• 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.

9th March & 10th March 2022, 9 AM – 12 PM
Room 255
Upon Registration Only

In his 1999 book The Sun, the Genome and the Internet, British polymath Freeman Dyson proposed a genetically altered forest to speed up rapid carbon capture. While some found it disturbing, many others considered Dyson’s proposal as an attractive solution for excessive CO2 emissions. Pinar Yoldas will conduct a workshop on Dark Botany, a speculative multimedia installation with elements of bio-art that imagines Dyson’s altered forest is possible with a compound called dark chlorophyll. The workshop is essentially a Speculative Ecology workshop decorated with examples from the history of art and science. Participants will be able to learn how to conduct artistic research, organize ideas, use imagination and execute proposals using design tools.

Participants are required to bring their own laptops and drawing tools.

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 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.

Following different stories of TCKs from the SWANA (South West Asian/North African) region, Cultural Misfits uses poetry and illustration as a vehicle to portray several kinds of conceptual and pragmatic dilemmas about migration. Through their journey of exploring their unique diasporic influences, empowerment is found in embracing duality.

Disarrayed glimpses of multiple narratives such as that of familial domestic tensions, a juvenile dream of going to Japan, the tendency to smash TVs in moments of anger, and eating fish. While using scenes from the artist’s surroundings and life in Saudi Arabia, like streets or malls, it never attempts to provide the whole picture, but takes a rhizomatic approach to tell a story of everyday life.

This film is screened as part of the Gulf Metaverse 2.0 program curated by Róisín Tapponi (Assyrian Iraqi-Irish film curator, programmer, writer, and academic)

The screening is taking place in the Atrium on 10th March 2022 at 9:30 AM for the VCUarts Qatar community only. Please use the registration button to register.

Furthermore, this film is streamed via Shashamovies.com.