Peripheral Mode by Tamer Elshabrawy
A S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence Residency.
Challenge “Psychogeography and the Influence of AI
Host institution
B’sarya for Arts, Alexandria (EG)
European partner
CHRONIQUES, Marseille (FR)
Peripheral Mode is a GPS-based audio-visual walk through which the artist explores the psychogeography of Alexandria: the subtle exchange between urban atmosphere and emotional life. Psychogeography is understood here as attention to the ways place, movement, and mood act upon one another, and to the traces they leave behind. The work asks how a city enters feeling, and how private and collective states gradually return to shape the city in turn.
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Built in the browser as a generative system, the piece unfolds along a route structured by smartphone geolocation. The phone does not simply deliver the work; it becomes the instrument through which movement, sound, and computation are held together in real time. Its sound world arises through artist-designed algorithms, synthesis, and live processing, remaining open to variation as the walk proceeds.
Within this structure, AI plays a supporting role, interacting in real time with the sounds of the city and modulating aspects of the live processing as one element of the work’s sonic composition. The work does not unfold as a fixed soundtrack. It shifts with pace, duration, and surrounding conditions, allowing the route, the act of walking, and the environment itself to participate in shaping form. In this sense, the city is not simply the site of the work, but part of its formal structure.
The artists
Tamer Elshabrawy
Tamer Elshabrawy is an Egyptian electronic and ambient music composer and sound artist. Rooted in Alexandria’s sonic memory, his work blends field recordings, storytelling, and immersive soundscapes. He creates collaborative experiences exploring emotion, memory, and the relationship between sound and mental states.
+ Website
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Want to dive deeper?
Listen to the associated
S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence Voices
Podcast Episode, inviting artists Linda Dounia and Noah Okwudini (Ala Praxis) [“Reprogramming the City: Urban Hacking and Decolonial Futures”].
& Check-out the other selected projects for the Afropean Intelligence Residency Program:
+ Challenge 1: Intercultural AI: Weaving Worlds through Art and Algorithms | “Untangler: Worlds Reimagined” – Peace Olatunji
+ Challenge 1bis: “Decoding Egwu: reclaiming indigenous intelligence through AI, dance and Igbo” – Emmanuel Ndefo & Dan Xu
+ Challenge 3: Plural Computation | “The Affogbolo’s Home” – Pierre-Christophe Gam
+ Challenge 5: Archives & Memory | “Adorned memory: Reimagining Egyptian Indigenous Archives Through Jewellery” – Khanya Mthethwa
+ Challenge 6: ZaZi: An African Educational AI Model | “LORAS AS AN ARCHIVE – A LIVING ARCHIVE” – Evans Akanyijuka
+ Challenge 7: Beyond Borders: AI, Climate, and Resource Justice in Africa | “Cry To The Water” – Chipo Mapondera
+ Challenge 8: Digital Lukasa: An Intelligent Archival Tablet | “The Memory Performer: digital reincarnation of Luba wisdom” – Mahoutondji Kinmagbo
+ Challenge 9: Provenance and Social Memory | “TERRITOIRE TISSé: Art Royal Kuba entre tradition et (R)évolution” – Melisa Kayowa
+ Challenge 10: Futurism and Geolocation | “Mobility as Memory: a decolonial AI cartography of Kinshasa” – Chinedum Muotto
+ Afropean Intelligence is bringing together 11 cultural organizations across Africa and Europe:
