The Distillery

Welcome to The Distillery, an online interview series hosted by Lee Shang Lun. Each half-hour episode is a livestreamed conversation that concentrates on the subject's unique perspective and expertise. The aim is to draw out simple ideas from deep discussion.


Episode 16 – Mohamed Chamas

Mohamed Chamas

26 May 2020 6:30 PM

Mohamed Chamas is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, game developer and poet based in Naarm (Melbourne, AU). Their practice aligns the synergies between Islamic mysticism and the contemporary-technological, outlining a research probe they name the 'dijital djinni'. Chamas draws on ancestral, psycho-spiritual, and socio-political channels to re-territorialize cyberspace, namely for the unsurveilled healing of orientalised bodies. Their work takes the form of semi-interactive 'artgames' for web and Virtual Reality (VR). Notably, their Sufi-as-cyborg VR piece ‘سايبر تصوف   (cyber tasawwuf) which received two Freeplay Independent Games Festival nominations in 2019 and has exhibited at Testing Grounds, Seventh Gallery, Siteworks, Incinerator Gallery and The Riddoch.