In "In Defense of the Poor Image” Hito Steyerl writes “[Poor images] testify to the violent dislocation, transferrals, and displacement of images—their acceleration and circulation within the vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism.” In this piece, I generate and project a poor image: pixelated outlines of webcam footage shot from above the seated audience. I consider the wasteful production of surveillance data on the internet. Webcam footage of the visitor sitting on the rug viewing the installation is transformed in real-time and projected; grey video is layered with the waving colors and patterns of the rug visitors are seated on. I create a space for meditative reflection by asking visitors to take off their shoes before stepping onto the rug, inviting them to sit, lay, and touch the patterns while listening to the audio through headphones. I recreate the ephemeral and intangible nature of spiritual practice that grounds me, using weight sensors that transform the body’s contact with the textile into a switch to transform the patterns by adding webcam data.

The audio is composed of four sounds that carry intimate meaning for me. By incorporating family archival material and centering my own vulnerable relationship with spirituality, I connect the data, projections, and sounds to my own body as I attempt to make the digital feel tactile and embodied. The four mixed tracks are: 1) The song Dashtestani, my late grandmother’s favorite song that captures the passage of time for me both inter-generationally and within my life. 2) A recording of the adhan (the Muslim call to prayer) playing out loud from a mosque while an ambulance drives by in Rabat, Morocco. The resulting sound, formed by the siren, people on the street, and the droning tone of the call to prayer, evokes an urgency and uneasiness in me. 3) I use the call to prayer, which incites collective ritual movement, as a vessel to merge the individual with the collective and evoke consciousness. I communicate urgency to my community through an intervention that feels intimate and vulnerable. 4) My mom’s friend saying Dua Komeil, a prayer said weekly on Thursday night, before the beginning of Friday, the holy day in Islam

The audio (which plays through headphones) offers the viewer a private meditative experience, allowing them to carefully observe the manipulated webcam footage and kaleidoscopic movement of the image of the rug below them, along with the shadows, reflections, and tension that is formed by the net and collaged textile materials that extend the threads of the carpet upwards, augmenting the dimensions of the rug. I transport people and recreate the intangible, grounding feeling of collective prayer and religious ritual to cope with and respond to vicious wasteful cycles of digital production and destruction.

I’m interested in our casual consent to surveillance (like unconsciously pressing “allow all cookies” on a website) and desensitization to being surveilled in public spaces. I’m considering two different implications of these issues. First, constant data production and collection has physical and environmental implications despite feeling intangible and ephemeral. For example, the Carbolytics Project finds that “browsing cookies contained in the top 1 million most-viewed websites on the internet produced 11,442 metric tons of carbon dioxide per month due to the energy consumption for the computing power to maintain them.” In my piece I try to make this accumulation of digital waste feel tangible and physical. Second, surveillance is used by the the American government to spy on and criminalize marginalized populations. In my work I’m interested in making the digital and video surveillance of Muslim communities visible and making its consequences legible with an intimate call to my community.