Biorhythm (1980-1984), one of Sonya Rapoport’s earliest interactive, computer-mediated “audience participation performances” is a data-oriented yet playful exploration of the human body as a computer.

In the late 1970s, there was a surge of popular but dubiously scientific interest in the body’s natural circadian rhythms. Using a commercial biorhythm calculator to predict her daily rhythms, Rapoport recorded her physical, emotional, and intellectual cycles throughout the year 1980. Making use of an oversize wall calendar, she created each day a small collage with the ephemera of her everyday life and paper records of her art practice – a fascinating autobiographical record.

Rapoport then tabulated this data in order to create an artist's book on computer printout paper in which plotter-printed graphs of her biorhythm data are compared to the computer’s predictions, which appear as sinusoidal curves in colored typewriter ink alongside select images from the calendar.

In 1983, Rapoport produced Biorhythm, an audience participation performance at Works Gallery in San José, as seen in the original video documentation:

A greeter asked gallery visitors how they felt, recorded their answers, and assigned them numbered, color-coded wristbands based on their response. A computer operator entered their data into a custom program that predicted their feelings using the biorhythm calculations. They also visited a palm reader and had their spontaneous hand gestures photographed while wearing a dentist bib – non-computerized methods of intuiting feelings.

The data, gesture photographs, and interviews gathered during the 1983 performance were later exhibited as Biorhythm Phase 3: The Computer Says I Feel… (1984) at San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. As seen in the video documentation above, Rapoport has printed in bold above her work:

THE COMPUTER OVERRIDES ALL OPINIONS

Biorhythm was featured in Sonya Rapoport: biorhythm at San José Museum of Art in 2020. Curated by Kathryn Wade, this extensive solo exhibition included a recreation of Sonya Rapoport’s audience participation performance.

The catalog Sonya Rapoport: Biorhythm (2020) by Alla Efimova and Terri Cohn was co-published by the Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust and San José Museum of Art to provide historical context for the 2020 exhibition. It documents Rapoport’s development of the Biorhythm project from 1980-84; explores Digital Mudra (1987-89), which makes use of images from Biorhythm; and discusses the recreation of the performance. Includes essays by SJMA Curator Kathryn Wade and SRLT Director Farley Gwazda.