"Glitch Resistance on Metal” (2018) is a series of dye sublimation prints on aluminum. Using photographs she takes herself, VJ Um Amel writes java code using Processing 2.2.1 that compress the time of the event captured and the time of computation into stills. Glitch may do violence to the surface of the image, but it makes it possible to see more, by questioning the source, revealing the material support of the digital ether, and suggestion how images are recomposed in circulation. As Art Critic Laura Marks writes about VJ Um Amel’s work in her book Hanan al-Cinema, and on Arab Glitch more theoretically: “Algorithmic aesthetics examine the way systems rely on codes. Glitch aesthetics, and its companions compression and low resolution, focus on the materiality of the support underlying the digital image: a materiality that constitutes an everyday problem in poorly infrastructured countries, including most of the Arabic-speaking world. Like algorithmic aesthetics, glitch aesthetics also indicate the material power relations that undergird systems.” Many thanks to the UCSB Carsey-Wolf Center (CWC). This installation is made possible by the CWC Faculty Research Support award.
Data Body of a Cyborg / سايبورغ مجسّم من البيانات
@data_body is part of the “Portrait of a Cyborg: 2017” series: a consideration of form, content, composition, materiality, virtuality, and data.
Dimensions: 18" x 12"
Cairo Graffiti / غراÙيتي القاهرة
Graffiti murals from photographs I took on Mohamed Mahmoud Street by the American University of Cairo Tahrir campus. These murals represent the avant-garde graffiti from the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. In 2017, Egyptian officials removed the murals.
Dimensions: 18" 12"
Hash Activism / هاشتاغ نشاط سياسي
From “Street Activism and Glitch Art” series: a consideration of movement in the singular and movements in the plural with speed, velocity, and power.
Dimensions: 10" x 5"
