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Interaction Design

Interaction Design — Kamel Ghabte, Digital Artist

Kamel Ghabte — Franco-Moroccan digital artist. 52 international exhibitions since 2017. Interactive installations, masterclasses, keynotes, and commissioned works.

Statement

Interaction is a material. Not an add-on, not a layer — a material in its own right, with its resistances, textures, and grammars. I have been working with this material since 2002, as an artist, an educator, and a builder of objects that ask to be touched, held, and traversed.

My installations don't hide their interfaces. They expose their own logic of exchange. The tension between what a gesture does and what an object responds — between the hand and the algorithm, between inherited memory and real-time computation — is the subject of my work, not its means.

Born in Morocco, trained in France. 52 international participations since 2017. That geography is not a biographical footnote: it is the condition of everything I make.

Signature works & installations

THE WORD_BROKER

Semantic negotiation interface
A physical/digital interactive installation where the visitor negotiates the value of words in real time with an AI agent. An exploration of language economies, symbolic hierarchies, and transaction as an aesthetic act.
Medium: interactive installation, NLP, touchscreen, live data.
Shown at: cultural institutions, arts and technology festivals.

ZELLIGE ARTCADE

Itinerant digital cultural device
A video game platform built around the geometric logics of Moroccan zellige tilework. Each game is an algorithmic exploration of a traditional constructive principle — zellige as a rule-based system, not a decorative motif. Installed at festivals, medinas, schools, and cultural institutions.
Medium: game design, generative algorithms, physical arcade cabinet, cultural mediation.
Partners: Institut Français · Fondation EPANWE · 1337 Ben Guerir.

Medina CyberCity

VR experience
The traditional medina reborn as a cybernetic city. The visitor walks through a space suspended between ancient derbs and speculative futurist architecture — a metaphor for contemporary Moroccan youth, rooted in heritage and crossed by modern aspirations. The foundation of a future Moroccan cultural metaverse.
Medium: virtual reality, spatial design, 3D environments.
Shown at: ÊTRE JEUNE 2026, Centre JOY Nouaceur.

Breath of the Bosphorus

Climate calligraphy
A generative installation where live wind data from the Bosphorus produces a dancing Arabic calligraphy and a generative mandala in real time. Climate and writing become the same gesture — a city exhaling its own script.
Medium: live data APIs, generative calligraphy, Processing / p5.js.
Shown at: IDAF — Istanbul Digital Art Festival 2025.

PhytoGraphies

Bioelectric plant portraits
Algorithmic portraits of plants drawn from their bioelectric signals. Each plant produces its own visual "fingerprint" — a vegetal identity card composed in real time, printable and collectable. An extension of bio-data sonification from sound toward image.
Medium: bioelectric sensors, generative visualization, printable output.
Shown at: art-science residencies, botanical gardens.

Vortex de Mémoire

AR commemorative experience
The visitor points a smartphone at a space and sees a vortex of memorial fragments emerge — archival images, texts, voices, symbols linked to the Marche Verte. Layers of collective memory superimposed on the present.
Medium: augmented reality (web AR), archival materials, spatial audio.
Context: official commemorations, history museums, intangible heritage programs (Morocco).

Parametric Digital Calligraphy

Algorithmic Arabic and Kufic calligraphy
The historical geometric rules of Islamic calligraphy translated into code parameters. Each execution produces a unique composition that respects traditional proportions while exploring variations impossible by hand — a conversation between rule and variation, tradition and algorithm.
Medium: generative code, Arabic / Kufic script systems.
Shown at: calligraphy and design exhibitions, Islamic art institutions, MENA cultural spaces.

THE SCRIPT_MINER

Narrative pattern extraction
An installation that analyzes the narrative patterns of a text corpus provided by the visitor and reinjects them as generative visual scores. The work makes visible the hidden grammar of stories.
Medium: creative coding, data visualization, generative print.
Shown at: research residencies, academic and cultural spaces.

DERB.EXE

Arcade cabinet — generative checkers game
A physical wooden arcade cabinet that reimagines the Moroccan street checkers game through a procedural generator anchored in Amazigh visual patterns. A 7-digit seed generates unique rules for every game. No data collected. Two players standing, face to face.
Medium: embedded electronics (Raspberry Pi), MDF, generative algorithms, formalized Amazigh patterns.
Shown at: 52 participations — festivals in Morocco, France, Belgium, Tunisia.

DATA RUG Protocol

Data-textile generative installation
A system that translates real data (climatic, economic, urban) into generative textile patterns following the visual grammars of Atlas Berber rugs. A collaboration with Dar Nassij and Institut Français de Casablanca.
Medium: Python, APIs, procedural generation, large-format projection or high-resolution print.
Shown at: contemporary art biennales, Franco-Moroccan cultural institutions.

KOUTCHI — Memory in Transit

Phygital haptic installation
A real Moroccan cart (koutchi) fitted with haptic sensors and connected to a generative AI pipeline. Six stations — medina, souk, road, port, European city, return. Twelve minutes. One question: who does the memory of a migration belong to?
Medium: FSR sensors, Arduino, OSC, Max/MSP, generative AI, authentic koutchi (Meknès, 12 years of use).
Shown at: cultural institutions, digital creation festivals, international residencies.

Markers

Books: Fantômes Numériques du Maroc collection — DATA RUG Protocol · DERB.EXE · KOUTCHI (KDP 2026, in French)

Working together

Masterclasses & workshops for professionals and institutions

1 to 3-day formats for creative teams, design schools, museums, arts centers, and festivals.

Available formats:
- "Interaction as material" — Critical and practical approach to interaction design (p5.js, TouchDesigner, Processing). For designers, artists, developers.
- "Heritage and algorithm" — Formalizing traditional visual grammars and translating them into code. For cultural mediators, heritage institutions, artists.
- "Generative AI in artistic contexts" — Creation workshops with generative tools (image, sound, text), centered on authorship and voice. For artists and institutions.

Available in French and English.

Fee: upon request
Book a call

Conferences & keynotes

Talks for festivals, biennales, professional conferences, and institutional events.

Recurring topics:
- "Interaction as a political act" — What the rules of a game, an interface, or an installation say about a worldview.
- "Data, memory, heritage" — How art can make visible what data cannot see.
- "Teaching creative coding outside major cities" — Experiences, tools, and pedagogical stakes.
- "Franco-Moroccan digital artist: posture, ethics, practice" — Reflections on authorship between two cultures and two technological contexts.

Format: 20 to 60 minutes, with or without live demonstration. Bilingual: French / English depending on context.
Fee: upon request
Book a call

Commissioned works & experiential consulting

For cultural institutions, local authorities, companies, and event programmers:

Fee: upon request
Book a call or [email protected]

→ Full page in French — Design d'interaction
→ Creative coding — courses and resources (French)
→ Creative coding in English

Kamel Ghabte · kamelghabte.me · [email protected]
SIRET 489 325 308 00026 · APE 8559A