Capstone Project: How to make a golem

How To Make A Golem is a multimedia art installation that intertwines a 15-minute video, an AR (augmented reality) gallery, and a linoleum block print to bring to life my great grandmother’s story as a ceramicist and a survivor of the Holocaust. Here, the golem from Jewish folklore is paired alongside her tale and her pottery as a metaphor for art that keeps stories alive and stands against any and all oppression.

In order to bring this video to life, I 3D-scanned dozens of my great grandmother's ceramics—some of which are housed in the Beck Archives at the University of Denver—and animated the models in Blender. When merged with family photos and my great grandmother's own words (voiced by my grandmother), these animations weave together a narrative of my great grandmother's experiences fleeing Nazi Germany, struggling as an immigrant in the U.S., and finally finding a home for her family and her artistic pursuits. Given the themes of survival, artistic creation, and storytelling present in golem folklore, as well as the similarity between the clay creature and my great grandmother’s clay creations, the golem serves as a central theme within the installation.

Shown at the 2024 ATLAS Expo at the University of Colorado Boulder, the 15-minute video was displayed alongside a hand-carved linoleum block print which features markings from one of my great grandmother’s pottery pieces, a QR code, as well as the Hebrew word used to activate the golem: "emet," or "truth." much like how “emet” is used to activate the golem, the QR code embedded in the print design serves as the activation site for an AR gallery, where viewers can see the 3D pottery scans and family photos up close in a condensed version of the video’s narrative. Through swiping or pinching gestures, viewers can spin or scale up the 3D models to examine the details of my great grandmother's work.

To access the AR Gallery:

• Scan the QR code on the print above with your phone

• Press “Launch” on the landing page, and accept motion and camera tracking

• Aim your camera at the print (which serves as an image target for the 3D models)

• Swipe with one finger to rotate the pottery pieces

• Pinch to scale the pottery pieces up or down

• Use the “TOGGLE” button to turn the images and text on and off

• Use the “NEXT” and “BACK” buttons to cycle through the pottery, images, and text

I began the project by making 3D scans of my great grandmother’s pottery using Kiri Engine, cleaning up the 3D models in Fusion 360, and then animating and rendering the models in Blender.

Here are several of the renders:

The family photos from the video and AR gallery were brought through Photoshop and then into Resolume Arena in order to create BPM sync montages that jumped around zoomed-in areas of the images, while also adding subtle glitch effects to the images to create a vintage film effect.

For the AR gallery, I used 8th Wall to create an AR scene that can track 3D models and photos to an image marker.

I initially designed the layout the linoleum block print in Photoshop, printed and traced the design onto the linoleum block, and then hand-carved the block to create the final print.

You can also find How To Make A Golem in the following places:

• YouTube — Short Film

• YouTube — Demo Video

• FilmFreeway Project Page — Video

• FilmFreeway Project Page — AR Gallery and Print