︎

SACRED 

SILENCE

#ELECTRONIC-ART
#LANGUAGE-AS-MACHINE
2023


The Arabic language is built on a system of trilateral roots, or a masdar, which refers to a three or four consonant based-word representing a core meaning or concept. Sacred Silence explores the letter ‘nun’ (ن) as a seed that grows into ‘kun’ (be) and the trilateral root ‘sakan’ (home/live) and finally manifests into ‘sukoon’ (stillness/bliss/quiet). The letter ‘nun’ is the 14th letter of the Arabic alphabet, marking the midpoint of the 28 letters. ‘Nun’, in its isolated form, opens Surat-al-Qalam in the Quran, making it one of the most deeply spiritually significant letters in Islam. It is reversible in spelling and symmetrical in shape, its circular bowl signifies the upper and lower worlds – the earth and cosmos. It also represents a vessel or an ark with the diacritic dot signifying the seed of immorality, or an indestructible core that evades exterior dissolutions. In Sacred Silence, the concepts of reflection and reversibility are explored to signify the dance between an internal spirituality and an external stillness, a journey from recognizing our existence through contemplative silence. The piece is composed of hundreds of LED bulbs that evoke the fractal multiplicity and repetition of nature, encompassing a spectrum from seeds to stars.




By Basma Hamdy, Selma Fejzullaj, and Shima Aeinehdar, with software by Levi Hammett