Wired Women S@lon 74: Montreal Premiere of Rashid & Rosetta + First Person Digital

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

+++  One Night Only! Two Showings! +++

Rashid & Rosetta is a Web art project on the theme of the Rosetta Stone, a famous Egyptian archeological artifact, created in 196 BC, that played a central role in the decipherment of hieroglyphs.

The project consists of an online exhibition of internet-based artworks created by six artists from Québec, Canada and Egypt. Conceived and curated by Isabelle Bernier and Salah D. Hassan and presented in collaboration with Studio XX and OBORO.

Isabelle Bernier, Rehab El Sadek, Heba Farid, Andrew Forster, Skawennati Fragnito, Hadil Nazmy

6:00 PM: First Showing of Rashid & Rosetta
In French, English and Arabic
Free Admission, seating is limited

7:30 PM: Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments: Dazibao Café (Suite 202)

7:40 PM: Brief presentation by Ravida Din, Executive Producer, Quebec Production Centre, English Program, NFB: the goals and selection criteria for First Person Digital: a training and production initiative designed to cross-pollinate multimedia creators and filmmakers for new media projects. In English, at Studio XX (Suite 201) and just across the hall from OBORO.

8:00 PM: Second Showing of Rashid & Rosetta
In French, English and Arabic
Free Admission, seating is limited

Venue: OBORO 4001 Berri St. (corner Duluth), Suite 200, Montréal, Canada
Tel: 514.845.7934 or 514.844.3250

**** Please rsvp for the Rachid & Rosetta presentation of your choice, not both ! ****

Featuring:

ISABELLE BERNIER (Montreal)
Curse of the Great Pyramid (Egyptomania)
The website is a humorous, parodic piece on colonialist fantasies, Egyptomania and Orientalism. It draws attention to the manipulative effects of the repetition of cultural clichés and ready-made ideas, particularly regarding the Arab world. The piece includes videos, interactive elements emphasizing the colonial basis for classic computer games, and more.

REHAB EL SADEK (Alexandria)
Continued Existence
This piece deals with the interplay of power, language and everyday life. These issues are both personal and universal, spanning individual and global experiences. Inspired by The Rosetta Stone, this piece seeks to bring together references in the decree engraved on the Stone and everyday life in a series of images (drawings) of bodies and body parts that stand in for words, utterances, and language.

HEBA FARID (Cairo)
LangMACHINuage
This work is inspired by the decoding process of The Rosetta Stone. The work plays with the idea that we can somehow — inherently, through futuristic evolution — read, write and speak any language, trans-literally, using any characters available. Visitors create a short phrase in French, English or Arabic, adding to a text/discussion already posted on an infinitely expanding “wall”, which can then be read in another language through a “lens” before it fades away and is forgotten.

ANDREW FORSTER (Montreal)
Concordance Mumbler
“Concordance Mumbler” is a text-based work that uses a database of poems to generate and display content according to themes selected by the viewer. The project begins with “code cracking” as referring to a very instrumental idea of translation: that one word represents one idea or thing, and that this signifying relationship between word and idea/thing is identical in another language.

SKAWENNATI FRAGNITO (Montreal)
TimeTravellerTM.com
www.TimeTravellerTM.com is a website from the future. The matter of how it is able to project itself into the Internet in 2009 is currently under intense study. What is quite clear, however, is that the makers of the website possess technology that by far surpasses anything available to us today.

HADIL NAZMY (Alexandria)
Rashid: The Journey for Foreign
One can’t determine what is foreign for the other. The idea of foreignness exposes the form of human relationships. This web project sketches a narrative that links historical and contemporary characters and stages a hypothetical movement through time and place. It also explores the border between fact and fiction within the complexity of the narrative imagination.