Jerusalem-USA: Zero Cybermiles between Jerusalem in Israel and the 20 JerUSAlems in USA

25 November 2019

Zero Cybermiles between Jerusalem in Israel and the 20 JerUSAlems in USA

There are thirty museums participating in artist Mel Alexenberg's Global Tribute to Rembrandt on five continents including those from the twelve states in USA that have places called JerUSAlem. The titles of the blog posts for the museums in the twelve states shows its distance in miles to Jerusalem in Israel and to Jerusalem in the US state. Zero cybermiles are added to describe the elimination of distance through today's digital technologies.

For example: University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor: 6,018 miles from Jerusalem, Israel; 14 miles from Jerusalem, Michigan; or 0 cybermiles, and Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York: 5,690 miles from Jerusalem, Israel; 78 miles from Jerusalem, New York; or 0 cybermiles.

I coined the word “cybermiles” to highlight the difference between my digital events honoring Rembrandt on the 320^th anniversary of his death in 1989 and on the 250^th anniversary on 2019. Cybermiles symbolizes the shift from the fax generation to the ubiquitous digital culture of smartphones and social media.

On the morning of October 4,1989, my Rembrandt inspired cyberangel ascended from the AT&T building in New York. It flew to Amsterdam to Jerusalem to Tokyo to Los Angeles, returning to New York on the same afternoon. It took an hour in each city to receive 28 pages of angel fragments and fax them on to the next city. After a five-hour flight around the planet, the deconstructed angel was reconstructed for the fifth time at its starting point.

Unlike fax technology where the cyberangel went from one city to the next on its circumglobal flight, today’s technology sees cyberangels ascend into “The Cloud” and descend into cities throughout the world. The Cloud describes a vast number of computers interconnected through a real-time communication network such as the Internet. The Cloud is a living network of networks blanketing our planet that expresses the biblical commentary that the angels in Jacob’s dream ascend into The Cloud and come down throughout the world.

In 1989, the distance between participating cities is measured in miles. Learn more about the circumglobal faxart event at Rembrandt Inspired Cyberangels Circle the Globe.

In 2019, rather than flying from place to place, cyberangels ascend into The Cloud and drop down anywhere in the world. Cybermiles in the age of smartphones and social media erases miles. Follow my emerging digital homage to Rembrandt as it is happening at this Global Tribute to Rembrandt blog.

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).