At first glance, you may feel bewildered by Ayesha Mubarak Ali’s fantastical art creations. But look further, and you’ll see intriguing clues on how she envisages reality that will be reimagined in future.
Pakistan-based visual tech-artist and wearable art designer Ayesha is redefining digital art using AI and hyper-real imagery. Like many female creatives in the Metaverse, this internationally acclaimed entrepreneur is involved in multiple projects and business ventures.
As the founder and creative director of tech-art start-up Oshii Brownie, Ayesha explains that her digital designs and art direction work aims ‘to promote multiple identities, and brown skin to the global community through tech-intervention.’ “The idea behind this fusion phygital company is to reinvent traditional South Asian practices and reinterpret cultural heritage by integrating character modeling techniques with fashion and virtual personification.”
Ayesha is also co-founder of Cosmic Tribe, where her art practice involves researching the impact of artificial lights on the psychological health of the post-millennial generation.
In one of her projects Dark Skies Gaze Back, she fused traditional and digital techniques in an experimental visual exploration. Her aim was ‘to raise awareness about light pollution and the unseen effects of the abstract role light plays in our daily life.’ Research on various aspects of light pollution, led her ‘to explore the role of screens, online surveillance, emotion mapping, and the different ways in which Machine learning and AI will dictate the future of human emotions one way or another.’
As a traditional artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Ayesha says she was always interested in combining physical art practices with digital ones. With her focus on empowering women, her toughest challenge when entering the male dominated web3 space was struggling to find likeminded supporters. Back then, the advice she would have given herself is that ‘my voice is unique, not to do what everyone else is doing and that nothing you learn will ever go to waste.
It’s not easy to grasp Ayesha’s extraordinary creative process of using artificial intelligence in her hybrid mix-media art as a key tool to co-mingle physical reality with virtual reality. She clarifies it by saying, “My practice engages with the blurred boundaries that arise between the concepts of reality, illusions, collective memory, scrutiny, and gender roles exhibited and masqueraded in pop culture.”
Her involvement as co-founder and creative director of Meta Visionaries since the beginning of 2022, focuses on developing an Edtech platform. This venture, she says, will utilize NFTs and the Metaverse to redefine the way we learn by fusing art, music, space science and entrepreneurship, making education ‘immersive, inclusive, affordable and interdisciplinary.
The concept of edutainment in the Metaverse is to build ‘unimaginable realities for networking and collaboration with people around the world.’
“We’re interested in working with artists, scientists, engineers, astronauts, businessmen, and other disciplines to come together and utilize 3d technology in the Metaverse to co-create a future together.”
With her conviction – that there are no boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors – she believes the technology of interdisciplinary education in the Metaverse can benefit everyone.
“In the future, people are not just going to learn the same things and careers are going to change radically. However, reaching the full potential of this new horizon will require developing an efficient system where technology is the main learning driver.”
In her view, this will enforce teaching, collaboration, and cross-pollination of ideas across different disciplines like science, arts, and engineering.
Ayesha defines the Metaverse as ‘the New Reality, the New Normal,’ stating ‘it can be anything that one can imagine virtually, from entertainment to economies, unique businesses, and educational infrastructures.’
She says over the past year, as people slowly adopt and identify the Metaverse and identify its end goal, they’re ‘now talking more about web3 and the Metaverse rather than just NFTs that are only part of the entire structure.
While Ayesha foresees the future of technology will define the Metaverse and vice versa, it will require breaking some barriers before the digital revolution is widely adopted. These include lag-free headset technology that can work with the metaverse, the ability to engage more senses to feel completely immersed and having 5G or higher to successfully create unique virtual environments. Other issues like privacy, cybersecurity and mental health awareness are also important since experiencing multi-sensory experiences and simulations can overwhelm people or make them feel unwell.
When asked what she sees as the most exciting thing in her future, this radical changemaker’s response is simple: “Whatever I’m doing, I like building new realities and want to do something unimaginable. And that means visualizing things that people say can’t happen.”
AYESHA M. ALI’S METAVERSE & WEB3 TIPS & RESOURCES
