‘Jemsheed’
Music by Ayshay (2011), PowerPoint by Kari Altmann (2012)

PowerPoint commissioned as part of Global Art Forum_6



Through the abstracted framework of a promotional corporate slideshow, the product of ‘Jemsheed,’ a devotional love song by Ayshay (Fatima Al Qadiri), is revealed. The nonsensical glyphs created by human response to touchscreen interfaces are presented as a new, hybrid, and alien language–unearthed from beneath the system of screens and images that technology uses to demonstrate and sell itself.

The repetition of the name Jemsheed in the song, like the repetition of hand movements onscreen, is an expression of devotional desire. The PowerPoint, made as a response to the music by Kari Altmann for Global Art Forum_6, posits this devotional yearning toward a technological system that aims for bodily control. The result of this new devotion creates a new language, whose glyphs appear like remnants from an unknown civilization, and suggest a relationship that is both distant and intimate.

karialtmann.com
fatimaalqadiri.com

artdubai.ae/globalartforum/2012/forumforum