How to Photograph God: Bible Blog your Life

 

Draft from Introduction to book in progress by Mel Alexenberg.  

Down-to-Earth Spirituality in an Networked World

Abraham rushed to the tent to Sarah and said, “Hurry!  Take three measures of the finest flour!  Kneed it and make rolls!”  Abraham ran to the cattle to choose a tender and choice calf.  (Genesis 18:6,7)

Abraham ran after a calf that ran away from him into a cave that was the burial place of Adam and Eve. 
At the far end of the cave, he saw intense light emanating from an opening.
When he came close to the opening, he found himself standing at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. 
About to enter the pristine garden, he remembered that his wife and three guests were waiting for lunch back at the tent.
What should he do?  Should he trade Paradise for a barbeque?
The Bible tells us that he chose to return to the tent and join his wife in making a meal for their three guests.
Abraham realized that Paradise is what we create with our spouse at home. 
Other visions of Paradise are either mirages or lies.

Enjoy life with the wife you love through all the days of your life. (Ecclesiastes 9:9)

My wife, Miriam, and I worked together to create paradise in our vegetarian kitchen.
Adam and Eve had a vegetarian kitchen.
Spirituality emerged from our collaboration making a potato casserole for our guests.
We bought potatoes and scallions in Avi’s vegetable store and cottage cheese and grated yellow cheese in Bella’s grocery.    
We baked the potatoes in the microwave, sliced them into the baking pan and covered them with the cheeses. 
Miriam washed the scallions, cut them up, and sprinkled them over layers of cheese-covered potatoes.
After the casserole was baked, we served it to our guests. 

 

Photograph God in Your Kitchen 

This biblical narrative linked to revealing God in a contemporary kitchen is a posting from the “Torah Tweets” blog http://torahtweets.blogspot.com that presents the core concept of this book that we can photograph God in all that happens in our everyday life.    Although its ideas are derived from the Hebrew Bible and kabbalah, its message speaks to people of all religions and spiritual traditions.   

The book begins by teaching you how to make an invisible God become visible through your creative lens.  It draws on the ancient wisdom of kabbalah to help you recognize that you have been looking at God all the time and often missed the action.  It helps you develop conceptual and practical tools for photographing God as divine light reflected from every facet of your life.

Just as a prism breaks up white light into the colors of the spectrum, kabbalah reveals a spectrum of divine light based upon the biblical passage "You God are the compassion, the strength, the beauty, the success, the splendor, and the [foundation] of everything in heaven and on earth” (Chronicles 1:29).   You will learn that photographing God is to creatively photograph these six divine attributes as they flow down into your life.

The second part of this book invites you to connect your personal narrative to the biblical narrative.  It guides you in creating your own blog to document how your everyday experiences reflect biblical messages.   It teaches how to find fresh meaning in your life story by relating it to the biblical story.      

Having learned how to focus your lens on God wherever you look will help you create blog narratives gleaned from your reading the Bible creatively.   

You will be encouraged to explore imaginative ways for blogging photographic sequences that link two stories – the story of your life as it unfolds and the enduring biblical story.  You will learn creative ways to write accompanying tweet texts to disseminate worldwide through Twitter and other social media. The 52 postings of the year-long “Torah Tweets” blogart project that my wife, the artist Miriam Benjamin, and I created offers a model for your Bible blogging.

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

My papers, letters, exhibition catalogs, book manuscripts, and art project documents have been incorporated in the collection of the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.   The curators of the Archives wrote me how “thrilled they were to have such interesting materials.”

  

The Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art is the world’s pre-eminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.

Founded on the belief that the public needs free and open access to the most valuable research materials, the collections are available to the thousands of researchers who consult original papers at our research facilities or use our reference services remotely every year, and to millions who visit us online to access detailed images of fully digitized collections.

Through collecting, preserving, and providing access to the collections, the Archives inspires new ways of interpreting the visual arts in America and allows current and future generations to piece together the nation’s rich artistic and cultural heritage. 

The Lone Pelican

Israel is the land bridge for 70,000 great white pelicans migrating from Africa to Europe in spring and from Europe to Africa in fall.

On their migratory flight, pelicans stop for a few days at the lake across from our home in Ra’anana.      

One pelican with a broken wing could not join with the others as they continued on their flight to Europe in April. 

Her mate stayed behind with her. 

Miriam and I enjoyed seeing the pelican pair swimming side by side as a pair of black swans and a pair of white swans, permanent residents of the lake, glided past them.

After a rain storm In January, her mate was no longer there.

Tu B'Shevat: Songs of the Trees

This week ends on Shabbat with the celebration of Tu B'Shevat – the New Years for Trees.  I photographed these trees in Israel.

Reb Aryeh Levine (1885-1969), known as the "Tzaddik of Jerusalem," recorded the following incident in his memoirs.

I recall the early days, after 1905, when God granted me the privilege to ascend to the Holy Land; and I arrived at Jaffa. There I first merited meeting our great master, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (of blessed memory), who greeted me with good cheer, as was his sacred custom to receive all people.

We chatted together on various Torah topics. After an early Minchah (the afternoon prayer-service), he went out, as was his custom, to stroll a bit in the fields and collect his thoughts. I accompanied him.  During the walk, I plucked a twig or a flower. Our great master was taken aback when he saw this. He told me gently:

"Believe me - in all my days, I have been careful never to pluck a blade of grass or flower needlessly, when it had the ability to grow or blossom. You know the teaching of the Sages, that there is not a single blade of grass below, here on earth, which does not have a heavenly force above telling it, Grow! Every sprout and leaf of grass says something, conveys some meaning. Every stone whispers its inner message in its silence. Every creature utters its song [of praise for the Creator]."  

Those words, spoken from a pure and holy heart, engraved themselves deeply on my heart. From then on, I began to feel a strong sense of compassion for all things.

(Adapted from "A Tzaddik in Our Time" by R. Simcha Raz, pp. 108-109)

Downsizing a Lifetime

The new Ra'anana retirement home of artists Miriam and Mel Alexenberg in Ahuzat Bayit is featured in the article "Downsizing a Lifetime" in The Jerusalem Post Magazine series on the most beautiful homes in Israel (text by Gloria Deutsch, photos by Uriel Messa), 4 January 2013, pages 26-29.

"Walking into the apartment feels a little like walking into a doll's house.  It's very neat, very compact, and most of the furnishings and fittings are white so as not to overpower the small space.  Color -- and there is plenty of it -- comes from flowers, plants and a few decorative items but is mostly concentrated on the walls, which are embellished with a selection of the unconventional art that both have pursued over the years."

Fringed Sukkah

My drawing "Fringed Sukkah" is a proposal for a fragile hut built in the form of a huge talit (prayer shawl).  It symbolizes the prophet Zechariah’s teaching that if people worldwide would live for just one week in huts open to their neighbors and the sky then all humanity would experience peace. 

A sukkah is a hut built to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot during which Jewish families move out of their homes into fragile structures with roofs through which stars can be seen.  Blue fringes flowing from the sukkah link sky to sea, heaven to earth, and spirituality to everyday life.  I built this fringed hut at the BMW Museum in Munich for the "Sky Art" exhibition. 

My drawing appears in the book Architectural Inventions: Visionary Drawings edited by Matt Bua and Maximillian Goldfarb (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2012), the catalog of a traveling exhibition of drawings envisioning speculative architecture that opened at Mass MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in 2009.  

Praise to the Czechs

The Czech Republic is the only European country that moved past Europe's anti-Semitic past to vote against the UN attack on Israel by the genocidal Palestinian Arabs.

These murders approved by the UN General Assembly showered Israel's civilian population with thousands of rockets.  One made a direct hit on my niece's apartment house in Kiryat Malachi killing her neighbors and sending her children into shock!

I'm happy to be in Prague participating in the Mutaphorphosis conference exploring interrelationships between art and science.

The last time I was there was in 2004 for my exhibition Mel Alexenberg: Cyberangels/Aesthetic Peace Plan for the Middle East at the Robert Guttman Gallery, Jewish Museum in Prague.  Miriam and I spent a wonderful few weeks there living in a romantic attic apartment in the museum.

At the opening of my exhibition, I explained my Aesthetic Peace Plan to the ambassadors of Israel and the United States.

 

Comment from Jeorge Enoughie:
Maybe the Czech have a good memory and they realize that what Israel is going through now is not much different from their own experience in the 1930s... Here's a powerful video on why Israel is the new Czechoslovakia: "Israel 2013 - Czechoslovakia 1938: http://www.geopolitics.us/?p=1525 

Miami Beach Eruv

Mel Alexenberg’s painting Miami Beach Eruv in the "Shaping Community" exhibition at Yale University Art Galleries shows a generic Art Deco hotel on Ocean Drive with the cord of the Miami Beach eruv hovering over it.  The Miami Beach eruv encircling the island city is the largest environmental sculpture in North America.  It is also kinetic art that transforms itself in seven day cycles and participatory art that shapes community.

Texts describing the Miami Beach eruv are published in the Yale exhibition catalog, my paper “Eruv as Conceptual and Kinetic Art” in the Visualizing the Eruv issue of Images: Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture, Vol. 5, 2011, and my website www.melalexenberg.com   
 
 Shaping Community:  Poetics and Politics of the Eruv

An exhibition exploring a Jewish spatial practice
Yale University Art Galleries
October-November 2012
Curated by Margaret Olin

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Talmudic law interprets the biblical imperative to “do no work” on the Sabbath as forbidding the carrying of objects from a private space into a public space on that day.   Because, however, the injunction against carrying would seem to contravene the biblical command that the Sabbath be “a joy,” the rabbinical corpus also instituted the eruv, a partnership that operates during the Sabbath to transform a neighborhood into a community with a shared dwelling place, within whose borders an orthodox Jew may carry a prayer book to the synagogue, push a stroller or wheelchair, and where children may play outdoors.

The eruv boundary is marked, so subtly as to be nearly invisible, by redefining urban fixtures such as utility wires with the addition of common pieces of hardware or fishing line. Yet the institution of an eruv demands the cooperation of surrounding communities and is often the center of acrimonious disputes and litigation.  The concept of the eruv raises issues about public and private space, borders and limitations that speak, in multifold and fascinating ways, to wider concerns about multiethnic communities, immigration, and human rights.

Postdigital Consciousness

My paper "Postdigital Consciousness" was published in the Swiss magazine Archithese: International Thematic Review of Architecture, No. 4, 2012. Below is the Archithese editor's summary.  For the full paper see: http://www.melalexenberg.com/paper.php?id=42

Paradigm Shift from Hellenistic to Hebraic Roots of Western Civilization

The Hellenistic concept of an ideal and static state of perfection is losing relevance in a networked world that is alive, thriving through dialogue and fast interaction.  An aspiration for rest might remain, but the non-linear dynamics of the universe and everything within cannot be ignored.  It is a process which departs from the formal object to focus once again on the vitality of nature and us as human beings.  

Amazing Story

(The Jerusalem Post, July 26, 2012)

Sir, - Marc Zell ("Making Ariel University a reality," Comment & Features, July 24) tells an amazing story in which I had the privilege of participating. I came to Israel from the United States 12 years ago to teach at the College of Judea and Samaria. To see it grow from a small college to a university with 13,000 students during that time is a powerful demonstration of the Zionist miracle of our start-up nation.

As former professor at Columbia University and research fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I can attest to the excellence of Ariel University's educational and research programs. I proudly identified my affiliation with Ariel in my papers published in peer-review international journals and in books.

It was my great honor to have taught at Ariel University until I retired as its first Professor Emeritus.

Menahem (Mel) Alexenberg
Ra'anana

Painting from my "Digitized Homage to Rembrandt" series hangs in the library of Ariel University

Bar Mitzvah in a Brooklyn Mosque

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

Mel Alexenberg and his wife Miriam Benjamin participated 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 participated 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 presentation following mine was given by Dan Shechtman, who had won the Wolf Prize in Physics and after Karmiel, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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.