Jerusalem-USA: Book Launch via Cyberangels Ascending from the Land of Israel and Going Down into JerUSAlems in USA

25 September 2019

Book Launch via Cyberangels Ascending from the Land of Israel and Going Down into JerUSAlems in USA

What better way to launch a book than to have cyberangels emerge from the book's cover, ascend from the Land of Israel, and fly to JerUSAlems in USA and around the globe announcing their message. Cyberangels are digital age messengers announcing how biblical insights can transform smartphone photography and social media into imaginative ways for seeing spirituality in everyday life. Through a Bible Lens speaks to Jews and Christians who share an abiding love of the Bible by inspiring the creation of a lively dialogue between our emerging life stories and the enduring biblical narrative.

“He had a vision in a dream. A ladder was standing on the ground, its top reaching up towards heaven as Divine angels were going up and down on it.” (Genesis 28:12)

Angels in Jacob’s dream go up from the Land of Israel and go down throughout the world.

Top image: On the cover of Prof. Mel Alexenberg’s highly acclaimed book Through a Bible Lens, Rembrandt inspired cyberangels spiral up from a NASA satellite image of the Land of Israel on a smartphone screen. The launching of the book to JerUSAlems in USA and throughout the world begins in the artist/author’s studio in Israel.

Bottom image: The lithograph “Angel Ascending from the Land of Israel” was created in the graphic center affiliated with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem by Alexenberg as a digital homage to Rembrandt on the 320th anniversary of his death. He was invited to Israel to make this lithograph when he was head of the art department at Pratt Institute in New York and research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. It is in the collection of the Israel Museum.

In tribute to Rembrandt on the 350^th year of his death, his digitized angels that have been dormant in the museum’s flat files came alive to adorn the cover of the 2019 book Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media.

See praise for the book from Christian and Jewish leaders and experts on art and digital culture at Israel365.

Mel Alexenberg

As an artist, my conceptual, environmental, and digital artworks have been seen by millions and are represented in the collections of more than forty museums worldwide. As an educator in USA, I am former art professor at Columbia University, head of the art department at Pratt Institute, dean at New World School of the Arts in Miami, and reseach fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In Israel, I taught at Bar-Ilan, Ariel and Tel Aviv universities and at Emunah College and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. As a writer, my most recent books are: 'Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media,' 'Photograph God: Creating a Spiritual Blog of Your Life,' 'The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness,' 'Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture' and 'Dialogic Art in a Digital World: Judaism and Contemporary Art' (in Hebrew). I live in Ra'anana, Israel, with my wife artist Miriam Benjamin. website: www.melalexenberg.com

Jerusalem-USA

From Jerusalem in Israel to JerUSAlems in USA

'This city of Jerusalem I have set in the midst of nations, with other countries round about her.' (Ezekiel 5:5)

JerUSAlem-USA is a participatory art project that links the twenty Jerusalems in the United States with the original Jerusalem in Israel. There are Jerusalems in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont.

The name of the American Jerusalems was inspired by the Bible where we read about King David establishing Jerusalem as the capital of the unified state of the Israelite nation more than 3,000 years ago. Today, Jerusalem is the vibrant capital of the modern State of Israel.

ON PARTICIPATORY ART

JerUSAlem-USA is a participatory artwork in which the artist invites the people in USA join with him in creating a collaborative work of art. Unlike the solitary role of the visual artist in his studio, the role of the artist in a networked world is shifting to becoming more like the role of playwright/producer/director in theater and film, composer/conductor in music and choreographer in dance.

In her book The Reenchantment of Art, Suzi Gablik proposes, “a new paradigm of participation in which art will begin to redefine itself in terms social relatedness…encouraging the emergence of a more participatory, social interactive framework for art, and supporting the transition from art-for-art’s-sake assumptions of late modernism.”

As the artist of ‘JerUSAlem-USA,” I create the conceptual framework, craft the score/script, and form a team of collaborators who together under my baton bring into being an aesthetic work of participatory art.

The significance of participatory art in our networked world is explored in depth in Mel Alexenberg's books Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media (Elm Hill/HarperCollins), and The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness and Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology and Culture (both published by Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press).