KARACHI: Just like you reach a positive result by adding two positives in algebra, the fusion of art and technology at the third Karachi Biennale, or the KB22, are a plus-plus.

It is worth the effort to visit all the nine KB22 venues to experience this kind of expression, too. The black curtains at first draw you into an area of complete darkness but soon you learn to focus through your third eye at the Jamshed Memorial Hall.

Artist, writer and educator Madyha J. Leghari’s artwork ‘Speaking in Tongues’ is like that. Remember those interactive type ‘Choose-your-own-adventure’ storybooks where you had a choice of pages to turn in order to reach a different scenario? Leghari gives you similar choices from the very start with you deciding if you want to experience her art in English or Urdu. That done you have other choices at hand in her interactive world of random thoughts.

You see life from the perspective of a woman who awakens one day to find herself trapped in a peaceful summer escape. Taking inspiration from the classic Sanskrit poetic form, Sandesha Kavya, she attempts to interact with non-human beings around her such as the clouds, the trees, water lilies, dragon flies, locusts and deer, the distance between whose horns can fit large clouds thanks to the angle of her camera’s lens.

Connoisseurs can appreciate artworks at nine venues of Karachi Biennale until 13th

It’s equally dark upstairs, in the Jamshed Memorial Library, but music lifts spirits and makes everything brighter.

Interdisciplinary artist Rabeeha Adnan’s artwork ‘Mukaalmah: We Can’t Both Be Right’ is a musical play performed by instrumental objects that address power dynamics within state structures because normally, seemingly identical groups draw parallels. But here you have two groups of seemingly identical musical instruments creating rhythm in harmony and synchronisation through projection mapping, light and sound.

At another venue, the NJV School, you get to experience augmented reality through conceptual artist Dennis Rudolph’s ‘Simurgh App’. The visitor can connect to one of the longest epic Persian poems, Shahnamah of 977-1010 CE through virtual 3D paintings visible through the Simurgh App in your smart phone.

Speaking of Apps, environment activist Yasir Husain, who is more known by the name Yasir Darya, has his artwork ‘Air Rider’ on display, too. ‘Air Rider’ allows users to experience data on air pollution through live performance. So you get to interact with a bike rider moving all over the city — from the sea to Bilawal Chowrangi, Old Clifton to Teen Talwar, Boat Basin, Mai Kolachi, the Native Jetty, Shaheen Complex, Metropole, FTC, Korangi Road, etc, — as he live streams data recording the pollution in the air around town.

Next, you get to enter a room with an LED screen in the middle of an antique wooden bed. Sometimes it feels that the sounds from the TV are that of a growling animal, then it sounds like someone snoring. Then going to one end of the bed you realise that it is a face talking to you, to be more clear, artist and sculptor Amin Gulgee’s face. You are in the ‘Memory Room’, a collaboration by fashion designer Laeeq Akbar, lighting adviser Pomme Amina Gohar, NJV School and of course Amin Gulgee.

And then there is another collaboration by Chitrali musician Irfan Ali Taj, sound designer Daniel A. Panjwaney, electronics and laser cutting expert Khurram Halari, augmented sitar designer Hamza Ahmad, artists Ashir Bhatti and Changez Basir aptly named ‘Saaz’, which is soothing to the ears and prompts thinking around technology and classical music.

There is a lot more hybrid and evolving digital art on display at Hamid Market, NED University’s City Campus, the Sambara Art Gallery, the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, the Alliance Française and IBA’s main campus for connoisseurs to view and appreciate until this year’s Biennale wraps up on Nov 13.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2022