"Nigunnim" was an audiovisual installtion I created for the Blanksteen Fellowship, at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale in 2023. I, along with the rest of the cohort, were given the phrase "How does speech become violence?" as a prompt for our work. I was inspired to create a pair of songs similar to the "nigunnim" I grew up with. For each song, I created a video using a program called EboSuite which can generate shaders that react to audio information.
An excerpt from my artist statement:
When approaching the themes of speech and violence, I dug in to find something that spoke to me in relation to what l've made in the past. I thought about violence due to lack of speech, and the frustration and anger that can arise when words fail. I thought back to my days in summer camp; in particular, I remembered debates with a friend on whether the nigunnim (tunes) we sang on Shabbat were better with or without lyrics.
My friend argued that when we sang the tunes without words, we were tapping into something deeper and truer than what our words could say. At the time I thought it was nonsensical and silly. Looking back, I'm not so sure. This piece was an opportunity to take what l've learned about music production to explore and compose nigunnim that make use of modern electronic instrumentation while incorporating the meditative, trance-like qualities of a wordless nigun. I used the accompanying visuals to transform a purely auditory experience into an even more immersive atmosphere.
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