Biography

Biography from Wikipedia

Sonya Rapoport (born October 6, 1923) is an American conceptual/digital artist and multimedia artist who has created computer-assisted interactive installations and participatory web-based artworks. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts. There, she regularly attended Saturday classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where she studied with Karl Zerbe. She spent her childhood summers at the art colony in Ogunquit, Maine.

About her education…

She attended MassArt (Massachusetts College of Art) for two years from 1941 to 1942 and during this period she met Henry Rapoport while he was a Ph.D. Candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1942 she was enrolled in a summer philosophy program taught by John Dewey in New York at Columbia University. She then returned to Massachusetts and studied at Boston University from 1943 to 1944, majoring in biology.

She married Henry Rapoport in 1944 and the couple moved to New York. Sonya Rapoport enrolled at New York University and, in 1946, received her B.A. in Labor Economics. She then attended the Art Students League of New York where she studied with Reginald Marsh. In September of 1946 the couple moved again, this time to Washington, D.C., where Rapoport entered the Corcoran School of Art to study figurative art and oil painting.

In late September, 1947, Henry Rapoport accepted a position as professor of organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. There Sonya Rapoport studied with Erle Loran, receiving her master's degree in art practice in 1949. The Berkeley art practice curriculum at that time was heavily influenced by the aesthetic philosophy of Hans Hofmann, although the school produced artists as divergent in their practices as, Rapoport, Jay DeFeo and Sam Francis.

Nowadays…

Sonya Rapoport, new media artist, has produced computer assisted, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary artworks and interactive installations since the mid-1970’s. These works have been presented at Sao Paulo, Brazil; Ars Electronica, Austria; DOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany; and the Kuopio Museum in Finland. ISEA(S), Digital Salon(s), and Siggraph have hosted her electronic artworks. Her concept for communicating altruisms to extra-terrestrials was presented in 2004 at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) workshop in Paris, later to become the web work, Kabbalah/Kabul. Recent venues for her artwork include the Art Biennial-Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; International Symposium of Interactive Media Design Istanbul, Turkey; the Whitney Biennial, 2006, and BIO4, 2007,Seville, Spain. A reproduction from her Inter-Active Installation ANIMATED SOUL: Gateway to your Ka was on the cover of LEONARDO JOURNAL, vol.39, number 2 2006 The issue included her autobiographical DIGITIZING THE GOLEM from Earth to Outer-Space. She is on the International Advisory Committee for the Symposium MUTAMORPHOSIS being organized in Prague in 2007.

Sonya Rapoport’s extensively published writings include art and book reviews. Her critiques have appeared in the MIT publication Leonardo/ISAST for which she serves on the governing board.

Ó http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonya_Rapoport

Biography from Media Art Net:

Sonya Rapoport was born in Boston, MA (USA). Studied at the New York University before receiving her MA at the University of California. In 1976, after concentrating for many years on painting and drawing, Rapoport turned her attention to electronic media, with the focus of her work oriented towards interdisciplinary and cultural studies. In 1998 she received a grant from the California Art Council for the production «Digital Mudra,» her first web-based work. Since then numerous works for the World Wide Web were created, among others «Redeeming the Gene» (2001). Rapoport was represented at major art exhibitions and festivals with these works and also serves on the Board of Directors of the magazine LEONARDO/ISAST, to which she regularly contributes articles. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA (USA).

Ó http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/rapoport/biography/

Biography from HTMlles 8

Sonya Rapoport lives in Berkeley, California where she received an M.A. degree from the University of California. She obtained her B.A. degree from New York University. In 1976, after an extensive career in painting and drawing, she became a multimedia artist. The focus of her work remains cross-cultural and interdisciplinary.

In 1988 Rapoport received a grant from the California Art Council to produce on-line the interactive artwork, DIGITAL MUDRA. Since then, her continued presence on the Internet has been visible as an early ARTSWIRE resident artist and a producer of Web artworks.

Her work has been included in traveling exhibitions sponsored by the United States Information Service and the National Endowment for the Arts. Exhibition venues have been Sao Paulo, Brazil; Ars Electronica, Austria; DOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany; and the Kuopio Museum, Finland; and recently, International Symposia on Electronic Art; and New York DIGITAL SALONS. Sonya Rapoport serves on the Board of Directors for LEONARDO /ISAST.

Ó http://www.htmlles.net/1997/rapoport.html

Second Paper

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Academic Year 2008/2009
Ó a.r.e.a./Dr. Vicente Forés López
Ó Paula Vázquez Valero
pauvazva@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press