"We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable...will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The “producers” and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these languages whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements. --Jean-Francois Lyotard. "The Field: Knowledge in Computerised Societies." The Postmodern Condition.

Remixing my own VJ-ing with more aesthetic-historical references opened up my performing and recording to new zones, including academic conferences and galleries, and allowed me to create VJ Um Amel (Arabic for “Mother of Hope”) as a conceptual art project. By VJ-ing, making art, and writing simultaneously, I work to bypass the notion of the critic as an authority who controls narrative, and to create a new role that's resonant with web culture: to function as archivist, vj, and scholar all at the same time. It is role consolidation as digital performance. --ala DJ Spooky, Rhythm Science.

About the Project-->

This project takes on building a bilingual platform in which a community of collaborators are able to construct a repository for Arab digital media, with the intention to contribute to the information architecture that is becoming the epistemological bank of the future. At the same time, the process of archiving allows for the immediacy of "knowledge" in the public domain, creating public intellectuals and artist collaboratives and collectives. Looking at the works of  contemporary  blogging academics, like Danah Boyd, Juan Cole, As'ad Abu Khalil, Mohja Kahf, and many more, we can say that contemporary research is engaging in this post-Fordist, "just-in-time” scholarship (Henry Jenkins) with the public(s).

The goal is to make inaccessible work accessible—whether it is research being done in universities among Arabists, or the local experimentations with digital media and urban culture among transnational Arab artists. The work considers itself relevant to social justice, situating Middle Eastern culture as its main node. The project is developed in collaboration, with the intention of making use of existing social networking sites.

The output of this multi-modal project has three interfaces for projecting the remixes/mash-ups of the newly archived media:1- VJ live at institutions like universities, art galleries, and museums; 2- recorded and made accessible online; 3- projected on buildings in strategic locations.

Introducing VJ Um Amel.