Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Yesterday was insaaaaaane. I barely finished editing my video before the screening, and was so rushed that I didn't even get a chance to watch it myself before handing it out to be screened!
Utimately, there were some kinks here and there, and the output turned out a bit blurry, but people clapped and cheered quite enthusiastically after watching it, which was suuuuuuch an ecstatic releif! The pressure was especially high, because my video was screened last (since I finished last), and all the videos were screened before mine, some of which recieved enthusiastic clapping and cheering, others less enthusiastic... more pitiful... which I gotta say, I was worried would happen to me. I'm just not used to public... um... screenings/performances/etc. And the turn up was pretty darn good too, the place was quite packed, I didnt expect it.
It felt good. Real good.
So today, I reworked some of the kinks that were bugging me. I still think it can be better, but this should do for now.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
One-Minute Films Night
Over the course of the past 5 days, 19 local artists -including myself- from a variety of diverse disciplines have been partaking in a workshop to create their first one-minute films, under the guidance of two Amsterdam-based video artists Aukje Dekker and Vava Stojadinovic.
Tonight at exactly 8:00 PM, these films will be screened at Rawabet Theatre (3 Hussein Al Me'mar Pasha St, Off Mahmoud Bassiouny St, Downtown), next to the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art (10 Nabarawy St, off Champellion St, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt).
Don't miss these one-minute art-films from
Amado El Fadni
Hany Taher
Hoda Farah
Huda Lutfi
Ibrahim Saad
Maha Maamoun
Maliha Ali
Mohamed Abdel Karim
Mohamed Ezz
Mofa
Mohamed Sharkawy
Omar Awaad
Roby
Paul Gedai
Rana El-Nemr
Weaam El Masry
Yousif Ahmed Salih
The workshop was a co-operation between the Townhouse Gallery and The One Minutes Foundation (from The Netherlands) and forms part of a wider program entitled The One Minutes Africa Project. This aims to give artists an opportunity to develop their skills in multimedia art and expose their work to a wider, international audience.
The project takes place in the context of the World One Minutes Exhibition, which has been officially adopted into Beijing's cultural program during the 2008 Olympic Games. The movies produced during the workshop will automatically enter a competition for participation in the World One Minutes, showcasing the best One Minutes from 100 countries around the Globe.
For more information on the One Minutes Project please visit: theoneminutes.org
For more information on the event please contact: yordanka@thetownhousegallery.com
Friday, April 18, 2008
All Your Books In Just A Few Ounces
This was just bound to happen sooner or later.
Amazon.com is releasing a little something something called Amazon Kindle, which basically makes electronic book reading a whole lot easier and more practical. I'd even go as far to say that it makes it more practical than traditional book reading, because lets face it... owning books is becoming an exceeding drag and clutter maker. Not to mention the amount of paper and ink that goes into book printing, and I don't think Earth's resources can withstand much abuse anymore.
My only nitpick would be that the device is too tailored for paperback, newspaper, and blog reading. Full color picture-based publications on the other hand, such as National Geographic, graphic novels, and design books , don't seem to be supported by Kindle, which is a maaaaajor major glitch in my opinion.
Although I do think electronic reading is the inevitable future, I would never own a Kindle until that glitch is fixed, and until it is integrated into the iPhone, because I believe it would be absurd to walk around with multiple portable devices. If its portable, and used on-the-go, then it should be integrated into one device; my music, my videos, my communication, and my reading... all in one.
Amazon.com is releasing a little something something called Amazon Kindle, which basically makes electronic book reading a whole lot easier and more practical. I'd even go as far to say that it makes it more practical than traditional book reading, because lets face it... owning books is becoming an exceeding drag and clutter maker. Not to mention the amount of paper and ink that goes into book printing, and I don't think Earth's resources can withstand much abuse anymore.My only nitpick would be that the device is too tailored for paperback, newspaper, and blog reading. Full color picture-based publications on the other hand, such as National Geographic, graphic novels, and design books , don't seem to be supported by Kindle, which is a maaaaajor major glitch in my opinion.
Although I do think electronic reading is the inevitable future, I would never own a Kindle until that glitch is fixed, and until it is integrated into the iPhone, because I believe it would be absurd to walk around with multiple portable devices. If its portable, and used on-the-go, then it should be integrated into one device; my music, my videos, my communication, and my reading... all in one.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Combining Art With The Concept of Recycling
This first issue of Magaz magazine is out, and in it they write about the Recylcator; a little interactive social game Mahmoud Hamdy, Marwan Fayed, and myself set up at volume 6 of the SOS music festival.
But what exactly is the Recyclator?
"With their booth at December's SOS Music Festival in Cairo still empty the night before the festival and a product line of clothes and accessories stalled in production, they sat around bouncing desperate ideas off each other until this one stuck. The booth was turned into a black box containing the three designers, their computers, and materials for twisting the curiosity and smiles of the festival goers. People were invited to place anything they had on them in a slot and... five minute later the item would come out recycled from another slot, altered according to the whims of the designers."
And believe it or not, the Recylcator is actually booked for World Environment Day at Azhar Park on June 7, sponsored by the British Council Egypt. Be there to experience this oddly fun creation for yourself!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
What Happens When You're Insomniac
Before actually typing this, I've been staring at the screen for a couple minutes now thinking what to say, even though before even attempting to turn on my puter, I initially felt I had a lot to blog about.
It's 6:21 AM now, and I've been awake since... maybe 3:30 AM. I've been going through these jacked-up insomniac sleeping patterns, or lack of patterns even, for a coupla days now and I'm not entirely sure why. What worries me is that the last time I went through a similar phase was when my first girlfriend and I broke up and back when I was still in college, which I don't think is at all reassuring.
I like it when I unexpectedly catch a good movie on TV. I just finished watching a movie called "Last Exit." Although obviously low budget and a little too high on the stressful drama, it really hit a chord for someone living in an awfully diseased megacity like Cairo all his life. I actually thought the film was shot in New York, but it turns out it was shot in Montréal and Québec in Canada, which ignorant me never thought could suffer so severely from the stress of urban megacity life. It's not right for people to have to be so many places at the same time, and so many things to do at once, with so little time to do it. We need to slow down a bit. Even though I do make it a point to make sure my working hours are limited, and make time for all the other many aspects of life, but because I'm so passionate about what I do, and because I love my work so much, one of my greatest fears in life is ending up like Giovanni Ribisi's character in Lost in Translation; running off to a shoot here and there, and utterly neglecting my sweetheart at home (or wherever) alone. That can never be good.
A couple days ago, my friend Tasem and I, along with our friend Nahla took a day trip to Alexandria, which was packed with so much stimulation and goodness. We took a small rowing boat out to sea with a skipper named Tarek the Israeli. I gave him a red apple and he gave us the wisdom of life. Seriously. In as simple a way as simplicity can ever get; age was proven very irrelevant and traveling and seeing the world is apparently the most beautiful thing ever.
My client Ahmed Fahim sent me the progression of the production of the signage I helped design for him:
He seems very happy with it, and so am I. Him and the partners are also very happy with my concept for the invitation I devised for their opening event, which also makes me happy. I really like Fahim.
I've decided to totally re-do my website in iWeb, because it makes everything look so easy and definitely makes maintaining look like a breeze, so until then no updates on the site, just this weblog. Apologies to the people emailing me about Shakloh's delay. Please refer to the beginning of the post where I mention something about slowing down :o)
I feel like shooting a music video.
It's 6:21 AM now, and I've been awake since... maybe 3:30 AM. I've been going through these jacked-up insomniac sleeping patterns, or lack of patterns even, for a coupla days now and I'm not entirely sure why. What worries me is that the last time I went through a similar phase was when my first girlfriend and I broke up and back when I was still in college, which I don't think is at all reassuring.
I like it when I unexpectedly catch a good movie on TV. I just finished watching a movie called "Last Exit." Although obviously low budget and a little too high on the stressful drama, it really hit a chord for someone living in an awfully diseased megacity like Cairo all his life. I actually thought the film was shot in New York, but it turns out it was shot in Montréal and Québec in Canada, which ignorant me never thought could suffer so severely from the stress of urban megacity life. It's not right for people to have to be so many places at the same time, and so many things to do at once, with so little time to do it. We need to slow down a bit. Even though I do make it a point to make sure my working hours are limited, and make time for all the other many aspects of life, but because I'm so passionate about what I do, and because I love my work so much, one of my greatest fears in life is ending up like Giovanni Ribisi's character in Lost in Translation; running off to a shoot here and there, and utterly neglecting my sweetheart at home (or wherever) alone. That can never be good.
A couple days ago, my friend Tasem and I, along with our friend Nahla took a day trip to Alexandria, which was packed with so much stimulation and goodness. We took a small rowing boat out to sea with a skipper named Tarek the Israeli. I gave him a red apple and he gave us the wisdom of life. Seriously. In as simple a way as simplicity can ever get; age was proven very irrelevant and traveling and seeing the world is apparently the most beautiful thing ever.
My client Ahmed Fahim sent me the progression of the production of the signage I helped design for him:
He seems very happy with it, and so am I. Him and the partners are also very happy with my concept for the invitation I devised for their opening event, which also makes me happy. I really like Fahim.
I've decided to totally re-do my website in iWeb, because it makes everything look so easy and definitely makes maintaining look like a breeze, so until then no updates on the site, just this weblog. Apologies to the people emailing me about Shakloh's delay. Please refer to the beginning of the post where I mention something about slowing down :o)
I feel like shooting a music video.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
The Lamp Party. Now with sound!
So I added sound to the little animation using iMovie, and I think it came out pretty alright. Most of the sounds are off freesound.iua.upf.edu and the main "soundtrack" is Great DJ by The Ting Tings, which I have been listening to non-stop now for a few days. Over and over and over and over.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Posters, videos, and books. Oh My!
I swear I'm not a procrastinator, and I swear I mean to update my blog almost everyday, at least once a week, and I swear I really want to upload the latest Shakloh already, but I'm a loner and have been juggling a million and one things for a while now, and this time I have proof!
First there was the poster design workshop with Jonathan Puckey between February 24-27, which was, I must say, all kinds of awesome and quite fresh and ground-breaking even. Jonathan approached poster design from an angle that, well is hard to describe in one sentence, but I'll try: It's an angle that aims to eliminate biased and not-necessarily-sensical decisions taken by most designers when designing posters, mostly for sheer aesthetic reasons, and developing a somewhat logical step-by-step process from which the aesthetic outcome is born, wherein the most interesting thinking process going on in the designer's head becomes more obvious in the little details of executing the initially laid out process. Make sense?
Well I said it's a bit hard to describe, but Jonathan and his posse will be releasing, based on what he's told me, a little manifesto of there, which will probably explain things much much better. One of the most interesting things of Jonathan's approach is that he's pretty bent on developing new tools, which are very much based on processes, and using them in his designs. When the same tool is used on a different design, with a different set of inputs, the outcomes are totally different. He could spend a coupla weeks developing a tool, but when it comes to using it, he could end up designing a totally original poster with it in about half an hour. One of the coolest and definitely most inspiring designers I've met this Jonathan guy.
You can download Jonathan's tools, made using scriptographer, and use them as plug-ins on your illustrator from here.
During the workshop, my group and I (Amira Atta, Ahmed Mansour, Mohammed Fahmy) first started out with a set of vinyl sheets as posters and tried to create a sort of automated process of cut and past that we thought would create interesting typographical+color combinations, but ended up looking rather boring and uninspired...
(but I'm still fascinated by that disco shine vinyl and have to, have to, have to do something with it)
We came up with a different concept, and different set of materials and ended up with something totally different.
And last week between March 29-31 there was a 3-day workshop on sampling animation by Rotterdam-based Jan Van Nuenen at ACAF in Alexandria, during which I managed to produce this:
Which I still need to add sound effects and music to and fix the coupla odd jitters in there. But I am so so thrilled to have a complete little animation out in only 3-days! I would've never been able to do that on my own. It's unheard of, man, unheard of!!
And an all-purple newsletter for Philosophy Interiors which relaunched itself earlier this week with an overall revamp and a pretty exquisite collection.
Oh right, and the book Arabesque from Die Gestalten Verlag - edited by Ben Wittner and Sascha Thoma-that was just released recently has a bit of my work featured in it, side-by-side with some of the freshest and most innovative visuals I've seen in a long time.
And I'm still not over the sheer genius of this music video Jonathan Puckey showed me, shot by a designer friend of his in one go, and its his freakin' first video:
Yet I am also oddly drawn to this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJnsqGgxxM
Can't... stop... hitting... replay...
First there was the poster design workshop with Jonathan Puckey between February 24-27, which was, I must say, all kinds of awesome and quite fresh and ground-breaking even. Jonathan approached poster design from an angle that, well is hard to describe in one sentence, but I'll try: It's an angle that aims to eliminate biased and not-necessarily-sensical decisions taken by most designers when designing posters, mostly for sheer aesthetic reasons, and developing a somewhat logical step-by-step process from which the aesthetic outcome is born, wherein the most interesting thinking process going on in the designer's head becomes more obvious in the little details of executing the initially laid out process. Make sense?
Well I said it's a bit hard to describe, but Jonathan and his posse will be releasing, based on what he's told me, a little manifesto of there, which will probably explain things much much better. One of the most interesting things of Jonathan's approach is that he's pretty bent on developing new tools, which are very much based on processes, and using them in his designs. When the same tool is used on a different design, with a different set of inputs, the outcomes are totally different. He could spend a coupla weeks developing a tool, but when it comes to using it, he could end up designing a totally original poster with it in about half an hour. One of the coolest and definitely most inspiring designers I've met this Jonathan guy.
You can download Jonathan's tools, made using scriptographer, and use them as plug-ins on your illustrator from here.
During the workshop, my group and I (Amira Atta, Ahmed Mansour, Mohammed Fahmy) first started out with a set of vinyl sheets as posters and tried to create a sort of automated process of cut and past that we thought would create interesting typographical+color combinations, but ended up looking rather boring and uninspired...
(but I'm still fascinated by that disco shine vinyl and have to, have to, have to do something with it)
We came up with a different concept, and different set of materials and ended up with something totally different.
And last week between March 29-31 there was a 3-day workshop on sampling animation by Rotterdam-based Jan Van Nuenen at ACAF in Alexandria, during which I managed to produce this:
Which I still need to add sound effects and music to and fix the coupla odd jitters in there. But I am so so thrilled to have a complete little animation out in only 3-days! I would've never been able to do that on my own. It's unheard of, man, unheard of!!
Now in between those, there has been some Album Cover Art:
Logo for the musician:
Work-In-Progress identity work:
And an all-purple newsletter for Philosophy Interiors which relaunched itself earlier this week with an overall revamp and a pretty exquisite collection.
Oh right, and the book Arabesque from Die Gestalten Verlag - edited by Ben Wittner and Sascha Thoma-that was just released recently has a bit of my work featured in it, side-by-side with some of the freshest and most innovative visuals I've seen in a long time.
And I'm still not over the sheer genius of this music video Jonathan Puckey showed me, shot by a designer friend of his in one go, and its his freakin' first video:
Yet I am also oddly drawn to this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJnsqGgxxM
Can't... stop... hitting... replay...
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