Room with Minarets / Ghurfah That Ma'athn (2024)

I created this interactive installation game for the Soft Image exhibition at Lobe Block, Berlin. the project brought together eighteen students from the Berlin Weissensee School of Art and Design to explore the "symbiosis" of analog and digital techniques. This project was also documented in a publication created for the seminar.

The Virtual Space: The game places the player in a small, confined room filled with mosaics of vastly different sizes—some are tiny, while others are massive structures that tower over the player. The project was an intuitive process, but the title and scale were inspired by the poem "When I was young, the minarets were bigger" by Mazen Najjar. It reflects my own memories of Questioning the feeling of the weight these structures had on me growing up in Syria and Saudi Arabia, and how the Weight of The structures shifts in our minds as we grow.

Trailer / GamePlay

Interaction and Narrative:

• The Mosaics: Each mosaic in the room prints a specific sentence when interacted with. They all carry the same message: that the player should not seek answers from these external structures, but from within themselves.

• The Red Door: Upon exiting the level through a red door, the player is met with an abstract music video.

• The Desert Journey: The video features distorted, blurry figures, ghosts, and "jinns" moving through a desert landscape. This is accompanied by an oriental AI-generated melody that I composed to bridge the gap between traditional storytelling and algorithmic sound.

Below are some screenshots of the virtual space and the documentation from the publication. If you want to experience the environment yourself, the game is hosted and playable Here for PC