Sonya’s computer-assisted interactive installations of the early 1980’s are among the earliest artworks to use computers in the gallery context. She collaborated with coders to create programs that gathered data about participants’ choices and used algorithms to analyze their personality. These works are startling prescient of our 21st century computer-mediated social life.

In projects such as “Objects On My Dresser”, “The Computer Says I Feel”, and “Shoe Field”, Rapoport used idiosyncratic, playful, and profoundly insightful rubrics to create data portraits of her subjects. With the computer acting as a dispassionate intermediary, these projects allowed Rapoport to broach intimate topics with her audience including sexual jealousy, psychological well-being, and beliefs about one’s own death.