Laila Shereen Sakr (VJ Um Amel)
Friday, April 17, 2026

AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies (ACGIS)
George Mason University

Worlds in the Making, Data in the Flesh

We are living inside AI as a media system and infrastructure

• AI curates what we see
• filters what circulates
• decides what disappears

Muslim/Arab Context

AI as contradiction

• Arabian Peninsula → spectacle, innovation, futurity
• Palestine → surveillance, targeting, erasure
   

Same systems. Different conditions.

Crisis of Media

The archive is under pressure

• livestreamed genocide
• platform censorship
• algorithmic suppression
   

Visibility + Erasure = same system

"Network Visualization on 2 million X posts on #MahsaAmini" (November 2022)

Roadmap

PROBLEM

AI flattens context

• pattern ≠ meaning
• language ≠ history

Global data is:

• uneven

• multilingual
• structured by power
• data ≠ life

METHOD

• Glitch → reading systems against the grain
• Contrapuntal → holding multiple histories in relation
• Culturally aware ontological approach

PRODUCTION

• Contrapuntal AI (design → intervention)
• Reality AI (experimental sci-fi film)
• Data Bodies: An Arabfuturistic Video Game about Liberation

Research Question

For example, sentiment analysis fails to recognize sarcastic humor (2012).

What would it mean to build AI differently?

• Not via prediction
• But via relation, memory, and interpretation

Challenge
Global data is uneven, multilingual, power-structured and AI flattens context.

Methods

Contrapuntal

Futurism

Glitch

International Journal of Middle East Studies, Tina Guirguis, 2025-01-20, “Arabic Glitch … deftly remixes and traces the history of the Arabization of the Internet.”

International Journal of Communication, Nathaniel Greenberg, 2026-02,   “Arabic Glitch...emerges as a shining academic achievement in a decades-long scramble by academics, journalists, and artists to capture some of that creativity and to tell the story of the Arab uprisings as one of rapid technological change, political reactionism, and creative resistance.”    

Journal of Cyber Policy, Jessica McClearn, 2024-07-18, “This text will serve as a guidepost for future exploratory work across disciplines.”

Neural, Neural Editors, 2024-07-19, “The glitch practise she proposes thus becomes a methodology of awareness and liberation …”    

Sample Reviews from Flagship Journals

Arabic Glitch Interventions

1. Glitch as method

2. Data body (no virtual/real divide)

3. Procedural literacy

Contrapuntal

• multiple histories

• in relation

• without resolution

Capitol Mosaic, 30-ft wall of Jan 6 images from Parler and Twitter, 
VJ Um Amel (Qualcomm Gallery, 2021).

Lineage of speculative resistance

• Larissa Sansour
• Arab digital artists
• Afro/Indigenous futurisms

Futurism = world-making under constraint

Arab Futurism Context

Larissa Sansour, ˜In The Future They Ate From The Finest Porcelain™, 2014, Video still

Participatory Design

Reality AI (film)

• 2211
• Darna: cyborg historian
• The Layer: AI-controlled reality

Reality AI (Intervention)

What the film does

• montage of real archives
• glitch breaks narrative
• memory refuses erasure

Data Bodies (Video Game)

• archive becomes environment
• data becomes embodied
• user becomes participant

Data Bodies (intervention)

Key shifts

• spectator → player
• archive → space
• data → experience

It is:

• built
• contested
• lived

Worlds in the making
Data in the flesh

Arab and Muslim futurity is not predicted

Acknowledgements

Ripley Baker
Pratyush 'Rumi' Bhattacharyya
Henry Coburn
Lexxus Edison
Negar Farajiani
Tina Guirguis
Intae Hwang

Susana Ruiz (Co-PI)
Cathy Thomas (Co-PI)
Alenda Chang (Co-Director)
Data Centered Collective:
Miha Vipotnik (Slovenia/Lebanon), Temitayo Ogunbiyi (Nigeria), and Lisa Parks (US)

 

Access to Knowledge for
Development (AUC, Egypt):
Nagla Rizk
Autonomous Futures
Network of Arab Women in AI
Creative Critical Undercommons
Arab Techies

Cass Mayeda
Sihwa Park
Chelsea Kai Roesch

Shashank Shivashankar