Exploring Ways to Create Beautiful Experiences
This interactive artwork was created to experiment with the idea of creating an interactive dance environment. For its development, I used C++ and Open Framework. The exhibition was held at ATS Flex Space, Chicago, Illinois, in 2017.
Stories in Motion: Toys of Time
Role
Spatial experience designer
Art Residency
Contributions
Concept development, Research, design, and testing
Medium
Digital and physical interactive installation
Overview
Stories in Motion is a developing interactive installation built from a TV, everyday objects, and a digital interface. Conceived as a site-responsive and evolving series for future international touring, the installation challenges fixed perspective by adapting to different sites and cultural contexts over time. It forms a shared archive of individual experiences, shaped by place, culture, and participation, where narratives unfold through play, exploration, and reflection. The work examines how shared choices can become a quiet form of encounter—an understated way of meeting across difference.
Experience Design
The project draws from my interest in interface design and narrative systems, borrowing from the organizational logic of film and media platforms to structure the work through the framework of Signal, Channel, and Episode. This system allows the project to build an expandable world that can grow across different sites, formats, and iterations while maintaining a coherent conceptual and experiential language.
Stories in Motion
Channel 1: Toys of Time
Episode 1: Complete
Episode 2: In Progress
Episode 3: In Progress
Channel 2: [Future Project]
Channel 3: [Future Project]
Channel: Toys of Time - E01
This episode project is inspired by a vivid childhood memory of the moment our family television broke; as my father prepared to open it, my sister watched in anticipation, genuinely believing the characters trapped inside were about to spill out into our living room. That sense of boundless possibility and playfulness informs this sculpture and assemblage installation, which features the silhouette of a TV set resting atop a dense pile of pop-culture cartoon characters. Built around a shared object-language of 90s-era childhood references, the work is activated through a participatory exchange rooted in Saudi cultural gestures of giving. In this open-ended experiment, participants contribute personal narratives that rarely surface in daily life, uncovering unexpected points of connection across diverse backgrounds. As visitors carry pieces of the pile home, the installation gradually dissolves, leaving only the hollow TV behind while the work itself disperses into multiple countries.
Research Framework
The research for this project centers on memory and cultural context as forces that shape experience. It examines how individual memories can expand into collective narrative, creating moments of shared understanding through play, reflection, and connection. Informed by neuroscience and psychology, the project considers how environment and sensory cues activate memory and influence interaction. As a developing line of inquiry, the work remains intentionally open, positioning the pilot version as a space to observe what emerges through participation and encounter.
Visitors Stories
Oliver, Canada
Ohhh Poké Ball!! I remember when Pokémon GO first dropped. I’d literally roam around my neighborhood for hours just to catch a Pikachu. Saw random people in the park doing the same thing.
Rami, Lebanon
Detective Conan!! I legit used to pause the screen to guess the culprit before him. Felt like I was part of the mystery team. So much fun, I miss that energy.
Lina, UAE
Oh wow, the yoyo! I forgot how obsessed I was with it. I used to spend hours outside trying tricks and showing off to my little cousin.
Sharine Atif, Egypt
The bottle sculpture reminded me of the old small glass Coca-Cola bottles - it brought me back to the 90's when living with my Grandmother in Cairo. One thing we always had in the house was a two-dozen wooden coca-cola crate under the closet.
Abdullah, KSA
Mario! I’d jump on the couch pretending to stomp Goombas. Couldn’t stop laughing, felt like I was living inside the game.
Heven, Austrailia
I remember Tamagotchi! They them banned them in our school. They were so addictive.
Outcome
Over the course of the event, the project engaged 877 visitors and recorded 488 stories. Many participants returned to add to the archive, while visitors with hearing loss shared their stories through translators.
Digital Mediation | Future iteration
This project aim to extend that inquiry into the digital and relational realm. Through a custom interface, participants navigate objects, gestures, and attention, generating ephemeral narratives that unfold collectively in real time. The work investigates how technology mediates communal experience, transforming objects into portals for shared reflection, play, and connection. As participants interact, choices and gestures become mechanisms for fleeting, emergent communities that form, dissolve, and reconfigure memory, time, and perspective. The project positions interaction and exploration as tools for perceiving relational structures, making invisible threads of collective experience tangible. By blending digital and physical encounters, it examines how communal life can emerge within technological systems, revealing the possibilities, tensions, and limits of connection in an age where experience is mediated by data, interfaces, and nonhuman agents. Future development includes world-building through a color-based design system, varied modes of interaction, sensory elements such as music, video, light, and touch, and expanded storytelling across different parts of the experience.
Behind the Scenes
