Hello reader. The blog admittedly has been quite forlorn of late, and there are many reasons for that, but the most relevant and important reason is that I have been possessed. Yes, possessed with an urge to finally create the Iridescent Alloy I have been dreaming of this whole time. Do you know the feeling, when you know exactly what you want to make, and your fingers are itching to make it so much that you can barely wait for each layer to dry let alone sit and write a coherent thought on the blog? I aimed to create what …
Tag: interactive
Discovering Jeddah
A significant part of my project proposal has been stepping out of my comfort zone to see if there were any artistic avenues in Jeddah — contrary to popular opinion. Looking at my old blog posts I realize I can date it back to that day at Arbab al Heraf. That day two things coincidentally came to my attention: I realized that, hidden in the nooks and crannies of Jeddah, circles of writers and artists bloomed Jeddah, and KSA as a whole, was undergoing a mini-cultural revolution Thus began an exploration that has gained momentum over this last year, almost too …
The Untold Edition — Tree Planting Drive with Akhuwat Foundation
I had been researching a lot of public art projects and they inspired me to recreate the idea that public art can break walls. Literally. So the first thing I did when I landed in Karachi was go and buy bricks. Yup. 500 red bricks which we then painted a pale terracotta and stenciled with ‘The Untold Edition” name. The idea was to build a wall out of them along with 500 plants and to invite people to pick up a brick, take home a plant and plant it with the brick placed next to it. Symbolically, and literally, public …
The Untold Edition — BTS
This project has consumed the last few months of my creative energy. So much work has gone into conceptualizing and executing it that it is difficult for me to even pen it down. I am literally answering emails and in meetings at all hours trying to set things up with collaborators and coordinate with team members and participants, approving and creating graphics, getting stuff printed and god knows what else. It has literally been so much work that last week I reached the point where I asked myself the question we often ask in the middle of a painting that …
First interactive digital installation — accepting failure
I wrote a while back about how I was delving into figuring out arduinos, their coding and combining them with voice recognition to create an installation. The idea was to hook up a VR to an arduino and the arduino to processing to play an animation everytime someone used specific words. Well, I managed to write the codes and create the animation BUT I misunderstood one key fact. The hardware I was using was designed to recognize only one voice. So now my interactive digital installation is missing the interactive part since it won’t interact with anyone but me! What …