I made this looping animation as a final project for a class on Rumi and Sufism. It is inspired by the illustrations and folios accompanying the manuscripts of the Masnavi and other works.
I drew and animated the three insets of the central frame in Procreate.
The upper left represents the samā’ or dancing dervishes. The upper right represents the theme of apophatic and mystical silence that runs throughout Rumi's work.
The bottom animation is a representation of tawhid, the dissolution of the rational self in an ecstatic, divine union of love. I also drew the two musicians on the bottom right playing the ney and the iklig, respectively.
All the other imagery (the frames, the birds, the plants, and the tile in the upper right) are from the Met Museum's digital collection of relevant folios. The tile in the upper right was likely originally placed on Rumi's tomb.
The sound is a series of compiled birdsong that I recorded in upstate New York. Finally, the quote is the last stanza of F2245-O10-1482, one of Rumi's ghazals.