• 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.

• This happening takes place in the Saffron Hall on Tuesday, 8th March at 9 AM.
• Please bring your own blank tote bag or t-shirt.
• Registration is required.

9th March & 10th March 2022, 9 AM – 12 PM
Room 281
Upon Registration Only

This workshop explores various technological practices through the lens of mythical/irrational structures as a tool to disrupt the western imaginary and logic. Through discussions and experimentations, we will trace speculative narratives of technology and machinery back to premodern cosmologies.

In Islamic traditions, occult practices depend heavily on a numerology known as “Al-Jafr,” the science of numbers claimed to be taught by Imam-Ali. The simple idea is that numbers are stored in the time/space fabric of the universe and can be called on to represent different elements. For example, the planet’s moves and positions that can be calculated based on its rotation reveal astrological information. It is believed that by using rational mathematics, you can calculate such physical elements, as well as calculate and manipulate other spiritual or mystical elements that are in control of or connected to the physical world.

Al-Awfaq, also known as “magic squares” are algorithmic structures used to carry out such calculations. They are believed to process and channel mystic powers in order to manifest them in a physical form. These algorithmic squares are the base of any talisman’s drawing on material varying from paper to animal skin and plant leaves. The talisman is the code that embodies the non-physical calculation of mystic power/energy/information.

Computer machines are built of a combination of circuit boards made out of silicon, ceramics, copper, gold, and other materials. These circuits run by regulating electrical signals using mathematical algorithms that define certain rational processes in order to calculate specific operations, and deliver logical results. To define and write such algorithms you have to code and embody them inside the material part (the circuit).

Participants should have basic knowledge of creative coding and prototyping tools such as Touchdesigner, processing, openFrameworks, etc., and are required to bring their laptops or tablets with 2D or 3D visualization software installed.

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

The initial objective was to create proposals out of food waste to create new materials to replace plastic packaging for food. However, it evolved into a Do-It-Yourself open-source material archive where people could start to experiment with these materials from home, know the simplicity of the process and further pressurize industries to move towards more sustainable solutions “because now the people know”.

Having been part of the MENA Grad Show, I was exposed to all kinds of people, including children and teenagers, which was eye-opening to a new direction for the project. I’ve had professors and teachers who were interested in workshops for their students, and little kids seemed to be intrigued by the video recipes and colorfulness of the project.

This made me open a new potential way for the project, and it is to potentially focus my target audience on schools and families, who could start working together on these materials, experimenting, learning about the potential of waste to replace one use or short-term items etc.

This project aims to educate on the simplicity of up-cycling a daily wasted resource, “food waste” to useful materials that would potentially be adopted by industries to move away from plastic Packaging. The prototype is fully functional and is ready to be launched.

The project focuses on visualizing folk songs of two different Egyptian environments; agricultural and coastal through Arabic lettering designs. The songs were collected from visiting each environment as well as recording some of them.

The difference between each area is depicted by envisioning the lyrics through Arabic lettering and turning each song to an illustrated piece from the original environment. This reflects on how the cultural environment influences the group to create their own kind of folk songs. The style of the posters focuses on analyzing their elements along with integrating them within the lettering designs.

In brief, the project imagines a new archive system. It also works on an experimental perspective for Arabic Lettering. The archive system depends on documenting the songs through merging the text (lettering designs) and sound (songs audios) together. That’s why the project can deeply relate to the second axis : State of Change. The archive brings the traditional folk songs and new technologies/ perspectives all together. It reflects on how valuable the word “Archive” is and the richness it carries, to be presented to the upcoming generations in an interesting way.

• 10th March 2022, 2 PM – 3 PM
• Atrium
• Upon Registration Only

“Designing From Within” is about adopting the biological terms endogenous and endemic as principles for setting just design practices. Through a reflection on Design’s mistakes and questionable methods, Paolo Cardini will invite us to rethink the role of design and designers in our society moving across the complex matrix that runs from global awareness to local identities and from future thinking to present actions.

This event is an in-person event for the VCUarts Qatar community only that will be streamed live. Members of the public are welcome to ask questions in a moderated chat, at the end of each session. Please use the registration button to register and receive a link to your chosen event.

• 10th March 2022, 3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
• Atrium
• Upon Registration Only

The canonical history of twentieth-century architecture and design in the English language is, like most histories, a constructed and partial view of reality. Yet it has often been perpetuated by its authors as a universal narrative of modernism consisting of a lineup of architects and designers, often Euro-American men, a progression of styles, and a sequence of masterworks. This reductionist view of history expires as soon as it is brought forth, as new information constantly emerges on that which was left out from narratives previously presented as complete.

Merely adding “newly found” architects and designers or their designs in an effort to make the existing narrative “global” without radically rethinking the very structures that underpin this reading of history do not suffice. New critical histories of design are not to replace one hierarchical narrative with another.

This proposed timeline is presented in two formats when launched in the context of Tasmeem Doha 2022. The timeline visualizes a partial history of architecture and design focusing on Latin America and the Arab World enriched by the inclusion of a slew of geographically diverse political and cultural benchmarks from around the rest of the world. It is anchored in the idea that any view of history is always provisional. There is no finite reading nor any claim to a “complete history” here.

In this talk, Mohamed Elshahed, the curator of the project, will present the timeline and discuss the conceptual ideas that produced it.

Mohamed Elshahed will be giving this talk virtually to a live audience. Seats are limited and are only open to VCUarts Qatar or Education city students, faculty, or alumni. In-person attendees must follow VCUarts Qatar guidelines related to COVID-19.

This event will be streamed live. Members of the public are welcome to ask questions in a moderated chat, at the end of each session.

• 9th March & 10th March 2022, 9 AM – 12 PM
• Room 101c
• Upon Registration Only 

It is 2022, and the idea of circularity shouldn’t be “radical”. Yet, it is. We continue to promote consumption, at unsustainable levels, with little or no thought to the end-of-life considerations of that consumption. At the core of Circularity lie materials: raw, processed, and waste. For many of us, these are foreign elements – something “out there” and vastly incomprehensible. Using the device of cooking, however, this workshop will treat materials as “ingredients”, and seek to acclimatize participants with the creation of new materials through this familiar act. Drawing on the culinary metaphor – the ephemeral and intoxicating soufflé is the result of four simple ingredients that everyone has in their kitchen at this very moment. The key is in the handling of the materials.

With assistance from Yasmeen Suleiman, Rabab Abdulla, and Abdul Rahman Anwar.

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

• 9th March & 10th March 2022, 9 AM – 12 PM
• Room 216
• Upon Registration Only

According to the Wikimedia Foundation, less than 10% of global contributors to Wikipedia identify as female, and 17% of all biographies on the site are of women (Tripodi, 2021). As art historians, we understand the power of presence and representation to reinforce systems of domination and oppression. The canon of art history remains largely ruled by white men. During this two-day workshop, we will lead a discussion on the importance of language, framing, and historical representation in contemporary and future feminisms, as well as teach techniques of editing and writing inclusively. This discussion will be followed by a session in which participants are divided into small groups to edit and create Wikipedia pages of women artists/designers/theorists from a diversity of geographies, using the structure of Edit-a-thon developed by the international group Art+Feminism.

With guest speakers Elena Pavan and Nicole Abiad.

Participants are required to bring their laptops.

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