Immersive Sound

Immersive Sound:

Music from the Mikvah

On May 17, 2023, the Jewish Museum of Maryland hosted Immersive Sound: Music from the Mikvah. The event featured music videos by local artists recorded in the mikvah (ritual bath) space of the Lloyd Street Synagogue at the Jewish Museum of Maryland.

Videos by Jason Carter

Audio by Garrett Long & Tristan Heles

Creative Direction by Morgan Spaner

Official Music Video for Mikvah Dream from MEGAFAUNA’s album ‘The Betrayal of Bees & Wasps’ released October 6, 2022.

Directed & Animated by Emily Kobert

2d animation, photography of original glass fusing, and digital compositing.

Check out the music video by 2023-2024, JMM Young Adult Campus Connector Emily Kobert made of the song, “Mikvah Dream” by MEGAFAUNA, aka Morgan Spaner, a 2023-2024 JMM Young Adult Campus Connector.

The song is about a dream that Spaner had about the mikvah in the Lloyd Street Synagogue. MEGAFAUNA performed “Mikvah Dream” in the Lloyd Street Synagogue’s mikvah at the Jewish Museum of Maryland for the Tu B’Av virtual Cabaret in August 2022. That performance later inspired the Immersive Sound: Music from the Mikveh video series and event in 2023.

Still from Mikvah Dream- MEGAFAUNA
(Official Music Video)
Animated and Directed by Emily Kobert

MIKVAH DREAM MUSIC VIDEO ARTIST STATEMENT

by Emily Kobert

I’m interested in the relationships between our bodies and the spiritual power of water, which is so central to the idea of mikvah. Growing up in South Florida, I have always felt a connection with the ocean. In the water I am weightless. I am myself in my original and true form. When I am in the water, I don’t know why I ever left.

I’ve tried to emulate the nakedness of mikvah in my process as an artist. I immersed myself completely in the song and let the music guide my vision and my gut. It brought me many questions and reflections about birth, rebirth, transformation, transition, and how they all relate to queerness and awakening.

I feel that new versions of myself are being born all the time, while I’m also growing connected to a deeper sense of who I’ve always been. I’m shifting, left and left and left and I squint at the shore to find a landmark to see how far I’ve drifted. I’m still coming into myself, my queerness, my Jewishness, myself as an animator and artist and this project has been a gratifying way to celebrate it all