Augmented Realities – TASMEEM DOHA 2022 / RADICAL FUTURES

The Geomorphosis Cycle: A Paradise With Walls of Nothingness

rf-admin — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 14:10:18 +0000

A live audiovisual performance by Islam Shabana

10th March 2022, 6:30-7:30 PM
Atrium
Upon Registration Only

Islam Shabana’s work is in the intersection of technology within the human’s mental faculties, mythology, and Islamic philosophy. Exploring concepts like system-social dynamics, religious performative rituals, occult practices, poetry, to simulation, science fiction, and future speculations. Examining how different technologies are interweaving these concepts producing/reproducing entangling structures between myth, fiction, and physical realities. Within such complex intersectional realms, the digital medium is emphasizing the shift in cognitive processes, oscillating the human experience and imagination between reality and hyperreality, human and non-human, physical and mental spaces.

This event is an in-person event for the VCUarts Qatar community only. Please use the registration button to register.

On Behalf of the Voice

rf-admin — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 22:58:11 +0000

On Behalf of the Voice’ explores the role of physical and digital infrastructures in aiding political power, and their use to control Arabic-speaking bodies in the city of East Jerusalem. This exploration takes on a multi-scalar approach — from the architecture of the territory down to the body of the [in]dividual — focusing on the concept of ‘dividuation’. Through the implementation of digital software (including the surveillance and collection of data, metadata and biometrics), a ‘dividual’ becomes the breakdown of an individual to their digitally diminutive parts.

Within this dividuation, this project focuses on the voice, speech and language – exploring the role of speech translation software and their effects when used on the society of East Jerusalem. Here, speech operated softwares, although extremely advanced, remain deeply flawed due to the complexity of the Arabic language and its dialects, causing glitches and mistranslations. Four softwares and their flaws are explored: Layered Voice Analysis 6.50, Athena, Facebook’s Neural Machine Translation and Google Assistant.

‘On Behalf of the Voice’ therefore emphasizes that the language that we speak and the dialects in which we speak, retains a level of resolution that the AI software does not. The project looks into the internal spatial cartography of the Arabic-Speaking tongue to propose a dialectal map and an architecture of resistance against softwares of control.

My project fits in with both axes of ‘State of Change’ and ‘The Department of Disinformation’, focusing on digital softwares and language, new systems and technologies – while also emphasizing colonial realities, and a fight for indigenous knowledge (in my case, the beauty in Arabic-speaking tongues).

Prologue_version_01

rf-admin — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 22:43:49 +0000

This project as a kind of foresight and collective review intends to attend to gene promotion in various biological species. Having been investigating Axolotl genome that has the capability of restoring the damaged parts of body, the scientists have carried out successful experiments to regenerate organ tissues of human, animal and plant species making use of Cell engineering. Looking backward, classical artists used to register a kind of perspective filled with plants, human and animal species. Examining the plants in their works and relying on our familiarity with the surrounding world, we could immediately accept these species as quite tangible objects. Yet, there has been a contentious issue as to how we could demonstrate and record the distinction between the performance of such species with distinguished new traits in contrast with those of past. In a different era of Persian literature, we have witnessed the vast use of cedar trees, directly or indirectly. The image of the tree has also been used in miniature and the stories of a different era in Iran. We could imagine to have another version of this tree with the same old appearance but with an upgraded gene and new capabilities. How would it be possible to investigate and record its image? This is actually an example of the visual evidence of ancient Iranian culture. By discussing and investigating such topics in other cultures by posing the question as to whether in a future filled with the creation of the new mutated phenomenon, we will encounter a huge alteration of definitions in areas such as literature and visual culture, I would intend to investigate and finally predict different subjects which are key elements in both literary and visual cultures of the other countries. This would be a kind of preparation and endeavor to create a platform for describing and portraying new species with mutated genes. In this project, I try to create an ecosystem in a virtual world as well as a real-world, including trans-Humans, plants, and animals with upgraded genome and new abilities which is a platform to review and research on these imaginary creatures with the genetic mutation. This project intends to answer whether they could affect the meaning of our literature, Poetry, and Stories in the future.