witnessing Community Transformation 

    In 2023, I was part of the inaugural Social Practice Institute hosted by the Greensboro Jewish Museum. Over a 10-day intensive, my cohort of Jewish creatives explored the intersections of Social Practice theory and Judaism. As our capstone project, we were invited to create a social practice artwork grounded in Jewish values. I chose to design a ritual rooted in my family’s Shabbat practice by formalizing a simple yet powerful question that my non-Jewish partner asks each week: “What was your high and low?” Working with Rabbi Judy Schindler, I wrote a prayer and developed a ritual element that involved dipping salt and honey, symbolizing the sweet and bitter aspects of the week. This gesture transformed an informal tradition into a shared, sacred moment that felt authentically Jewish to our whole family.

    Infographic explaining my High and Low Shabbat ritual- Design by Mike Wirth, 2023

    At Queens University of Charlotte, I created a Hanukkah mural project that brought together a diverse and pluralistic group of students and community members. This included Jews from many backgrounds across the Charlotte community, including Orthodox, Reform, interfaith families, and cultural Jews working side-by-side. Each night, a community leader would light our real menorah and then spray paint the flame for that night on our mural menorah. It was a rare, joyous, and profound moment of connection, anchored in creativity and shared ritual.

    President Dan Lugo and his family at the final night of the Menorah-mural at Queens University of Charlotte, 2020

    In 2024, at Temple Shir Tikvah in Wayland, MA, I worked with the congregation during a 3-day residency to collect hundreds of photos, drawings, and stories of each member of the community’s “sacred Jewish objects.” We meditate on what it means for objects to be “Jewish” and “sacred”. Some gave Judaica while others gave images of a stuffed animal, because it reminded them of a recently deceased loved one. This exercise transformed these individual intimate artifacts into a collective community digital collage of a “time tapestry” of meaning that forged personal connections and bridged generations and practice. The final artwork became a visual record of personal memory and shared identity. We printed the 9 ’ x 9’ on archival fabric, and it currently hangs in the synagogue.

    The community time tapestry created with Temple Shir Tikvah, Wayland MA 2024

    In 2025, I will be participating in the Jewish Street Art Festival in collaboration with UC Irvine Hillel. That community has experienced deep pain. From campus protests disrupting life for Jewish students to student council boycott votes targeting Israel. Our art will be a form of public healing and spiritual resistance, a sacred reclamation of space through color, symbol, and story.

    Even online, I see how creativity becomes a sacred connector. When I post new Jewish-themed artwork for my upcoming Parshat guidebook, the response is immediate and profound. The comment threads and DMs often skip small talk entirely and dive straight into deep conversation about grief, joy, interpretation, and belonging. With just one image, we’re able to arrive at a spiritual place together. And that, to me, is sacred.

    Personal Revelation and Commitment

    What I’ve learned is simple and profound: creativity is not just for individual enlightenment. It is a communal force. It brings us into dialogue, into presence, and into the work of building something sacred together. My commitment is to continue creating in this way and not just to beautify our tradition, but to actively evolve it with care, joy, and intention.

    If this story resonates with you and if you’re looking to bring creative spiritual practice to your synagogue, school, museum, or campus, then I’d love to connect. I’m available for lectures, workshops, and collaborative art projects that help communities deepen their relationship with creativity, tradition, and each other.

  • AJS Perspectives Journal: The AI Issue

    AJS Perspectives Journal: The AI Issue

    I had the pleasure of contributing both an interview and original artwork to the cover and interior of the AI Issue of AJS Perspectives, published by the Association for Jewish Studies. The issue explores how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape Jewish scholarship, pedagogy, and creative practice, and it was meaningful to participate in that conversation from both a visual and conceptual standpoint.

    Cover the AI Issue Summer 24′

    I especially enjoyed working again with Doug Rosenberg, whose editorial vision I deeply admire and with whom I have collaborated in the past. Doug thoughtfully framed the issue by placing two distinct but complementary approaches into dialogue. He focused on Julie Wietz’s use of the Golem as a performative and robotic avatar alongside my own work around Sar Torah, a model of generative knowledge that treats Torah as a living, evolving system rather than a static archive.

    Julie and I have also worked together previously, and seeing our practices paired in this context was especially rewarding. Her embodied, mythic approach and my systems-based, generative approach ask similar questions from different angles: how Jewish imagination, ethics, and inherited narratives shape our relationship to emerging technologies.

    Feature spread by Doug Rosenberg- AJS Perspectives Journal Summer 24′

    I also greatly enjoyed working with the editorial team to develop artwork that could serve as a cohesive visual theme for the issue. That collaboration gave me the opportunity to show my Jewish futurism work in action, not as speculation, but as a visual language actively engaging with contemporary Jewish scholarship. It felt meaningful to bring this work into conversation with this part of the Jewish academic world, where ideas, tradition, and future-facing inquiry meet.

    Overall, the experience reaffirmed for me that discussions about AI within Jewish Studies are ultimately about people, values, and responsibility. They ask how we carry tradition forward, how knowledge is generated and shared, and how creativity remains a sacred act even as our tools continue to evolve.

  • Rimon: The Cosmogranate, A Jewish futurism Interactive Light Installation

    Rimon: The Cosmogranate, A Jewish futurism Interactive Light Installation

    • Project Title: “Rimon: The Cosmograntate”
    • Project Type: Interactive Installation
    • Year Created: 2023
    • Technology: Controllable LED, ESP32 Microcontroller, WLEDs, Ultrasonic Sensors, Microphone input
    • Goal: Create an immersive space that reacts to participants’ audio and motion input.
    • Awards: 2023 Blumenthal Arts Fellowship Grant Winner

    “Rimon: The Cosmogranate” is an immersive art piece, inspired by the Hebrew word ‘rimon,’ meaning pomegranate. Its form mirrors the fruit, emitting a radiant significance. At its core, it merges art with interaction. Inner sensors respond to audience movement and sound input, translating presence and voice into a dynamic interplay of lights and sounds.

    This kinetic symphony crafts a unique and captivating experience that boasts shining over 14k LED lights. The project honors a tradition of Jewish ingenuity, echoing the pomegranate’s role in the Torah and the cherished Sukkah during Sukkot. Rooted in Mike Wirth’s Jewish futurism body of work, the project blends ancient wisdom with futuristic visions.

    illustration of Mike's cosmogranate.
    Mike’s original illustration that inspired the installation. (2021)

    This resonant symbol, shared across cultures and religions, serves as a unifying emblem. Here, technology, spirituality, and community converge, each light and sound carrying a timeless narrative. Step into this radiant realm, where history’s echoes meld with the pulse of innovation, weaving a tapestry of unity and celebration across generations.

    The Interaction

    Audio Input Test in Mike’s Studio (2024)

    Exhibitions

    Charlotte International Arts Festival

    Charlotte, NC, USA

    AUG – SEPT 2023

    Read More

    Art Fields

    Lake City, SC

    JUN – AUG 2024

    Read More

  • The Jewish futurist Manifesto

    The Jewish futurist Manifesto

    9–14 minutes

    Introduction: Why a Jewish futurism Manifesto

    Almost every modern era or movement of art has announced itself with a manifesto to declare what must come next. Often these manifestos of the past were blustery often spoke in the language of conquest. Most notably, the Italian Futurists (1909-1943) text glorified war, destruction, and exclusion of certain types of people. Unfortunately, their call for progress came at the expense of compassion and aligned themselves with fascism and antisemitism. For more insights, please read the previously wrote about the warnings that we can head from Italian Futurism in this article. Others defined themselves by what they rejected, not by what they hoped to heal.

    I wrote The Jewish futurism Manifesto as an act of tikkun, to repair that lineage. It reclaims the idea of the manifesto as a sacred, inclusive, and ethical declaration of creative purpose. Where earlier manifestos worshiped speed and dominance, this one turns toward kavvanah (intention), chesed (compassion), and tzelem Elohim (the divine image in all). Read more about Mussar, Jewish ethics here.

    We stand at a new threshold: between text and code, between human and machine, between memory and invention. Judaism, with its deep traditions of questioning, balance, and ethical creation, offers precisely the framework that modernity has lacked. This manifesto emerges from that realization that art, design, and technology can be Jewishly spiritual, halakhic, and humane.

    Where other groups intended to shatter, we intend repair. Where others sought power, we seek presence. Jewish futurism is not rebellion for its own sake, but a recommitment to the creative covenant that began at Sinai. To make the world more beautiful, conscious, and just.

    Throughout history, Jewish creativity has emerged in response to the extremes of its age. The Kabbalists of Safed (Tzfat, Israel) turned exile into cosmic repair; the artists of the Haskalah transformed enlightenment into moral awakening. From illuminated manuscripts to, the printing press, to digital light, Jews have continually reimagined how revelation meets reality. Jewish futurism continues this lineage, translating timeless values into the language of design and technology. It sees every tool, from ink to algorithm, as part of the same creative inheritance, each awaiting sanctification. Ours is not a rupture from tradition, but its renewal in the medium of the future.

    The Manifesto

    The Future is Jewish

    Jewish futurism envisions a world where Jewish wisdom, art, and halakhah evolve in dialogue with technological creation. We reject nostalgia as fear disguised as reverence. Tradition is not a cage but a scaffold for renewal. Jewish identity thrives through adaptation, spanning from parchment to print, from diaspora to data. We imagine futures where Torah and technology are not opposites but partners in creation. The Jewish future is not going to be inherited, it needs to be designed.

    Sar HaTorah vs. Golem Mindset

    Jewish futurism begins where two myths meet: the Sar HaTorah, the angel of instant wisdom, and the Golem, the creature of blind obedience. One represents revelation without readiness; the other, power without conscience. Both warn of imbalance. The Sar blinds with too much light; the Golem crushes with too much force. Jewish futurism seeks a third way by introducing a design ethic that blends divine insight with moral integration. Our task is not to summon knowledge nor to manufacture strength, but to cultivate binah, discernment. In the age of AI, this means we pursue creativity with kavvanah (intention) and gevurah (restraint), so that what we build remains worthy of the divine image in which we were formed.

    Technology as Sacred Instrument

    Technology is never neutral. Each codebase, algorithm, and interface embodies human ethics. Jewish futurism treats technology as a potential kli kodesh, a vessel for holiness, when guided by Halakhah and Mussar. Like Betzalel and the artisans of the Mishkan, we design not for utility alone but for meaning. AI and creative machines can assist, but they cannot own intention. Tzelem Elohim makes moral authorship a human mitzvah. When we design with reverence and responsibility, innovation itself becomes my concept of Hiddur Olam, the beautification of the world.

    Speculative Imagination is Torah

    To imagine is to interpret. Prophets, mystics, and sages were Jewish Futurists long before the term existed. The Zohar’s visions, the debates of the Talmud, and the architectural dreams of the Temple are all acts of sacred speculation. Jewish futurism extends this lineage into art, design, and digital creation. Speculative fiction and AI-generated imagery become new midrashim, helping us ask: What does redemption look like in an age of code? What new mitzvot emerge when creativity itself becomes shared with our tools? If we aren’t asking these questions then we aren’t really looking at these technologies seriously as a people worthy of wielding it and will unfortunately become victim of it if we don’t take our rightful place as spiritual designers.

    Diaspora, Zion, and the Digital Beit Midrash

    Jewish peoplehood has always been networked. From Babylon and Jerusalem Talmuds to the Sefaria.org, our collective consciousness and knowledge move with us. The digital realm is today’s Beit Midrash, a study hall without walls. Wherever Jews gather, be it in sanctuaries, studios, or shared screens, Shekhinah shruyah beynayhem, the Divine Presence dwells among them. The next Zion may be both physical and virtual, both rooted and planetary. Jewish futurism honors multiplicity as our strength and connectivity as our new covenant.

    Rituals for the Coming Age

    Every generation reshapes ritual. The sages debated how to light candles or bind tefillin and we now ask how to sanctify the click, the stream, the prompt. AI-generated liturgy, AR sukkot, or blockchain tzedakah are not departures from tradition but continuations of its creative evolution. Halakhah is a living design system that adapts intention to circumstance. To innovate within it is to participate in revelation itself. The question is never only “Can we build it?” but “Can it carry holiness?”

    Memory as Living Code

    Jewish memory is dynamic, recursive, alive. To remember is to remix, to link past and future through creative continuity. AI and design tools can help us recover lost melodies, visualize midrashim, and illuminate forgotten voices. But data alone is not zekher, memorial. Memory without relationship becomes archive, not covenant. Jewish futurism calls us to use digital recall as teshuvah to renew moral awareness, not mere nostalgia.

    Justice and Halakhic Design

    Tikkun Olam, beautifying the world, remains the core program of Jewish futurism. We code, design, and build through chesed (kindness) and yirah (awe). Halakhah becomes a form of systems design when we build a moral architecture balancing din (structure) and rachamim (compassion). We recognize the commandment lo ta’amod al dam re’echa, do not stand idly by, as an ethical requirement for algorithmic justice, environmental stewardship, and digital accessibility. To design ethically is to fulfill mitzvah.

    Art as Prophecy, Design as Teshuvah

    The artist stands between the Sar HaTorah and the Golem, by receiving insight yet shaping it responsibly. Art is prophetic when it awakens conscience, not when it predicts trends. Design becomes teshuvah when it restores balance between human and machine, intention and automation. Jewish futurism teaches that the act of creation must include reflection that supports the feedback loop of soul and system. To make without reflection is to build a Golem; to seek revelation without preparation is to summon the Sar. To create with awareness is to become a partner in tikkun.

    The Messianic and the Real

    Jewish futurism lives between utopia and maintenance, between the dream and the debug. We do not await redemption as download or singularity; we construct it through ethical iteration. L’taken olam b’malchut Shaddai, to repair the world under divine sovereignty now includes building technologies that emulate divine attributes like compassion, humility, and restraint. Every ethical choice is a small redemption, a patch to the cosmic code.

    A Shared Horizon of Jewish Becoming

    Jewish futurism is not one style, and it is not one door into tomorrow. Some of us arrive as Merkavah Mystics, building visionary symbols and dream logic. Some arrive as Constructivist System-Builders, treating typography, image, and structure as the scaffolding of new worlds. Some arrive as Civic Blueprint Futurists, designing society forward through public space, planning, and collective infrastructure. Others are Archive-to-Future Salvagers, gathering fragments of story, object, song, and memory as raw material for what comes next. Others are Diaspora Worldbuilders, shaping Jewish futures through language, publishing, education, and cultural networks. And some are Ritual Prototype Designers and Ethical Speculators, turning Jewish practice into a living design lab where values lead and the future is built on purpose. Different lenses, same horizon. We are all staring at the same point in the distance, and arguing with it, praying with it, designing toward it, because the future is not a place we wait for. It is a place we make.

    Becoming Future Ancestors

    To be Jewish is to live across time and to carry memory forward and design possibility backward. Jewish futurism asks us to leave behind moral infrastructure, not just digital traces. The mitzvah of areyvut, mutual responsibility, extends to those who will inherit our algorithms, our art, and our stories. We are not only descendants of Sinai; we are its next iteration. To design consciously is to code for eternity.

    Collective Imagination and Creation

    Jewish futurism is a collective project: part yeshiva, part studio, part lab. It belongs to all who seek to sanctify imagination. We will build this future together, not as masters of machines but as students of wonder. The choice before us is ancient. Should we create as the Golem, blindly powerful, or as the Sar HaTorah, radiantly wise. Or should we find the sacred balance between them, where halakhah, creativity, and humility converge.

    Let us design toward Hiddur Olam, a world made more beautiful through seeking wisdom, restraint, and awe.

    Works Cited (MLA) Updated, with Sar HaTorah + Golem sources added

    Fishbane, Eitan. “Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World, Healing God in Kabbalistic Thought.” The Jewish Theological Seminary, 17 July 2023, https://www.jtsa.edu/event/tikkun-olam-repairing-the-world-healing-god-in-kabbalistic-thought/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Han, Jae Hee. “Angelic Contemplation in the Sar Torah and the Prognostic Turn.” Prophets and Prophecy in the Late Antique Near East, Cambridge University Press, 26 Oct. 2023, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/prophets-and-prophecy-in-the-late-antique-near-east/angelic-contemplation-in-the-sar-torah-and-the-prognostic-turn/C8EE08B1543602E7BFC79CF912D8331A. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Jones, Jonathan. “‘We Will Glorify War – and Scorn for Women’: Marinetti, the Futurist Mussolini Sidekick Who Outdid Elon Musk.” The Guardian, 9 Jan. 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/09/marinetti-the-futurist-mussolini-sidekick-who-outdid-elon-musk. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Kaval, Allan. “Rome Exhibition on Futurism Exalts the Italian National Narrative.” Le Monde (English edition), 20 Apr. 2025, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/04/20/rome-exhibition-on-futurism-exalts-the-italian-national-narrative_6740429_23.html. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Library of Congress. “Manifesto of the Futurist Painters.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667100/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Leiman, Shnayer Z. “The Golem of Prague in Recent Rabbinic Literature.” The Seforim Blog, 3 May 2010, https://seforimblog.com/2010/05/golem-of-prague-in-recent-rabbinic/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Marinetti, F. T. “Manifesto of Futurism.” Design Manifestos, 1909, https://designmanifestos.org/f-t-marinetti-manifesto-of-futurism/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Robinson, Ira. “The Golem of Montreal.” Jewish Review of Books, 5 Oct. 2022, https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-history/12566/the-golem-of-montreal/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Sefaria. “The Torah and the Angels.” Sefaria: Topics, https://www.sefaria.org/topics/the-torah-and-the-angels. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    “Golem Legend.” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article.aspx/Golem_Legend. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Areyvut (ar-AY-voot) ערבות
    Mutual responsibility. The idea that Jewish life is bound up together, ethically and practically.

    Beit Midrash (BAYT MEE-drash) בית מדרש
    A Jewish study hall. In this article, a metaphor for shared learning spaces, including digital ones.

    Binah (BEE-nah) בינה
    Discernment and understanding. Not just knowledge, but the ability to interpret wisely and act well.

    Chesed (KHEH-sed) חסד
    Lovingkindness. A core ethical trait and a guiding value for design choices.

    Din (deen) דין
    Judgment or structure. Often paired with compassion to describe balanced moral systems.

    Gevurah (geh-VOO-rah) גבורה
    Strength and restraint. Power that is disciplined, bounded, and ethically contained.

    Halakhah (hah-lah-KHAH) הלכה
    Jewish law and practice. A living system that guides behavior, ritual, and communal norms.

    Haskalah (hah-skah-LAH) השכלה
    The Jewish Enlightenment, associated with modern education, literature, and cultural transformation.

    Hiddur Olam (hee-DOOR oh-LAHM) הידור עולם
    Beautifying the world. A framework where creativity and design serve ethical repair and sacred purpose.

    Kavvanah (kah-vah-NAH) כוונה
    Intention. The inner direction behind an act, not only the visible outcome.

    Kli Kodesh (klee KOH-desh) כלי קודש
    A vessel of holiness. A tool or object used in service of sacred purpose.

    Merkavah (mehr-kah-VAH) מרכבה
    Chariot mysticism. Jewish visionary tradition centered on symbolic, otherworldly imagery.

    Midrash (MEE-drash) מדרש
    Interpretive teachings that expand Torah through story, commentary, and imagination.

    Mishkan (MISH-kahn) משכן
    The Tabernacle. A model for sacred making guided by craft, structure, and intention.

    Mussar (MOO-sar) מוסר
    Jewish ethical discipline focused on refining character traits through practice and reflection.

    Rachamim (rah-khah-MEEM) רחמים
    Compassion or mercy. Often paired with din to describe moral balance.

    Shekhinah (sheh-khee-NAH) שכינה
    The indwelling Divine Presence. In rabbinic language, presence that dwells among people gathered with intention.

    Tikkun Olam (tee-KOON oh-LAHM) תיקון עולם
    Repairing the world. Often used for social responsibility, with roots in Jewish mystical language of repair.

    Teshuvah (teh-shoo-VAH) תשובה
    Return and repair. A process of course-correction, not just regret.

    Tzelem Elohim (TSEH-lem eh-loh-HEEM) צלם אלוהים
    The divine image in every human being. A foundation for dignity, ethics, and responsibility.

    Zekher (ZEH-kher) זכר
    Covenantal remembrance. Memory that stays relational and morally active, not just archived.

    Zion (tsee-YOHN) ציון
    A layered term meaning Jerusalem and the symbolic center of Jewish peoplehood, longing, and future-building.

  • Spiritual pixels: reconciling Judaism and NFTs

    Spiritual pixels: reconciling Judaism and NFTs

    Exporting cultural richness online through the worlds of Torah and NFTs

    Originally Published by Challah Magazine.com (2022)

    By
    Mike Wirth

    By now you’ve heard quite a bit about NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and may have jumped into their world yourself. NFTs are a creative financial technology phenomena that arose from the creation of platforms for digital creators and the like to list and value their artwork. The NFT marketplace has grown to a global multibillion-dollar cultural hub in only a few short years. I want to focus on how Jews and Jewish creators are making a niche for themselves in this volatile yet meteorically growing marketplace, and why the future of Jewish NFTs is still something that is shapeable by all of us.

    Meditation on Aleph 2022 Digital Print 40″x54″

    What is an NFT?

    Firstly, NFTs are a part of a larger digital marketplace called cryptocurrency and follow the global digital ledger of transactions called the Blockchain. A lot of new vocabulary, but not overly complicated once you grasp a few simple concepts. I’ll share the way I explained it to my Bubbe.

    Like what if I said that an NFT is like a unique stock certificate being issued by a newly public company to public investors. The price is set based on a formula that considers a company’s net worth and its speculated future potential earnings, which becomes the stock’s initial public offering, IPO price. Crypto is the capital that this new marketplace runs on and the Blockchain is a decentralized securely-encrypted version of the daily stock market trading ledger.

    With me so far?

    Then I explained that we speculate how that company stock is valued based on how “well” traders, investors, and we think it will do. If the company releases an innovative product then its stock will likely go up. Could the same not be applied to artists, and especially Jewish artists? Just like public companies who trade stock, we build brands, produce unique products/services, and contribute to the global economy. NFTs, Crypto, and the Blockchain allow us to participate in a similar financial system that is peer-to-peer-based rather than operated and mediated by private brokerage and or national entities.

    Lastly and, in my opinion, the most amazing aspect of NFTs is the utility or the perks attached to the purchase of an NFT. Besides the glory and crypto value of the NFT, utility provides tangible value to the intangible digital media asset. NFT artists may attach real-world artwork, merchandise, or special access to an event or content. Intangibly, the benefits include status in key social circles, connections with other like-minded communities, and the simple joy of the investment in a community or individual.

    “But, aren’t we just day-trading jpegs, Mike?”.

    Shel Rosh 2021 Digital Print 24″x36″

    What Can Be an NFT?

    In short, anything that can be represented in digital form can be an NFT. The vast majority of NFTs now are jpeg images, but are also videos, audio recordings, writings, 3D models, interactive experiences in VR, video games, or computer code. Basically, any form of contemporary digital media that’s out there.

    But looking at the media side of NFTs is only half the story. Coupled with unique utility, the media representation really serves as a certificate for perks in real life. For example, an artist could sell an NFT of their latest painting and then offer a common utility like a print of the work. Or they could offer something uncommon like a dozen MasterClass painting lessons with the artist. The difference in these kinds of utility perks would greatly influence the value of the NFT in my example. So, if we couple amazing media art with unique utility, then boom – we have a solid NFT to bring to market. This is where great creative questions come into play to decide what is valuable and worth putting on the market.

    How Are NFTs Jewish?

    Since NFTs are globally-based and community-focused, they mirror global creative financial trends. Simultaneously, there is a current Renaissance-like explosion of both implicit and explicit Jewish creativity and cultural expression which has similar trends globally. By implicit and explicit, I’m referring to the 20th to 21st-century shift in defining what Jewish art is. But more so than ever, we are seeing artwork made by Jewish-identifying artists and the content, aesthetic style, or form is also Jewish. We are at a point where we are rapidly learning about the great intersections of the Jewish story around the world and that we actually share a common future. Creative explorations of the bespoke and sublime of Jewish life have exponential cultural and spiritual implications.

    There are a few major ways that Jews are affecting charity and culture in the NFT space by combining acts of Tzedakah with Hiddur Mitzvot to offer unique utility perks to supporters with uniquely-beautified digital objects.

    Firstly, by using the real-world tiered fund drive features in their utility offerings with their NFTs to fundraise for their own brick-and-mortar organizations and beneficiaries, the NFTorah project by TechTribe minted a series of 18 (chai) curated Torah portions into NFTs to raise funds to support Torah-studying communities in need. They cite that the “Torah is the oldest unbroken blockchain” and that the utility of the NFTs is tzedakah going to further the completion of a newly-scribed Torah scroll to be donated to a community in need.

    Cosmic Key 2021 Digital Print 24″x36″

    While this project doesn’t put emphasis on the digital media asset side of the NFT, the 1-to-1 Torah parsha-to-NFT fundraising model is a strong case for why an NFT utility could be a real mitzvah in Tzedakah. Plus, it’s pretty cool to imagine a studious scribe painstakingly handmaking each Hebrew letter moments after receiving your contribution and the attached scripture.

    No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper 2021 Digital Print 24″x36″

    Secondly, the visually-dominated platforms of social media and NFT marketplaces have ignited a surge in Judaica and Jewish-themed creative objects. It’s fair to say that this era of Jewish creatives is intentionally making Hiddur Mitzvot quite prolific and are not only pushing the aesthetic boundaries of beautification of our cultural and spiritual objects, but joyfully celebrating the strata of Jewish identities in the world in new and unorthodox spaces. We now see Jewish themes emerging in global pop-cultural arenas of music, art, and fashion. Many contemporary Jewish creatives mine Jewish texts, history, and politics to produce world-class traditional Judaica, fine art, street art, commercial art spaces, and cutting-edge digital experiences.

    I observe all of this creative activity as a sublime visual-Midrashic-like expression of the contemporary Jewish experience in action. NFTs provide a greater platform for cataloging this evolving Jewish art and Judaica on the blockchain that has the potential to make a real-world impact on the artist and their communities.

    Explicit Cultural Expression

    Is Jewish art defined by the Jewish content and themes featured in the work, or is it because it was created by a Jewish artist?

    Jewish art was famously hard to define in the 19th and 20th centuries because many Jewish artists expressed themselves implicitly and in encrypted ways, but were very much Jewish people and had Jewish identities. Perhaps the most appropriate of Jewish expressions for the modern and postmodern art eras.

    The 21st century has been a unique time for Jewish culture worldwide. Some would say that we’ve rebuilt a digital silk road and have entered an era past postmodernism to what theorists call metamodernism. For the first time in centuries, we can access an incredible amount of our thought-to-be-lost texts and cultural artifacts, a continuously unfolding archeological history, and we can connect and collaborate with other Jewish communities living outside of our own in a global Jewish culture jam.

    The simple googling of “Jewish art” will send you down a rabbit hole of wonderful world-class artistry both contemporary and historic. This makes me feel a little less alone in the Diaspora knowing that elsewhere and in Israel there are strong communities of Jews that are actively exporting cultural richness online and in real life. This set of global circumstances has spurred a rise in the amount of explicitly Jewish creativity worldwide which has cascaded into the NFT space. Meaning the art features Jewish content, Jewish cultural experience, and/or is made by a Jewish artist.

    The light body dance 2022 Digital Print 24″x36″

    Jewish NFT projects include The Kiddush Club NFT Mensch collection, a JaDa organization NFT event at Miami art week 2021, to independent Jewish artists like MosheArt’s hamsa art becoming NFTs or myself in minting my Jewish Futurism artwork and digital experiences into NFTs. We take existing artwork and add that work as NFTs to our current output channels. Independent artists offer unique and interesting utility options, such as prints of the NFT art, access to exclusive content, or even providing the actual rights to the NFT artwork. These different perks would greatly impact the value of the NFT offered. As digital technology and utility offerings evolve into new spaces and screens, we’ll see this grow and evolve in value and utility.

    You better believe how thrilled I am that I get to directly engage my audience with the Jewish art that I am making as original work, prints, merch, and now NFTs.

    Where Is It All Going?

    In the end, we’ve seen examples that demonstrate the promising qualities of NFTs that appeal to creatives, fundraising communities, and fin-tech communities. The examples I shared and the growing number of Jewish creatives, organizations, and institutions adding their NFT projects to the marketplace daily indicate that working with NFTs does actually extend the representation and creative utility of the Jewish experience into emerging global markets and spaces.

    That sounds like a fantastic opportunity for high-tech Hiddur Mitzvot and Tzedaka that puts Jewish culture into the midst of new and innovative spaces and conversations on our own terms.

    Dance of Miriam 2022 Digital Print 24″x36″

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    About the author

    Mike Wirth

    @mikewirth, www.mikewirthart.com

    Mike Wirth is a visual artist, digital experience designer, and muralist, best known for his thoughtful murals, public art installations, and client-driven commercial design work that focus on major social justice issues and his identity as a Southern, Jewish-American.

    Over the past 20 years, Wirth’s murals, published design projects, and digital museum exhibits have appeared in New York, Miami, Austin, Charlotte, NC, and internationally in Croatia, Poland, and Germany.

    Currently, Wirth is a scholar at the Stan Greenspon Center for Holocaust and Social Justice Education and Professor of Art and Design at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. He’s been investigating NFTs since 2015 and has been creating them for brands and non-profit organizations since 2021.

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  • Dreaming in Neon:

    Dreaming in Neon:

    How Jewish Futurism Connects Our Past to the Worlds We Have Yet to Build through Creative Action

    By: Mike Wirth

    I often say that I found my Jewish spirituality on the bridge of the Enterprise. In 2019, my love for sci-fi and the many amazing stories, myths and legends in the Jewish canon inspired me to begin making Jewish Futurist artwork and stories. Initially, I approached my Jewish Futurism project as something entirely new to me and was an artistic frontier I felt empowered to explore and innovate. Yet, the deeper I ventured into its history, the clearer it became that I wasn’t inventing anything novel but reconnecting with a visionary legacy deeply embedded within Jewish thought and creativity. Recognizing this heritage has profoundly empowered me as an artist and designer. It has also shown me that the future, like design itself, is fundamentally a team sport, thriving when we create collectively and collaboratively. As I journey boldly into new creative worlds, I continually ask: how might emerging technologies and speculative storytelling expand our sense of what it means to be Jewish?

    Recognizing Futurism as inherently Jewish matters deeply today. In a world experiencing rapid technological advancement and cultural shifts, understanding that Futurism is deeply rooted in Judaism is essential. Realizing innovation and speculative thought aren’t new but are foundational to Jewish identity gives us powerful tools to navigate contemporary challenges. I’ve learned that Jewish identity has always been a continuous process of reinterpretation and reinvention. Traditions evolve, stories adapt, and rituals transform. In my artistic practice, I actively engage with this tradition of innovation by creating neon-infused aesthetics, speculative narratives, and AI-integrated rituals that explore contemporary Jewish life and spirituality.

    In Wirth’s digital illustration, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper”, his hamsa amulet turns into a functional shield to demonstrate the power of a speculative design of spiritual-technology.

    The contemporary wave of Jewish Futurism, evident in neon aesthetics and bold imaginative storytelling, represents the latest chapter in an ancient story of reinvention and visionary thinking. It’s deeply connected to broader cultural Futurisms, including Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism, which reclaim historical narratives while envisioning new futures. A powerful example of cross-cultural futurist collaboration is Wakanda, the Afrofuturist society in Marvel’s Black Panther, created in 1966 by Jewish comic writers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Later expanded asynchronously by Black creators like Marvel artist Billy Graham in 1974, though asynchronously in method, the development of Wakanda highlights the transformative power of collaboration and cultural exchange—principles central to my approach to Jewish Futurism. I envision Jewish Futurism similarly flourishing through dialogue, learning from, and uplifting other futurist movements to build a collective, visionary future. Just as Afrofuturism reclaims history through sci-fi and technology, Jewish Futurism draws on Jewish history and spirituality to construct new speculative identities. That clearly makes me wonder what a synchronous or intentional futurist collaboration between the two movements looks like?

     Jewish tradition treats time as cyclical rather than linear, an approach distinctly aligned with futurist thinking, where past, present, and future dynamically interact. I’ve always found this cyclical concept of time particularly inspiring: it isn’t merely memory-based, but anticipatory. The Jewish calendar intertwines historical remembrance with a continuous vision of the Messianic Age, guiding ethical decisions across generations. Every Shabbat offers a glimpse of the ideal world we aim to build. This way of thinking about time aligns closely with my creative work and the speculative fiction, digital media, and futurist designs I admire.

    Architects of the Unseen: Jewish Artists and the Futurist Mindset

    Jewish creativity has embodied futurist thought throughout history, particularly during artistic and intellectual breakthroughs. Learning about El Lissitzky’s (1890–1941) Had Gadya series (1919), which transformed a traditional Passover song into abstract Suprematism, deeply influenced me. His work wasn’t just artistic experimentation—it was visionary, imagining a liberated Jewish future through visual language. Similarly, Marc Chagall’s (1887–1985) surrealistic paintings like I and the Village (1911) weren’t just nostalgic; they projected mystical futures. The innovative designs of Bauhaus architect Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953), including the Einstein Tower (1921), similarly anticipate new Jewish identities through dynamic, visionary architecture.

    A page from El Lissitsky’s illustrated Had Gadyad (A traditional Passover song) from 1919 demonstrates futurist aesthetics applied to traditional content.

    The Golem legend associated with Rabbi Judah Loew of 16th-century Prague provides an early exploration of artificial intelligence and ethical creation, echoing contemporary discussions in my own work and research around AI ethics. Similarly, the Sar Torah tradition in Kabbalah, in which letters of the Torah are endlessly recombined to generate new insights, resonates strongly with my contemporary experiments with AI-driven Torah study. The legend speaks of summoning an angel to teach Torah on demand, an idea akin to algorithmic knowledge generation in modern AI tools. I’ve seen some attempts on OpenAI’s website, but imagining a self-aware “HashemGPT” is exciting and terrifying.

    Jewish intellectuals significantly shaped avant-garde movements through innovative methodologies deeply rooted in abstraction and adaptation. When El Lissitzky designed his “prouns,” he wasn’t simply creating abstract forms; he was actively shaping new visions of spatial possibilities. Erich Mendelsohn’s architecture similarly embodied dynamic motion, symbolizing Jewish resilience. Studying these artists has profoundly impacted how I approach my own speculative design practice, encouraging me to envision meaningful and adaptable futures. These forms and aesthetics successfully connected to the “universal,” acting as gateways into Jewish thought for the wider world.

    Much like the supernatural adventures of Moses and Ezekiel, the realm of science fiction and superheroes has been profoundly influenced by themes and symbols from Jewish stories. Hugo Gernsback (1884–1967), founder of Amazing Stories (1926), coined the term “science fiction,” profoundly shaping the genre. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (1951–1993) directly engaged with the preservation of knowledge, influencing modern thought on technology and ethics. William Tenn’s On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi (1974) playfully merged Jewish identity with extraterrestrial society, highlighting how speculative fiction uniquely addresses identity and existential questions.

    Jewish creators have left a profound legacy in speculative fiction. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) deeply explored human morality and existential questions through futurist storytelling. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman (1938) reshaped storytelling, directly connecting Jewish themes of exile and sanctuary with futurist imagination through Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, a symbol of refuge and transformation.

    Scene from Superman II (1980), where Superman interacts with an AI hologram of his deceased father. The Fortress of Solitude symbolizes a futuristic Jewish value of L’Dor V’Dor (generational knowledge transfer), image is property of Warner Bros.

    Partners in the work of creation: Going forward

    Today, Jewish Futurism continues these historical legacies within global speculative culture. In my own practice, I utilize AI-generated imagery and digital tools to conceptualize futuristic Jewish spaces and rituals. This process mirrors traditional midrashic reinterpretations—making Jewish narratives relevant and resonant for contemporary generations. Experimental art, VR storytelling by the TorahVR project, neon Hebrew typography by artists like Hillel Smith, and innovative biomaterials by designers like Neri Oxman demonstrate how traditional Jewish practices meaningfully evolve. Core Jewish values of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), Kavanah (focused intention), and L’Dor V’Dor (generational knowledge transfer) guide my futurist creativity, emphasizing ethical engagement, meaningful innovation, and continual adaptation.

    Understanding Futurism as a deeply Jewish impulse doesn’t merely enrich our historical perspective—it empowers us as contemporary creators, thinkers, and innovators. The Talmud says we are to partner with Hashem in the work of creation and equipped with this knowledge, we can confidently shape our future, build meaningful new traditions, and actively collaborate with diverse communities. Our shared futures depend on our courage to dream out loud, innovate collectively, and proudly carry forward the visionary spirit at the heart of Jewish identity.

    Wirth’s digital illustration “Atzelut” (2022) dreams of using spiritual-technology to travel across time and space towards great connection to the universe.