Israeli singer-songwriter Ehud Banai’s music has found a beautiful setting deep inside the Bell Caves at Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park, where it forms the soundtrack to a new immersive video-art exhibition exploring memory, birth, dreams, and the mysteries of human consciousness.
The Eighth Sound exhibition brings together Banai’s songs and texts with video art by Ronen Tanchum. Created specifically for the ancient caves, the approximately 40-minute work surrounds visitors with music, projected images, light, and movement, transforming the underground space into what its creators describe as a kind of “womb of the earth.”
The exhibition, launched by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, will run on selected evenings from July through the end of November. It is the seventh contemporary art exhibition to be presented in the caves since the site was converted into an unconventional gallery space.
The idea originated in Banai’s response to the caves themselves. The Bell Caves are hundreds of man-made caverns, carved out during the Byzantine and Early Arab periods. They have a bell-like shape, which historians believe was created to prevent the ceilings from caving in.
“On my first visit to the cave, I felt as though I had crossed into another dimension, like entering a giant womb,” Banai said. “The Gemara tells us that a fetus in its mother’s womb possesses the highest level of consciousness.”
An immersive journey through memory, dreams, and consciousness
Banai said he began thinking about figures such as the prophet Elijah and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, whose mystical experiences were associated with caves. From there, he developed the concept of a journey told through speech, sound, and images.
“It is about transitions: from pregnancy to birth, from reality to dream, from life to what lies beyond it, from a cycle of seven days and seven notes to the eighth day and the eighth sound,” he said.
The exhibition takes its title from the idea of something existing beyond the familiar cycles of time and music: beyond the seven days of the week and the seven notes of the musical scale. The “eighth sound” represents an elusive frequency that cannot be physically heard, symbolizing hidden consciousness, memory, and voices emerging from silence.
According to various traditions cited in the exhibition text, the fetus learns the secrets of the universe while in the womb, only to forget them at birth. Life then becomes a gradual process of recollection, with each encounter, dream, and observation offering a glimpse of that lost knowledge.
Music and AI imagery reshape Beit Guvrin’s ancient Bell Caves
The soundtrack includes several of Banai’s best-known songs, many in new arrangements recorded especially for the exhibition. It also features his first recorded performance of “Atuf Berahamim,” “Wrapped in Mercy,” which he wrote after seeing an ultrasound during his wife’s pregnancy with their eldest daughter.
Tanchum’s projected imagery follows the emergence and dissolution of memory. Abstract forms gradually become recognizable images before fading away again. Each projector offers a different viewpoint, while the natural contours of the cave become part of the constantly changing visual composition.
“For me, this work began with Ehud’s text, before I had visited the cave and before I had heard the music,” Tanchum said. “In his words, I already felt a gateway to childhood memory, to an inner sense of time, and to a spiritual dimension.”
When he entered the Bell Caves, it became clear that the video work would have to respond to the space rather than merely use it as a screen, Tanchum recalled.
“The cave did not feel like a background, but like a living place with its own rhythm, substance, and breath,” he said.
Tanchum developed an AI-based visual system designed to blend with the cave through light, imagery, and movement. Banai’s voice, he said, provides the “human heart” of the journey.
Tomer Sargosti, director of Beit Guvrin National Park and founder of the Bell Cave Gallery, said the annual exhibitions allow visitors to experience the historic site from a different perspective.
“The cave, its acoustics, the video artwork, and the atmosphere all come together and invite the public on an emotional and sensory journey in one of Israel’s most impressive heritage sites,” he said.
The exhibition will be open from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., with last admission at 9 p.m., on selected Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday nights, depending on the month. The exhibition itself lasts about 35 minutes, while a full visit to the Bell Caves takes about 75 minutes.
Visitors may also order picnic packages in advance and collect them at the park’s service center for an evening combining art, nature, food, and wine near the caves. Tickets can be reserved through the Israel Nature and Parks Authority website.
Source:
www.jpost.com
