“After Cordoba” by Cynthia Beth Rubin

Image from cbrubin.net

Title:

After Cordoba

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):

Cynthia Beth Rubin

Symposium:

TISEA: Third International Symposium on Electronic Art
More artworks from TISEA:

Creation Year:

1992

Artist Statement:

This series is built on the juxtaposition of fragments from both personal and cultural history Ironically, the computer has placed me in a new relationship to tradition. It has provided me with the means to access my cultural legacy directly , and I often begin works by placing medieval Hebrew manuscripts inside the computer. I purposely quote sources from different times and places to tell the story of my own culture which comes form migrations over the last several hundred years from place to place as a subculture which is in and of itself a blended culture. A single work, for example, might bring together images from a 17th century Hebrew manu-script from Italy, the house I lived in as a young child, 19th century polish synagogues, and trees from the yard of my current home in Vermont. The work is totally conceived and developed within the computer, as the mechanism for the selective merging, layering, and melding of my sources. How the source images enter the computer (either through my own photographs or direct drawing) is not important, as in any case I must work hours with the sources within the computer to make them truly part of the evolving computer image.

What the computer offers is the means to create, shift, and emphasise hierarchies of both relationship and representation among pieces of the past which I bring together in my images.