Modern Midrash Art Project

For my modern Midrash class we were instructed to select one art form and concentrate upon using it to portray, extend and embellish a biblical event, the spiritual journey of a biblical character, or a given key word or theme. I knew I wanted to do some sort of digital project. A basic google search for inspiration led me to a word cloud site, similar to my project but just in a blob instead of a meaningful picture. At first, I tried this with the whole text of the Torah, and chose Mechon Mamre just because it was easiest to cut and paste. I paired this with a google image search of “Moses." When I saw the end result I wondered how/if the words would change based on the text and went through the same process with Joshua, Judges, Samuel, etc.

This project allows viewers to ask questions about a million different texts and their statistical analyzers. A person could recreate it by focusing on  parshiyot or chapters, breaking up the texts into their different authors (like JPDE or Isaiah and Dutereo-Isaiah) and so many different possibilities.

Click here to see more examples of my Modern Midrash Art in the image gallery.