Bar Mitzvah in a Brooklyn Mosque

 Silent Witnesses: Migration Stories through Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind

Mel Alexenberg and his wife Miriam Benjamin are participating in this exhibition at the Holocaust Memorial Center in conjunction with the Conference of the Council of American Jewish Museums, Detroit, February 2012

Bar Mitzvah in a Brooklyn Mosque by Mel Alexenberg

I was born in the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital (now Interfaith Hospital), celebrated my bar mitzvah in my Uncle Morris' synagogue at 1089 Coney Island Avenue (now a Pakistani mosque), and was married in the Park Manor Jewish wedding hall on Eastern Parkway (now an African-American Baptist church).

My Uncle Morris Wasserman founded a storefront synagogue in Brooklyn that he named Congregation Beth Abraham for my father. He was the rabbi of the congregation. He lived in the two floors above the shul with his wife Dora (my mother's sister) and their five children. My parents, my sister and I spent all the Jewish holidays in their house. We had only to run down a flight of stairs to participate in the services.

On the Sunday following my being called up to the Torah as a bar mitzvah on Shabbat, we celebrated with family and friends in Uncle Morris's shul as he sang with the accompaniment of a choir. My parents sat with my sister and me in front the bima draped with an American flag.

When my uncle retired, he sold 1089 Coney Island Avenue to a Hasidic group that later sold it to Muslims who redesigned the synagogue to serve as a mosque.

My Synagogue Came on Aliyah

Silent Witnesses: Migration Stories through Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind

Miriam Benjamin and her husband Mel Alexenberg are participating in this exhibition at the Holocaust Memorial Center in conjunction with the Conference of the Council of American Jewish Museums, Detroit, February 2012

My Synagogue Came on Aliyah by Miriam Benjamin

I came on aliyah in 1949 from my birthplace, Paramaribo, Suriname, when I was 9 years old. 60 years later, my synagogue followed me and came on aliyah. The Tzedek ve-Shalom synagogue established in 1736 on the northern coast of South America was dismantled and shipped to Israel and reconstructed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

My father, Moshe Yehuda Benjamin, chanted the Torah portion on Shabbat in the two synagogues in the Dutch colony, both the Tzedek ve-Shalom (Justice and Peace) Sephardi synagogue and the Neveh Shalom (House of Peace) Ashkenazi synagogue. Neveh Shalom, established in 1735 and reconstructed in 1835, still stands in the center of Paramaribo next to a mosque built in 1984.

I rushed to be the first person in synagogue on Friday evenings after the sand floors were raked smooth so that my footprints would be the first to show. Both synagogues had sand floors to symbolize the Diaspora wanderings of the Jewish people just as they wandered in the Sinai desert sands on their way to the Land of Israel.

My grandmother was born in Suriname and moved to Amsterdam where she married the son of the Chief Rabbi of Holland Yosef Tzvi Dunner. They were murdered in Auschwitz. Their daughter, my mother Anna Benjamin, passed away several months after giving a Hanukah piano recital at Beit Juliana in Herzliyah, Israel, at the age of 101. She enjoyed her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren thriving in the Land of Israel.

Biography

Miriam Benjamin is an artist who works in ceramic sculpture, environmental art and collaborative projects. She has created Jewish ceremonial objects, clayscapes inspired by geological forces in the Negev desert, and monumental artworks made in collaboration with elders from different ethnic communities of Miami. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums in New York, Miami, Washington, and Honolulu. She studied at Columbia University, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Massachusetts College of Art, and earned her M.F.A. at Pratt Institute. Benjamin was artist-in-residence at the South Florida Art Center and has taught at colleges in Israel and New York.

Art Education / Jewish Life / Networked World

My paper below is the lead essay for a special issue of Jewish Education Leadership on "The Arts in Jewish Education" (Vol. 9, No. 3, Summer 2011).  The photo shows our granddaughter Elianne reenacting her role as ima shel shabbat (Sabbath Mother) in her kindergarten in Kfar Saba.

Art Education for Jewish Life in a Networked World  

Whoever is endowed with the soul of a creator must create works of imagination and thought, for the flame of the soul rises by itself and one cannot impede it on its course…. The creative individual brings vital, new light from the higher source where originality emanates to the place where it has not previously been manifest, from the place that “no bird of prey knows, nor has the falcon’s eye seen.” (Job 28:7), “that no man has passed, nor has any person dwelt” (Jeremiah 2:6).         Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook

The confluence between the deep structure of Jewish consciousness and the postdigital redefinition of art invites a rethinking of art education for Jewish life in a networked world. The 20th century's modern art movements demolished the Hellenistic definition of art revived in the Renaissance. In the 21st century, we are witnessing the emergence of a paradigm shift from the Hellenistic to the Hebraic roots of western culture.

The leading edge of 21st century art education worldwide is responding to the rise of postdigital art forms that emphasize the human dimensions of new technologies in relation to cultural and aesthetic values, community connections, scientific explorations and interdisciplinary thought. This new art education aspires to integrating pride in roots with an explorer's view of the world as it is shared by others.

The Hellenistic definition is reflected in the words for art in European languages: art in English and French, arte in Spanish, Kunst in German and Dutch, and iskustvo in Russian. The roots of all these words are related to artificial, artifact, imitation, and phony. In contrast, the Hebrew word for artist (oman) is spelled (alef-mem-nun) AMN with the same letters as the word amen which means truth. Its feminine form is emunah, faith, and as a verb l’amen means to nurture and educate.

The Hellenistic characterization of art as mimesis, imitating nature, arresting the flow of life, has become obsolete as new definitions of art are arising from Jewish thought and action that explore issues of truth, faith, and education as they enrich everyday life. In Thorleif Boman's classic book Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, Hebraic thought is characterized as being “dynamic, vigorous, passionate, and sometimes quite explosive in kind; correspondingly Greek thinking is static, peaceful, moderate, and harmonious in kind.”

Not only are the Hebrew words for 'artist' and 'educator' linguistically linked, but the Torah teaches that the prototypic Jewish artists Betzalel and Oholiav were divinely endowed with artistic talent coupled with the talent to teach (Exodus 35:30-34). Art education offers an alternative method of Torah study that beautifies the mitzvah of study through creating visual midrash. Art education in Jewish life needs to cultivate visual midrash through multimedia experiences that extend the verbal exploration of text. ‘Context’ in its primal meaning is ‘with text’ and the defining characteristic of postmodern art.

The narrative of the Jewish people begins with the journey of Abraham as he crosses over from his all too familiar past to see a fresh vision of a future in a new land. Indeed, Abraham is called a Hebrew (Ivri) – one who crosses over into a new reality. Abraham is told: “Walk with your authentic self away from all the familiar and comfortable places that limit vision to a land where you can freely see.” Here, the dynamic Hebraic mindset is established as new ways of seeing emerge from the integration of our journey in life with our inner quest for spiritual significance. The power of Abraham to leave an obsolete past behind and to cross conceptual boundaries into an unknown future presents a powerful message for art education today.

I identified major issues in art education today by analyzing 21st century books published by National Art Education Association, its special interest groups, and papers published in the International Journal of Education through Art. It is instructive that in addition to dealing with culture and ethnicity, collaborative art and cooperative learning, visual culture, interdisciplinary learning, creativity and developing cognitive processes through art making, the most recent special interest group established in 2008 is the Spiritual in Art Education Group. It seeks to study the relationship between the spiritual impulse and the visual arts and to develop art education curriculum theory and practices that encourage the study of the spiritual in art.

My inaugural statement for this NAEA group, papers in four NAEA books and in the International Journal of Education through Art suggest that the most advanced curriculum models for future art education can be derived from Torah sources. Postdigital curricula explore the interrelationships between four realms in the creative process, both divine and human, that flow from intentions, thoughts and feelings to action: Atzilut (Emination) - the precognitive realm of consciousness/spirituality/intention. Beriah (Creation) - the cognitive realm of insight/conceptualization/inquiry. Yetzirah (Formation) - the affective realm of emotions/aesthetic experience/artistic expression. Asiyah (Action) - the space-time realm of acting with materials/technologies/media in local community/global culture/biosphere.

Torah Tweets: Book 4 / Numbers במדבר

A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative

See our Torah Tweets blogart project at  http://torahtweets.blogspot.com in which we show 6 images for each of the 10 torah portions in Numbers, the fourth biblical book. To whet your appetite for seeing the entire project, we are showing here one image from each of 4 torah portions with torah tweets referring to these images.

The torah portions shown are Shelah (A Different Spirit), Hukat (Miriam's Well), Pinhas (Sight and Insight), and Mattot (Talking Rocks and Trees).

The Lubavicher Rebbe teaches: The purpose of life lived in torah is not the elevation of the soul; it is the sanctification of the world.

Only Joshua and Calev with his "different spirit" could recognize the spiritual in mundane tasks and hard work when accomplished in freedom.

The Arizal, Rabbi Isaac Luria, taught that on entering the Land of Israel, Miriam's well reappeared gushing water beneath the Sea of Galilee.

Why is "see" repeated twice? At first glance, Moses saw the Dead Sea and desert. Then, he saw the future of his people in their land.

Rabbi Haim ben Attar explained that Moses gained a deeper vision. He saw boys and girls playing in the Land of Israel.

Calev's different spirit and independent thought is sorely needed by Calev's descendants who have resettled the Land of Israel in our day.

Knesset & Karmiel

Postdigital Art, Science, Technology and Kabbalah

  

Art and science came together for me this summer at the Knesset in Jerusalem and in the Galilee city of Karmiel. 

I participated in the annual award ceremony at the Knesset honoring the world's best scientists and artists with the coveted Wolf Prizes. The President of Israel on the recommendation of the Minister of Education had appointed me to the Council of the Wolf Foundation in 2002. Wolf Prizes are awarded in Jerusalem in the fields of agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, art, music, and architecture.


Later in the week, I presented the paper below at the First International Conference on Art, Science and Technology at ORT Braude College in Karmiel.

The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: Art, Science, Technology and Kabbalah

If we google postdigital art, the first listing is Wikipedia's definition from my new book: "In The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age, Mel Alexenberg defines 'postdigital art' as artworks that address the humanization of digital technologies through interplay between digital, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems, between cyberspace and real space, between embodied media and mixed reality in social and physical communication, between high tech and high touch experiences, between visual, haptic, auditory, and kinesthetic media experiences, between virtual and augmented reality, between roots and globalization, between autoethnography and community narrative, and between web-enabled peer-produced wikiart and artworks created with alternative media through participation, interaction, and collaboration in which the role of the artist is redefined."

In the 21st century, not only is the role of the artist changing, but art itself is being redefined. We are witnessing a redefinition of art in our postdigital networked world that is confluent with the Hebraic roots of Western culture rather than its Hellenistic roots. The 20th century was a century of modernism that broke down the Hellenistic definition of art that dominated the art world since the Renaissance. This Hellenistic definition is reflected in the words for art in European languages: art in English and French, arte in Spanish, Kunst in German and Dutch, and iskustvo in Russian. The roots of all these words are related to artificial, artifact, imitation, and phony. In contrast, the Hebrew word for artist (oman) is spelled (alef-mem-nun) AMN with the same letters as the word amen which means truth. Its feminine form is emunah, faith, and as a verb l’amen means to nurture and educate.

The Hellenistic definition of art as mimesis, imitating nature, arresting the flow of life, has become obsolete as new definitions of art are arising from Jewish thought and action that explore issues of truth, faith, and education as they enrich everyday life. In the classic book Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, Hebraic thought is characterized as being “dynamic, vigorous, passionate, and sometimes quite explosive" and Greek thinking as "static, peaceful, moderate, and harmonious.” It is the Hebraic rather than the Hellenistic roots of Western culture that is redefining art in a networked world in which digital technologies are being humanized through participation and interaction.

I will explore the confluence between emerging forms of postdigtital art and Jewish consciousness through a conceptual model for creative process at the intersections of art, science and technology derived from kabbalah. The kabbalistic model is a metaphorical way of thinking derived from the deep structure of Jewish consciousness. Kabbalah provides a symbolic language and conceptual schema that facilitates understanding the dynamics of the creative process in postdigital art that explores the interplay of art, science and technology with creativity and spirituality.

I will apply this model of creative process to my development of a biofeedback-generated visual imaging system at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In interaction with this biofeedback system, a person generates digital self-portraits through internal body changes detected as brain waves by electroencephalograph or blood flow in capillaries by plethysmograph. At New York University and Columbia University I analyzed my in-depth interviews of prominent scientists (Nobel Laureates and members of the US National Academy of Sciences) and prominent artists to develop a model of aesthetic experience in creative process using psychological, biological, and mathematical methodologies. Through my research on art in Jewish thought at Bar Ilan University and Ariel University, I came to see how kabbalah provides a dynamic schema that colorfully integrates these other methodologies.

The kabbalistic model of creative process reveals a progression that draws inspiration down into the material world from a higher source where originality emanates. It demonstrates how inspiration is drawn down into our everyday world in ten stages called sephirot (sephirah in singular) that are derived from biblical passages describing both the artist and God as creators of worlds (Exodus 35:31 and Chronicles 1:29).

The first stage in the creative process is the sephirah Keter / Crown. Keter is (ratson) intention to create, (emunah) faith that one can create, and (ta'anug) anticipation that the creative process will be pleasurable. Without this will to create, self-confidence, and hope for gratification, the creative process has no beginning. Keter sets the stage for the sephirah of Hokhmah / Wisdom that requires (bitul) a selfless state, nullification of the ego that opens gateways to supraconscious and subconscious realms. When active seeking ceases, when consciously preoccupied with unrelated activities, when we least expect it, the germ of the creative idea bursts into our consciousness. We need to become an empty vessel in order to receive (l'kabbel) a sudden flash of insight that kabbalah calls Hokhmah. It is the transition from nothingness to being, from potential to the first moment of existence. In biblical words, “Wisdom shall be found in nothingness” (Job 28:12). When I asked prominent scientists and artists where they were when they had their most profound insight, none said they were in their laboratories or studios.

In synagogue on Shabbat, I was absorbed in the rhythm of the chanting of words from the Torah scroll following them with my eyes. I was far removed from my studio/laboratory at MIT when I suddenly realized that the word for face panim and for inside p’nim are written with the same Hebrew letters. I sensed that I needed to create portraits in which dialogue between the outside face and inside feelings become integrally one. When I told my son what had just dawned on me, my mind left the sephirah of Hokhmah for the sephirah of Binah / Understanding. The shapeless idea that ignited the process began to take form in Binah.

The first three sephirot represent the artist’s intention to create and the cognitive dyad in which a flash of insight begins to crystallize into a viable idea. The fourth sephirah, Hesed / Compassion, represents largess, the stage in the creative process that is open to all possibilities, myriad attractive options that I would love to do. Hesed is counterbalanced by the fifth sephirah of Gevurah / Strength, restraint, the power to set limits, to make judgments, to have the discipline to choose between myriad options. It demands that I make hard choices about which paths to take and which options to abandon.

I thought of a multitude of artistic options opened to me for creating artworks that reveal interplay between inner consciousness and outer face. As an MIT artist with access to electronic technologies, my mind gravitated to creating digital self-generated portraits in which internal mind/body processes and one’s facial countenance engage in spirited dialogue. As I felt satisfaction with my choice, I departed from the sephirah of Gevurah to the next stage, the sixth sephirah, Tiferet / Beauty. This sephirah represents a beautiful balance between the counter forces of largess and restraint. It is the feeling of harmony between all my possible options and the choices I had made. The sephirah of Beauty is the aesthetic core of the creative process in which harmonious integration of openness and closure is experienced as loveliness, splendor, and truth.

The seventh sephirah, Netzah / Success, is the feeling of being victorious in the quest for significance. I felt that I had the power to overcome any obstacles that may stand in the way of realizing my artwork. The Hebrew word for this sephirah, netzakh, can also mean “to conduct” or “orchestrate” as in the word that begins many of the Psalms. I had the confidence that I could orchestrate all the aspects of creating a moist media artwork that would forge a vital dialogue between dry pixels and wet biomolecules, between cyberspace and real space, and between human consciousness and digital imagery. The eighth sephirah, Hod / Gracefulness, is the glorious feeling that the final shaping of the idea is going so smoothly that it seems as effortless as the movements of a graceful dancer. The sephirah of Netzah is an active self-confidence in contrast with the sephirah of Hod, a passive confidence that all is going as it should.

The ninth sephirah, Yesod / Foundation, is the sensuous bonding of Netzah and Hod in a union that leads to the birth of the fully formed idea. It funnels the integrated flow of intention, thought, and emotion of the previous eight sephirot into the world of physical action, into the tenth sephirah of Malkhut / Kingdom, the noble realization of my concepts and feelings in the kingdom of time and space. It is my making the artwork. I constructed a console in which a participant seated in front of a monitor places her finger in a plethysmograph, which measures internal body states by monitoring blood flow, while under the gaze of a video camera. Digitized information about her internal mind/body processes triggers changes in the image of herself that she sees on the monitor. She sees her face changing color, stretching, elongating, extending, rotating, or replicating in response to her feelings about seeing herself changing. My artwork, Inside/Outside:P’nim/Panim, created a flowing digital feedback loop in which p’nim effects changes in panim and panim, in turn, effects changes in p’nim.

Postdigital Narrative Art

Michael Bielicky, Norman M. Klein and Mel Alexenberg at ZKM

TorahTweets4M&M@52
Professor Mel Alexenberg

Abstract of presentation at the inaugural symposium of the 
Institute for Postdigital Narrative
ZKM Center for Art & Media/University of Art & Design
Karlsruhe, Germany, 25 November 2010
See video of conference at http://vimeo.com/18704694 

The Book of Creation (SePheR Yetzirah), the oldest of kabbalistic texts, begins: "The universe was created with three SePhaRim, with SePheR (form), with S'PhaR (quantity), and with SiPuR (narrative)." The SPR root of the Hebrew word for narrative has emerged in the word for SPiRal in many languages, ancient and modern, and in the English words SPiRitual and inSPiRation. The biblical narrative continues to be written by scribes in a spiral scroll form, a SePheR torah, following a millennia old tradition.

Midrash is two thousand years of creative narratives designed to elucidate the biblical narrative. It takes the biblical narrative and spins out tales that read between the lines of the biblical text and that reveal messages hidden in the white spaces between the Hebrew letters. These inspirational stories form a vast literature illuminating biblical texts from countless alternative viewpoints. Postmodern art provides media and contexts in which traditional story telling can be transformed from a verbal activity into visual one. Postdigital narrative art is visual midrash.

My artwork for the past four decades has been visual midrash, personal narratives that explore interrelationships between art, science, technology, and Jewish consciousness. The blog particularly lends itself to creating unfolding narratives for a networked world. My current blogart project is a collaborative artwork being created with my wife, artist Miriam Benjamin, in celebration of our 52nd year of marriage. We were married motzei Simhat Torah, the Jewish holiday when the torah scroll is rewound to begin the annual cycle of reading it. During each of the 52 weeks of our 52nd year, we will post six photographs reflecting our life together with torah tweet captions that relate the weekly torah reading to our lives, past and present. People worldwide are invited to follow our postdigitial narrative at http://torahtweets.blogspot.com/.

Manifesto: Institute for Postdigital Narrative (IPN)
Professor Michael Bielicky, Institute Director

There is no question that contemporary generations operate within the various hybrid realities of our digital age with a distinctive naturalness and implicitness as if the world had been such for centuries. Real-time experience, virtuality, interactivity, nonlinearity and telematics especially determine young people’s perception of reality. We can no longer rely on one-dimensional representational systems to understand the complexities of our contemporary world. There is a need for more accessible variable systems as they help us comprehend the interwoven realities of our times. Though above all, it is most important to develop the ability to embrace and humanize the often-alienating characteristics of digital culture.

Mankind has always operated on narrative to explain and understand its own existence. Our times, in particular, call for the exploration, expression, and especially, creation of new story-telling formats. Although the contemporary generations are finding themselves increasingly confronted by their digital reality, they still remain material, or analog, at their core. Man cannot flee his physicality and location. It is also becoming increasingly apparent in our digitally influenced quotidian-culture that the physical is of a special fascination and attractiveness. The dilemma of virtual representation and analog imprisonment will only be overcome when a close interplay between these seemingly opposing conditions is attained.

There are indeed serious indications that a postdigital consciousness is slowly being established. The concept of postdigitalism was coined by Prof. Dr. Mel Alexenberg, and appropriately summarizes the reverberatory exposure of our times to the digital vortex. New formats are becoming more important. Take Serious Games for example: these are digital games that undertake serious content such as political or social themes. In these games the serious content is directed to groups that normally do not have direct access to such themes. In this way, the computer game has become a medium that is able to critique.

Postdigital qualities can also be observed in the area of WEB 2.0, in which the Internet user makes the transformation from consumer to producer. Social networks (social media) have gained importance through the enabling of social interaction and collaboration. This seems to be only the beginning of a forward trending era as the Internet still has so much un-tapped potential. One should not overlook that this medium became a collective hard-drive and a collective processor of humanity.

Torah Tweets: Book 3 / Leviticus ויקרא

A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative

See our Torah Tweets blogart project at http://torahtweets.blogspot.com/  

in which we show 6 images for each of the 11 torah portions in Leviticus, the third biblical book. To whet your appetite for seeing the entire project, we are showing here one image from each of 4 torah portions with torah tweets referring to these images.

The torah portions shown are Aharay (Kabbalah of Aharon's Baseball Cap), Pesach (Freedom in Crete), Behar (Action Angels & Bicycles), Behukotai (Torah in a Potato).

Modi'in Miracle pitcher, 6' 7" Maximo Nelson, stands for singing Hatikvah with a batboy wearing a uniform with flowing tzitzit fringes.

10 players on the field created a kabbalistic dance of 10 sephirot in Mel's mind as he watched baseball being played in the Holy Land.

Circular matzot symbolize idolatry. Since words in the torah are written without vowels, calf (EGeL) can also be read as circle (EGuL).

The idolatrous transgression of the Israelites was their worship of Ra, the sun God represented in Egyptian art as a golden circle.

Angels in the World of Action (Asiyah) are bits and bytes of consciousness of everyday life called ofanim. Bicycles are ofanayim.

If we make torah and our lives integrally one, we will be rewarded with material blessings of bountiful crops and abundant fruit.

All the torah is in a potato if we reveal it by carving out Hebrew letters that have no separate existence from the potato itself. 

Torah Tweets: Book 2 / Exodus שמות

 A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative

See our Torah Tweets blogart project at http://torahtweets.blogspot.com/ 
in which we show 6 images for each of the 11 torah portions in Exodus, the second biblical book.  To whet your appetite for seeing the entire project, we are showing here one image from each of 4 torah portions with torah tweets referring to these images.

The torah portions shown are Mishpatim (Tune Out, Turn Off, Unplug), Terumah (Kabbalah of Love), Vayakhel (Non-Art Day), Tetzaveh (Growing Gold).  

On day 7, we don't e-mail, don't tweet on Twitter, don’t write on Facebook walls, don't link on LinkedIn, don't Google, don't blog.

No banks of TVs, bank ATM's, phone sales, wireless accesses to all Israeli citizens for issuing gas masks, nor coffee shop video totems.

The names Ohad and Iyrit spelled out on the pathways between the sephirot trace spirituality flowing down into everyday life.

They are wed to each other through the sephirah of inner beauty (tiferet) that brings intentions, thoughts and emotions into the world of action.

After holding the baby, Elianne took candlesticks, put a doily on her head, covered her eyes and sang the blessing over Sabbath candles.

If it wasn't weekday play but the real thing, lighting the candles would usher in a Non-Art Day in which we cease from all creative work.

Hiking in the desert, we suddenly caught sight of a single acacia tree isolated in the valley as we came over the top of hill.

We walked down the rocky hill photographing the tree as we got closer. Miriam sat down to rest under the tree.

The Future of Art in a Postdigtal Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Cconsciousness

IT'S OUT!!
Today, I received the book in the mail for the publisher (Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press). Below is the back cover text:

In The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age artist and educator Mel Alexenberg offers a vision of a postdigital future that reveals a paradigm shift from the Hellenistic to the Hebraic roots of western culture. The author surveys new art forms emerging from a postdigital age that address the humanization of digital technologies. He ventures beyond the digital to explore postdigital perspectives rising from creative encounters among art, science, technology, and human consciousness. The interrelationships between these perspectives demonstrate the confluence between postdigital art and the dynamic, open-ended Jewish structure of consciousness. Alexenberg’s pioneering artwork – a fusion of spiritual and technological realms – exemplifies the theoretical thesis of this investigation into interactive and collaborative forms that imaginatively envisage the vast potential of art in a postdigital future.

“This Hebraic-postmodern quest is for a dialogue midway on Jacob’s ladder where man and God, artist and society, and artwork and viewer/participant engage in ongoing commentary.”
– Prof. Randall Rhodes, Chairman, Department of Visual Art, Frostburg State University, Maryland, USA

“Mel Alexenberg, a very sophisticated artist and scholar of much experience in the complex playing field of art-science-technology, addresses the rarely asked question: How does the ‘media magic’ communicate content?”
– Prof. Otto Piene, Director Emeritus, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

“This is a wonderful and important book.”
– Dr. Ron Burnett, President, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada

“The author succeeds in opening a unique channel to the universe of present and future art in a highly original and inspiring way.”
– Prof. Michael Bielicky, Director, Institute for Postdigital Narratives, University of Art and Design / ZKM Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany

“This book is simply a must read analysis for anyone interested in where we and the visual arts are going in our future.”

– Dr. Moshe Dror, President, World Network of Religious Futurists, and Israel Coordinator, World Future Society

See more about my books at
http://future-of-art.blogspot.com

Torah Tweets: Book 1 / Genesis בראשית

 A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative

Artists Mel Alexenberg and Miriam Benjamin are celebrating their 52nd year of marriage by collaborating on this blogart project. They were married motzei Simhat Torah, the Jewish holiday when the torah scroll is rewound to begin the annual cycle of reading it. During each of the 52 weeks of their 52nd year, they post six photographs reflecting their life together with torah tweet captions that relate the weekly torah reading to their lives, past and present.

See our Torah Tweets blogart project at http://torahtweets.blogspot.com/  
in which we show 6 images for each of the 12 torah portions in Genesis, the first biblical book.  To whet your appetite for seeing the entire project, we are showing here one image from each of 4 torah portions with torah tweets referring to these images.

The torah portions shown are Hayay Sarah (Women, Water & Loving Kindness), Vayehi (Home after 27 Centuries), Vayera (Eden in the Kitchen), Bereshit (Creation of the World at our Doorstep).  

With the water level of the Sea dangerously low, we were disappointed that the rain clouds dissipated as we walked to the waterfront.

We photographed Tzvi with his daughter in purple (segol) and his wife Nurit with their youngest daughter as their Superman son watched.

Miriam washed the scallions, cut them up, and sprinkled them over layers of cheese-covered potatoes.

Miriam recycled one mitzva for another.  She pressed cloves into our Sukkot etrog (citron) for a sweet smell to mark the end of Shabbat.

New Book

The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness
(Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press, 2011)

From the University of Chicago Press catalog:
In The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age, digital technologies. He ventures beyond the digital to explore postdigital perspectives rising from creative encounters between art, science, technology, and human consciousness. New chapters “Postdigital Perspectives: Rediscovering Ten Fingers” and “Wiki Perspectives: Multiform Unity and Global Tribes” have been added to chapters on semiotic, morphological, kabbalistic, and halakhic perspectives. The interrelationships between these alternative perspectives demonstrate the confluence between postdigital art and the dynamic, creative, open-ended Jewish structure of consciousness. Alexenberg’s pioneering artwork – a vibrant fusion of spiritual and technological realms – exemplifies and complements the theoretical thesis of his book. A revolutionary investigation into interactive and collaborative forms that imaginatively envisages the vast potential of art in a postdigital future.

Mel Alexenberg is head of the School of the Arts at Emuna College in Jerusalem and former professor of art and education at Columbia University and Bar Ilan University, head of the art department at Pratt Institute, and research fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. His artworks are in the collections of more than forty museums worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Jewish Museum of Prague, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He is editor of Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture.

JerUSAlem-USA.blogspot.com

Jerusalem, Michigan
Jerusalem Landholders in Utah

Skip's Dock on Galilee Straits welcoming people to Jerusalem, Rhode Island

Country Store in Jerusalem, VermontParticipatory Art Linking the 20 Jerusalems in USA with the Original in Israel
I have intiated a new participatory artwork JerUSAlem-USA that links the twenty places in USA called "Jerusalem" with the original Jerusalem in Israel for which they are named. There are Jerusalems in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont. The name of these America Jerusalems was inspired by the Bible where we read about King David establishing Jerusalem as the capital of the united state of the Israelite nation 3,013 years ago. Today, Jerusalem is the vibrant capital of the modern State of Israel.

Invitation to Participate
JerUSAlem-USA invites people to participate in this art project by sending photographs of everyday life (people, homes, shops, community events and celebrations, flora and fauna, scenery, etc.). These photographs are matched by images of everyday life in Jerusalem, Israel, and posted at http://jerusalem-usa.blogspot.com/. The juxtaposition of photographs of the original Jerusalem with those from the twenty American Jerusalems creates an interactive network of people with shared values that deepens the friendship between them. In addition to being posted on the art project blog, the matched images will be exhibited in museums and art galleries in Israel and USA, and incorporated in a book JerUSAlem.

Down-to-Earth Spirituality in Art Education

My paper

'Concerning Down-to-Earth Spirituality

in Art Education'

was published in NAEA News, National Art Education Association Caucus on the Spiritual in Art Education, February 2009.

The artist Wassily Kandinsky explored the spiritual nature of the emerging modern art movements at the beginning of the 20th century in his classic book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. He saw modern art as movement away from the representation of the material world to a more spiritually elevated world of abstraction. He symbolized this spiritual ascent by a moving triangle with its apex leading it forwards and upwards.

Complimenting modernism’s movement of art to a higher spiritual realm of pure color and form, 21st century postmodernism is the beginning of movement of art down into everyday life and out across a networked planet. This spiritual movement downward and outward can be symbolized by a second triangle moving into the future through the wisdom of the past with the apex pointing downwards. These two triangles intertwined symbolize the dynamic integration of both up and down movements, like the biblical image of angels ascending and descending on Jacob’s ladder linking heaven and earth.

Rather than a quest for purity of form in some heavenly realm, our contemporary challenge is to reveal spirituality in the rough complexities of earth-bound living. Striving for our own spiritual ascent is insufficient. Our challenge is to strive to draw spirituality down into every aspect of our daily lives. Art education flowing from a down-to-earth spirituality invites learners to transform the material world into a spiritual one by their act of creative perception. It invites young artists to reveal the holy sparks hidden in their mundane world though their art.

In his acclaimed novel, City of God, E. L. Doctorow provides an elegant literary formulation of the spiritual in contemporary life: “It has to appear in the manner of our times. Not from on high, but a revelation that hides itself in our culture, it will be ground-level, on the street, it’ll be coming down the avenue in the traffic, hard to tell apart from anything else.”

Academic version of Artiststory blog

Inside/Outside: P’nim/Panim, a biofeedback-generated interactive imaging system in which internal body processes create digital self-portraits. Developed by Mel Alexenberg at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies for his LightsOROT exhibition at Yeshiva University Museum in New York.

Autoethnographic Identification of Realms of Learning for Art Education in a Post-Digital Age

A more academic version of this Artiststory blog appears in my paper in the International Journal of Education Through Art, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2008. Read the abstract below:

Realms of learning for art education in a post-digital world are identified through autoethnography, a qualitative research methodology congruent with an emerging paradigm shift beyond the digital culture of the Information Age to a post-digital Conceptual Age that honours the ability to create aesthetic significance, to discern patterns, to craft a meaningful narrative and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel creation. Realms of learning are brought to light through a narrative that highlights episodes in the life of an artist/researcher/teacher that have special significance for art education. This autoethnographic inquiry, at the intersections of art, science, technology, and culture, identifies interweaving realms that create a colourful fabric of lifelong learning: from awesome immersion, playful exploration, aesthetic creativity, morphological analysis, interdisciplinary imagination, cybersomatic (computer-body) interactivity, polycultural collaboration, to holistic integration.

An Artist's Story

Mel Alexenberg lecturing on the Talmud and the Internet at ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe in November 2008

Holistic Integration of
Multiple Fields, Multiple Roles, Multiple Identities

Mel Alexenberg מנחם אלכסנברג
This blog explores my quest along the virbrant interface between
mutliple fields - art/science/technology/culture
mutiple roles - artist/researcher/teacher/writer
mutiple identities - jewish/israeli/american/global.
It is an autoethnographic narrative that highlights episodes in my life that explore these multiple fields, roles, and identities.

a/r/tography
My methodology is derived from a growing literature in art education that Canadian professor Rita Irwin calls a/r/tography, recursive autobiographical inquiry of an Artist/Researcher/Teacher, in her book a/r/tography: Rendering Self Through Arts-Based Living Inquiry.

Biography as an Art Form
The book, Art Works: Autobiography, by Barbara Steiner and Jun Yang, explores and documents autobiography as a contemporary art form. They write "Autobiography in art has certain features in common with the literary autobiography. Both claim a link between the narrating subject (the author), the life or episode of a life described, and the work that describes it."

One Word for Artist and Education
When speaking Hebrew at home in Israel, the integral link between art and learning is obvious since the word for artist oman אמן as a verb means to educate l'amen לאמן. Furthermore, the biblical artists Betzalel and Oholiav received the divine gift of artistic talent coupled with the ability to teach others (Exodus 35:30-35).

Spectrum of Learning Through Art
The following realms of learning through art are woven together in my artiststory:
awesome immersion
playful exploration
morphological analysis
interdisciplinary imagination
semiotic communication
cybersomatic interactivity
global connectivity
polycultural collaboration
ecological perspective
responsive compassion
spiritual emergence
moral courage
holistic integration
appreciating irony
revealing beauty
invisible dynamics
national revival
peer collaboration
spectral encoding
down-to-earth spirituality
illuminating darkness

From Awesome Immersion to Illuminating Darkness
My a/r/tographical inquiry begins in my awesome childhood summers in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York and leads six decades later to illuminating the darkness of Mumbai murders in celebration of Hanuka with my family in Israel.

Postmodern Journey through a Blog
It is in the nature of a blog to tell a story in a reverse chronological order where it begins at the end. If you feel more comfortable with a narrative that starts at the beginning, go to the end of the blog and start with "Awesome Immersion" and work your way up. Or if you feel in a postmodern mood, journey through the blog in no particular order at all to create a holistic collage juxtaposing diverse episodes in a dance of the mind.

Illuminating Darkness

Rotating Light before Darkness

Hanuka 5769/2008:

Celebrating light over darkness in Mumbai in front of the Taj Hotel attacked by Islamist terrorists a month earlier

גולל אור מפני חשך וחשך מפני אור

Jerusalem (Israel) Mumbai (India) Mumbai (India)
Aizwal (Mizoram State, India)
Israel

Katmandu (Nepal)

Seoul (South Korea)

Melbourne (Australia)
Hobart (Tasmania, Australia)
Seattle (Washington) Denver (Colorado) New Jersey Turnpike London (England)
Berlin (Germany)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Budapest (Hungary)
Johannesburg (South Africa)

Tiblisi (Georgia)

Israel

Rotating Light Before Darkness
גולל אור מפני חשך וחשך מפני אור

A digital artwork honoring Gabriel and Rivah Holtzberg and the others murdered in Mumbai Chabad House, is being exhibited in the "Art in Darkness" Hanuka exhibition at Emuna College in Jerusalem. The title of my artwork Rotating Light before Darkness is a phrase from the Jewish prayerbook. I created this artwork to express the Chabad view that the tragic darkness witnessed in Mumbai must be counteracted by speading the light of Torah around the globe.

Welcoming Dawn Around the Globe
This memorial artwork shows the welcoming of dawn around the world by cycling photographs of morning prayers from Jerusalem, Aizwal (Mizoram State, India), Katmandu (Nepal), Seoul (Korea), Melbourne, Hobart (Tasmania, Australia), Honololu, Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Richmond (Virginia), New Jersey, Manhattan, Brooklyn, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milano, Prague, Budapest, Eisiskes (Lithuania), Johannesburg (South Africa), Vysoki (Russia), Tbilisi (Georgia), and returning to Jerusalem the following morning. At the Emuna College exhibition, Rotating Light before Darkness is shown in digital motion rotating through 24 time zones.

Add Light to the World
There is a Talmudic disagreement between Hillel and Shamai about lighting Hanuka candles. Shamai proposed lighting 8 candles on the first night and one less each following night until on the 8th day only one candle glows. This makes sense conceptually since the story goes that all the oil was found and was used up after 8 days. Hillel chose the aesthetic route in contrast with Shamai's conceptual one. He proposed that we should add light to the world rather than subtract from it. Jewish tradition follows Hillel by lighting one candle on the first night of Hanuka and adding an additional candle each night until all eight candles give light together on the last night.

Interaction of Our Souls, Our Hearts, Our Visions"The divine purpose of the present information revolution, which gives an individual unprecedented power and opportunity, is to allow us to share knowledge – spiritual knowledge – with each other, empowering and unifying individuals everywhere. We need to use today’s interactive technology not just for business or leisure but to interlink as people – to create a welcome environment for the interaction of our souls, our hearts, our visions."
From Toward a Meaningful Life: The Wisdom of the Rebbe by Menachem M. Schneerson, adapted by Simon Jacobson (New York: William Morrow, 1995)