Landscapes of Dialogue Series

Landscapes of Dialogue Series explores the cultural questions of geopolitical boundaries, geographic ownership,technical advancement and nationhood

Landscapes of Dialogue : Landscapes of Conflict

Landscapes of Dialogue : Landscapes of Conflict - Exhibited recently in Palestine in collaboration with Palestinian artists and arts organization Al- Mahatta - Exhibited during the recent Isreali/Palestinian conflict - 3-D realtime sculptural landscapes were generated by using alive web news from both Arabic and Western web stations, transmitted at pivotal points of this conflict. Unique visual sculpted landscapes that were directly created through the different cultural perspectives, lived experiences and political agendas that arose and/or created through the conflict. Through analysis of this political and cultural data, Landscapes of Conflict questioned the significance of technology in the shifting political and geographic boundaries, through the unique visual landscapes generated directly through the different cultural perspectives, lived experiences and political agendas that arose and/or created through the conflict.

Landscapes of Dialogue : Above Us Only Sky

Landscapes of Dialogue: Above Us Only Sky was the starting point for the my use of physical geography and the public realm to question digital topography and geographic ownership of landscape and the changing impact technology has on our perception of geography and nationhood. Using Arabic typography, metal public realm GPS positions, geo-tagged photography and ‘a virtually’ known but nationally unknown Jordanian village’ Shatana ‘, to host an intervention that physically reflects the satellite saturation of Shatana and highlight the political and technological network that encompasses the region and the village. Above Us Only Sky was developed and produced during an International Triangle Arts Residency in Jordan, supported by the British Council in Jordan and further developed in Palestine/Israel with support of Palestinian artists. With just a notebook of gps positions of former residential addresses of palestinian now artist based in Jordan, a digital SLR and a data logger, this piece explored the loss of home, memory and nation . The experience of working with local and international artist’s from the middle eastern area allowed my work to evolve beyond is initial western perspective and understand and encompass complex political and cultural issues within my practice.

Landscapes of Dialogue : Google Forest “Qur’an

Landscapes of Dialogue: Google Forest “Qur’an”, exhibited at he Passage 35 Gallery, Cairo, Egypt 2008 is a Digital Typographic Forest generated by western google searchers for the word “Qur’an”. A forest grows, its voice is the visual typographic language of data mining, with its technological roots, its air and water are the western techno society - these Qur’an” trees, this forest ecology spring from western society and continue to grow .

Upcoming - Landscapes of Dialogue : Dialect[ical] Nation

This project is being developed in response to a series of questions: If dialogue were translated into phonological sonic pitches of 'dialect' that would be translated into data to affect a video cityscape, what distortions or even new landscapes would be generated by the dialect of a city? Would the socio-linguistic aspects of the city be reflected? Would different cities with unique dialects and accents create different pitch maps that could be visualized? Would cities with vastly differing cultural outlooks and dialects generate drastically differing landscapes? If these questions where broadened to encompass a nation such as our own, what visuals would be generated by the dialect of a country? How would the visual landscape of a country generated through 'dialect' differ from a landscape generated by a 'sociolect' of the standard english of politicians and news broadcasters?

With a play on, and reference to, the Marx/Engels idea of 'Dialectical Materialism', wherein the truth is the whole picture, of which each view makes up a more or less one-sided, partial aspect - Dialect[ical] Nation aims to look at the whole picture by investigating different views and partial aspects of one nation.

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