Tag: jewish art

  • Episode 19 -Designing Shabbat: A UX Approach to Jewish Ritual Design

    Episode 19 -Designing Shabbat: A UX Approach to Jewish Ritual Design

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 19 -Designing Shabbat: A UX Approach to Jewish Ritual Design
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    In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth shares the story behind a UX‑driven case study in Jewish ritual. Mike talks about creating the High and Low Ritual at the Greensboro Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Social Practice Institute, and how that work led to speculative ritual objects like a geodesic sukkah dome, an experimental mezuzah, and a reimagined tallit. From there, he introduces a three‑layer framework of halakha, minhag, and design space that gives Jews clear parameters for responsible experimentation: know what’s non‑negotiable, what’s inherited custom, and what’s open for thoughtful play. Mike reflects on teaching this framework at Judaism Unbound’s Shavuot Live and previews his upcoming Lehrhaus class on speculative ritual design, ethics, and boundaries. Throughout, he argues that accessibility is not an add‑on but a core part of the mitzvah, and unfolds his evolving idea of “hiddur olam” , beautifying not just individual commandments, but the systems and worlds our rituals create.

  • Episode 18 – Here I Am: The Hineni Project, Bar Shechter z”l, and Painting Through Grief

    Episode 18 – Here I Am: The Hineni Project, Bar Shechter z”l, and Painting Through Grief

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 18 – Here I Am: The Hineni Project, Bar Shechter z”l, and Painting Through Grief
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    In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, I share how the Hineni Project carried me from the shock of October 7 into a deeply personal relationship with one family in Israel: the family of Bar Shechter z”l, a young father and psy‑trance DJ murdered at the Nova music festival. Hineni means “Here I am” in Hebrew, a word that speaks to radical presence and spiritual readiness, and it became the frame for how I showed up as an artist, friend, and witness.

    I talk about growing up in the Israeli‑diaspora in‑between space, meeting Bar through his music and his loved ones, painting his portrait in my studio, and how that canvas grew into a dream of a community mural on a wall in his hometown of Katzir. Along the way we explore Jewish grief, memory, and what it means to say “Hineni, here I am” again and again through art, even when nothing can fix the loss.

  • Episode 15- Hiddur Olam: The Creative Torah System for Jewish futurist Living

    Episode 15- Hiddur Olam: The Creative Torah System for Jewish futurist Living

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 15- Hiddur Olam: The Creative Torah System for Jewish futurist Living
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    In this episode, Mike unpacks Hiddur Olam, his creative Torah system and multi‑volume art book series that reimagines Genesis through Jewish futurism, design thinking, Mussar, and Kabbalah. Listeners will hear how weekly parsha study, visual storytelling, and spiritual practice come together as a framework for beautifying the world through creative Torah.

    Discover Hiddur Olam, a creative Torah system and illustrated book series that reimagines the first portions of Genesis as luminous encounters between humanity and the Divine. Mike Wirth shares how Torah study, design thinking, Mussar, and Kabbalah weave into a practical framework for Jewish futurist creativity and spiritual growth. Learn how weekly parsha art, reflective commentary, and a structured creative process became the backbone of a multi‑volume Hiddur Olam series and its upcoming companion workbook. This episode is for artists, educators, rabbis, and seekers who want to turn their own creative practice into a form of Torah learning and world‑beautifying action.

  • EP 14- Papayas on the Moon- My Chat with Alejandro Glatt

    EP 14- Papayas on the Moon- My Chat with Alejandro Glatt

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    EP 14- Papayas on the Moon- My Chat with Alejandro Glatt
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    In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, I sit down with Mexican artist and papaya visionary Alejandro Glatt, the first Mexican artist to send a papaya to the Moon as part of the Lunaprise art museum project connected to NASA’s Artemis missions. Recorded on the day of the Artemis II launch, our conversation weaves together Jewish futurism, space exploration, and the surprising holiness of fruit in my own evolving sense of contemporary Jewish life.

    Alejandro and I first met at the Jerusalem Biennale, and in this interview I explore how his “Papayas to the Moon” work merges art, ritual, and space technology, turning a simple papaya into a cosmic symbol of life, diaspora, and connection. I ask him about his “Feel the Fruit” experiences, his role as a community builder and trip leader to Israel, and how he imagines Jewish civilization carrying its stories, symbols, and sacred objects into orbit and beyond.

    As you listen, you’ll hear me probing how Alejandro’s art on the Artemis missions reshapes my own questions about Jewish presence in space, how beauty and tiferet might travel with us off‑planet, and why sending a papaya to the Moon could be a kind of blueprint for future Jewish creativity among the stars. You can explore more of Alejandro’s work at alejandroglatt.com and see how his papayas are expanding the conversation about Judaism, ecology, and interstellar imagination.

  • Episode 13: How a Jewish Immigrant Named Hugo Created Sci-Fi

    Episode 13: How a Jewish Immigrant Named Hugo Created Sci-Fi

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 13: How a Jewish Immigrant Named Hugo Created Sci-Fi
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    Before science fiction was a genre, Hugo Gernsback was already building the infrastructure for it: radio magazines, hobbyist communities, wild speculative stories, and the first publication devoted entirely to imagining tomorrow. A Jewish immigrant from Luxembourg, he launched Amazing Stories in 1926 and quietly trained a generation of readers and writers to think in futures, long timelines, and unintended consequences. His magazines hosted women in leadership roles, predicted computer dating, video calling, and the social costs of new technology, while also carrying the casual racism and sexism of their era. We place him alongside Einstein, the artists of Vitebsk, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to ask what it meant for Jewish creators to be building the future from the cultural margins. And we end with the question he would have loved most: who is building that kind of futures literacy today?

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  • Episode 11: Jews, AI, and the Real Meaning of “Creative”

    Episode 11: Jews, AI, and the Real Meaning of “Creative”

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 11: Jews, AI, and the Real Meaning of “Creative”
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    In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Mike Wirth uses the 4C model of creativity to map out what we really mean by “creative” in an age of AI art and endless images. He traces his own journey from parametric code experiments to Jewish futurist murals, then layers in Jewish history, exile, and the long tension around graven images as a lived curriculum in world‑building.

    Along the way, Mike explores flow, aura, and authorship, asking who holds intention and responsibility when AI enters the studio. The conversation lands in Jewish futurism as an ethical frame, inviting listeners to treat narrative and technology as tools for building livable futures.

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  • Episode 8: Speed Kills : Why Every futurist must confront the past

    Episode 8: Speed Kills : Why Every futurist must confront the past

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 8: Speed Kills : Why Every futurist must confront the past
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    In this episode, we confront the rise and collapse of Italian Futurism, the avant garde movement that worshiped speed, technology, youth, and rupture at any cost. What began as radical artistic rebellion under Filippo Tommaso Marinetti quickly blurred into nationalism and ultimately aligned itself with fascism.

    So what went wrong?

    We examine how aesthetic obsession with acceleration became political extremism, and how the rhetoric of disruption can mask ethical blind spots. For today’s futurists working in AI, design, and innovation, the lesson is clear: progress without moral grounding is dangerous. If you build the future, you are responsible for its consequences.

    Essay referenced: What Went Wrong with Italian Futurism and Why Every futurist Needs to Know More About It

  • Episode 7: ADHD, Design, and Jewish futures with Alex Duchene

    Episode 7: ADHD, Design, and Jewish futures with Alex Duchene

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 7: ADHD, Design, and Jewish futures with Alex Duchene
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    In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Jewish futurist and community artist Mike Wirth sits down with graphic designer Alex Duchene to explore what it means to be a neurodivergent, Jewish creative. They talk about ADHD “neuro spicey super powers,” how neurodivergence shapes their design practice, and why stories are the throughline that connects their creative, Jewish, and neurodivergent identities. This is a conversation about thinking differently, designing with intention, and what Jewish futurism looks like through an ADHD lens.

    Alex Duchene’s Website

    Meesh Meesh Media

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  • Episode 6: Ethical AI and Jewish Art

    Episode 6: Ethical AI and Jewish Art

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 6: Ethical AI and Jewish Art
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    In this episode, I look at how AI is impacting Jewish artistry itself: from how I and other Jewish artists research, sketch, and prototype with AI-generated imagery, to how algorithms are beginning to influence our visual language, ritual design, and the stories our communities tell about themselves. I raise concrete questions about authorship, ownership, and credit when AI systems remix Jewish symbols and styles at scale, and I ask what happens to kavannah, memory, and responsibility when part of the “hand” in Jewish art is computational. Throughout, I frame AI as both a powerful tool for midrashic reinterpretation and speculative Jewish futures, and a disruptive force that can flatten nuance, decontextualize heritage, or sideline human makers if we do not respond with clear ethical commitments.

    Let’s not wrestle with this golem alone. Check out this episode.

    Software referenced:

    DiffusionBee

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  • Episode 3: Practicing Jewish futurism

    Episode 3: Practicing Jewish futurism

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 3: Practicing Jewish futurism
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    In this episode, I move from defining Jewish futurism to actually doing it. What does it look like to practice Jewish futurism in your creative work, your teaching, your community building, or your daily life? How do Jewish texts, rituals, and patterns of thought become tools for imagining futures rather than artifacts of the past?

    I explore Jewish futurism as a lived methodology. One that shows up through design, storytelling, ritual adaptation, speculative thinking, and creative constraint. Drawing from Torah, rabbinic interpretation, art practice, and my own community-based projects, this episode looks at how Jews have always practiced futurism by rehearsing futures, holding multiple meanings at once, and designing systems meant to survive change.

    This episode is an invitation. Not to agree with a definition, but to experiment. To treat Jewish tradition as a living design system. And to ask how your own creative practice might become a site where past, present, and future meet.

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