by

Sonya Rapoport

In reviewing my artwork since the 1991 publication of "Process(ing) Interactive Art Using Computer as Brush, People as Paint and Installation Site as Canvas," (1) I find that recognizing trends and synapses between early and later work is a revitalizing indulgence that discloses unconscious commitments and passions. Since early 1976, my multi-media computer-assisted and inter-disciplinary artwork has continued to offer interactive choices for improving the human condition for the viewer participant. In a reversal of artist/audience roles, the resultant material creates the content. And still, 27 years later, coding is a key means for layering trans-gender, trans-ethnicity, trans-culture and trans-genetic issues into an art form. Social concerns, current events and scientific processes remain interwoven metaphorically and humorously within its context. These approaches and issues are incorporated in my latest published artwork, Redeeming the Gene, Molding the Golem, Folding the Protein. This mythic parody designed for web viewing challenges current genetic engineering techniques with those of the ancient ritual of Kabbalah -- a vector strategy used to create an artificial anthropoid, the golem. Lilith and Eve, who have been maligned as source of female evil, reinvent themselves by creating an ethical gene with which they mold the golem. The Kabbalah gene replaces and is a response to the artist's gene that Eduardo Kac invented in his artwork, Genesis. The Transgenic Bagel, Smell Your Destiny In 1993-95, in a work that preceded Redeeming the Gene, by eight years, I used Biblical and scientific material to create The Transgenic Bagel, an interactive artwork. The Transgenic Bagel is the story of how a eating a genetically processed bagel can alter the DNA profile -- as determined by the viewer's choice. The work was initially conceived as an interactive installation that would take place in a laboratory environment. After being programmed in two other formats, Hypercard and Director, The Transgenic Bagel was finalized as an interactive web-based art work with a supporting interactive book. Concurrently, in Smell Your Destiny (1994-95) -- another web-based work that parodied genetic manipulation -- I suggested smelling fishy fragrances to achieve a higher life style. Brutal Myths, Make Me a Man, Arbor Erecta, Make Me a Jewish Man Weaving mythical overtones into a continued use of scientific methodology, "Brutal Myths" (1996), created with Marie Sat, is the first of my web-based works to focus on gender issues. In this work, ancient herbal cures -- that take the form of printed out and cut herbal images -- are prescribed to uproot insecurities that are at the root of misogynous prejudices. Web artworks, Make Me A Man (1997) and Arbor Erecta (1998), also approach the gender topic via the male. Cross cultural commonalities between western civilization and New Guinea highlight a need for change in social attitudes as to what constitutes masculinity. For example, in Make Me A Man, hazing among paratroopers is paralleled with bloody tribal initiation rites. The botanic and spiritual icon in New Guinea culture is the Pandanus tree. Arbor Erecta details a true-life trans-gender metamorphosis enacted according to tribal ritual sequences associated with this tree. Thus, ritual practices resurface in this piece, as they do in the aforementioned work, "Make Me A Man" where the cultures of South Eastern India, Indonesia, and Ancient Egypt are the source of the images used in the illustrations. "Continuing to unravel threads of cross-cultures, religion, science, feminism, humor and parody, Make Me A Jewish Man, combines both ancient Jewish culture with the morphology of the olive tree, the symbol of Israel. By eating olives one can become an ideal Jewish Man according to Talmudic precepts. "The Law, as good as the fruit of the Tree of Life" (Gen. 324 ), prescribes a gentle, recessive, non-violent, non-phallic masculinity. The work is presented with a wry twist of feminist bias. Kabbalah/Kabul Sending Emanations to the Aliens Before the coming of the web, I introduced participation in interactive installations as a healing process. A Biorhythm Participation Performance (1981), Coping With Sexual Jealousy (1984), and The Animated Soul 1991) are such examples. Shoe-Field(1982, 1986), and Digital Mudra(1987) approach the game on a mystical level. My work-in-progress, Kabbalah/Kabul Sending Emanations to the Aliens, -- which considers encoding altruistic messages into a form that can be transmitted across interstellar space by radio or laser signals -- continues to addresses cross cultural themes. The method for communicating altruistic emanations to extraterrestrials is based on the mystical doctrine of Kabbalah, a system of communication by the use of numbers, letters, and words. Altruisms are defined in this work, as emanations depicted on the Tree of Life, the main icon of Kabbalah, in which ten creative forces intervene between the infinite and here on earth. In Kabbalah/Kabul, hybrid imagery combines primal humanity as perceived in Afghan news photos, with scientific procedures that provide the technology for creating altruistic DNA. The work endeavors to integrate the infinite outer universe with the altruistic universe that lies here within us. __________ Notes: 1. Sonya Rapoport, "Process(ing) Interactive Art Using Computer as Brush, People as Paint and Installation Site as Canvas" in Women Art and Technology Edited by Judy Malloy, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003 (Leonardo Series); Originally published in Leonardo, 24, no 3, 1991)