Sun is a tilism—an enchantment set in a canyon, with four monoliths serving as conduits of elemental memories for deep listening and contemplative gaze. The mystical structures relate to the ummahat or mothers–fire, air, water, earth–the basis for processes of elemental generation that link all beings to what Zakariya al-Qazwini, the thirteenth-century Persian naturalist and cosmographer, described as “an amazing, interconnected arrangement and wondrous order.” However, we have grown indifferent to it. In Urdu, the word sun is a homonym (verb: to listen; adjective: without sensation, numb, indifferent, desolate, deserted). The relationship inscribed across its meanings animates the premise of an environment that questions this indifference by shrouding itself in a wondrous illusion, calling upon us, SUN! (listen!)‚ to restore and heal our connection to it.
This virtual environment design project serves as a preliminary conceptual art for Akram’s subsequent emergent media works, reimagining the Indo-Islamicate Tilismi Dastan with immersive media and extended reality (XR) as part of her research-creation doctorate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University.
