The Animated Soul was a multi-year extended project that took the form of computer-mediated interactive installations, artworks on paper, published software, and an artist’s book. It reflects Rapoport’s interest in mortality and the mystical belief system described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, especially as an antecedent to the Ten Commandments.

An initial proposal first appeared in 1990 in Fine Art Forum’s Words on Works, an online newsletter edited by Judy Malloy. Where Am I Coming From? Where Am I Going To? (1989) was to be an interactive computer program where users could “choose pathways to find the image of who they were in a former life, reversing a procedure from the Egyptian Book of the Dead”.

The first piece produced was From Osirus to Sinai, 1990, a large vertical scroll with photocopied images that presented the Declarations of Innocence and featured Egyptian religious iconography crossed with images of the computer and modern icons.

Animated Soul - Gateway to Your Ka was first exhibited in 1990 as an interactive installation at Ghia Gallery, a casket and funerary objects showroom in San Francisco. A series of large color collages were displayed alongside a computer running a Hypercard program.

Participants began by selecting an owl (wisdom), windmill (power), or dancers (pleasure), and then, after a series of choices, were printed a ticket with their assigned “ancient double,” or Egyptian god. They then proceeded into the back room, where they found their “words of power” in one of 27 open coffins, and received their “boarding pass” to everlasting life.

Animated Soul - Gateway to Your Ka, performance documentation at Ghia Gallery, San Francisco, 1990.

Variations of the performance were produced at Takada Fine Arts, San Francisco, in 1992, and Kuopio Art Museum, Finland, in 1992.

Animated Soul was also recreated as an elaborate “choose your own adventure” style artist book that recreated the hypermedia experience of the installation. Printed in 1992, it was featured in the National Endowment for the Arts Travelling Book Exhibition.