The Jordanian government has kept pace with the reliance of many on artificial intelligence and announced, on Thursday, the launch of “Farah,” the government’s digital spokesperson, a virtual character developed with artificial intelligence, to begin communicating with the people, according to what the Jordanian Ministry of Government Communications announced.
In its post on the “X” platform, the Ministry attached a video clip of “Farah” of that character, who introduced herself in a colloquial dialect as a digital speaker, “in an experience that is the first of its kind in the region and the world.”
She added, "The government's goal in this initiative is to harness digital technology to develop communication tools to deliver information to citizens."
For his part, the Minister of Government Communications and the official spokesman for the Jordanian government, Muhammad Al-Momani, said in a post on the “X” platform: “As part of the government’s continuous endeavor to employ digital technology and artificial intelligence tools to communicate, explain government decisions and policies, and make information available; The digital spokesman service (Farah) will be launched, which will be one of the digital government communication tools. Which aims to provide citizens and those interested with information.”
The Jordanian News Agency (Petra) said that the launch of the “Farah” account on the “Instagram” platform aims to be a new digital window to communicate with the public and provide information to citizens in a simplified and direct manner.
She added that the launch of “Farah” came as part of a trend to employ modern technology to communicate with citizens, and to answer questions related to issues of concern to the street, through digital content directed to users of communication platforms.
She pointed out that Farah speaks in a simplified manner. To constitute a qualitative addition to traditional communication channels, in an experience aimed at keeping pace with the accelerating digital transformation and changing the ways the public receives official information and news.
She stressed that the launch of the digital speaker is seen as a pioneering step in the process of employing artificial intelligence in institutional work and public communication, in conjunction with the trend of official institutions to enhance their presence on digital platforms and reach broader segments of society.
Yasmina Nestin captures the face as if it were the most unreadable part of a human being. You magnify it, bring it closer to the eye, flood it with layers of color, and then leave a space in it that the viewer cannot enter. In her exhibition “Guardians of Memory” at “The Upper Gallery” at “Saleh Barakat Gallery” in Beirut, faces are the first thing that catches the eye, but staying in front of them for a long time shows that what attracts the eye is not their size alone. There is something muffled inhabiting her, a sadness that does not declare itself, and a heaviness that appears in the withdrawn looks, the prostrate heads, and the bodies that seem to have reached a moment in which they have stopped being stubborn about what they feel.
Nesten does not draw well-known people, nor does he seek to fix the features of a particular individual. She says she wants to draw people without drawing a specific person. Yet there is something strange about the familiarity that its characters create. We feel that we have seen this woman, or known that face, or sat in a room similar to this room, without being able to attribute any of it to a specific memory. The characters are imagined, but their physical and psychological presence gives them the intensity of people who lived life outside the frame of the painting.
This idea carries the vision of “Guardians of Memory.” Memory in paintings is an effect that resides on the face, body, and place. There is a woman supporting another, a person lying in the grass, a figure staring out of a high window at a distant street, women around a table, a bride and groom, bodies sitting close together while the distance between them seems greater than the seats suggest. These scenes do not need complete stories. The way a shoulder is bent, or the position of a hand, or the direction of the eyes, opens up a world beyond what we see.
The sadness that overwhelms many of the characters is shaped by the darkness of the color. Nestin paints in pink, orange, turquoise, yellow, green and red, sometimes juxtaposing very light tones next to a withdrawn face or a tired body. This paradox gives the paintings a special power. Color does not explain the psychological state and is not subject to it. The world can be bright while a person lives something else inside him. The bright colors retain their brightness, so that sadness forms within the faces, looks, and body positions, independent of the color mood of the painting.
The artist also treats the face as an independent drawing space. Some features are textured, other parts melt into the brush strokes. The color on the surface of the skin varies, becoming clusters of green, pink, blue, yellow, and brown, as if the face is being built before us from accumulated layers of time. The closer we get to it, the weaker our feeling that we are in front of a picture of a person and the more we see the drawing, the stroke, the color, and the surface. When we move away, man reappears. This movement between the person and the drawing keeps the portrait suspended between what is recognizable and what remains outside awareness.
Even hands play a role no less important than faces. Heads rest on it, hold books and cups, touch another body, or rest heavily on a table. Sometimes they seem more frank than the eyes. According to Nestin, the body does not perform a theatrical movement and does not demand our attention, but it carries the trace of what happened before it. Her characters mostly exist in the moment after the action, when the movement fades and what the experience did remains in the body.
This sensitivity towards people and place is not separate from the path of an artist who carried more than geography with her. Yasmina Alexandra Nesten was born in Helsinki in 1988 to a Lebanese-Finnish family, and grew up in Beirut, where she studied fine arts at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. She later moved to New York and obtained a master's degree in digital arts from Pratt Institute. During her years there, her interest included the city, social narratives, and what it means to be visible or absent within one's surroundings. In Oregon, where she lives and works on the Pacific coast, she returned to portraiture and a person’s relationship with his memory, his place, and the impact of his multiple origins and environments. Therefore, it is difficult to separate the people in “Guardians of Memory” from the rooms, streets, fields, and windows that contain them.
Nestin is concerned with what is difficult for painting to capture, that is, the part of a person that his image neither fully reveals nor hides. Therefore, they give their faces all this space and then leave it difficult to own. There is always a life beyond features, a history that does not reach the eye, and something that a person keeps to himself even while standing before us. The face that we think we know how to read may be the place where its owner hides the most.
Bahrain signed a contract for its participation in the Expo 2030 Riyadh exhibition, paving the way for the start of a new phase of its preparations for the international event hosted by the Saudi capital.
This step establishes an official framework for Bahrain's participation in Expo 2030 Riyadh, and allows it to move forward towards completing the organizational and operational aspects related to its participation over the six months of the exhibition, including the development of its pavilion, programs and experiences provided to visitors.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Chairman of the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, confirmed after signing the agreement that his country’s participation in “Expo 2030 Riyadh” reflects the depth of the fraternal and historical relations that bring the two countries together, and the growing cooperation it is witnessing in various fields.
The Chairman of the Authority explained that signing the contract represents an important milestone in Bahrain’s preparations for “Expo 2030 Riyadh,” and embodies its keenness to actively participate in this global forum, and to provide participation that reflects its identity, achievements, and future aspirations, thus enhancing its presence on the international scene.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed added that the national work teams are continuing their efforts to complete the organizational and preparatory aspects of participation, ensuring the provision of an integrated Bahraini presence that keeps pace with the importance of the event, and the global space it provides for cultural and knowledge exchange and building partnerships.
For his part, Talal Al Marri, CEO of Expo 2030 Riyadh, confirmed that this step reflects the growing momentum we are witnessing as countries move from the stage of confirming participation to implementing what they will present in Riyadh in 2030, noting that the features of the exhibition begin to take greater shape with the signing of contracts, through the pavilions, programs and experiences that countries will present to visitors.
Al Marri looks forward to working closely with the Bahrain team during the next stage, and to a distinguished participation that reflects its vision, culture and ambitions, and contributes to enriching the “Expo 2030 Riyadh” experience.
The signing of the contract moves Bahrain’s participation from the stage of confirmation and preparation to planning and implementation, as it is planned to create a sustainable pavilion that will continue beyond the period of the exhibition to become part of the Global Village, one of the components of the sustainable legacy that “Expo 2030 Riyadh” will leave.
While more than 145 countries confirmed their participation in Expo 2030 Riyadh, countries, with the progress of preparations, began to move to the stage of signing official participation contracts, the most recent of which was France last month, on the sidelines of the visit of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, to Paris.
The conclusion of official contracts reflects the continued progress in preparations for hosting Expo 2030 Riyadh, and comes in the wake of Saudi Arabia and the International Bureau of Exhibitions recently signing the agreement on privileges and benefits granted to international participants, which establishes the legal and administrative framework regulating the participation of countries and international organizations.
This growing momentum in international participation coincides with tangible progress across the various paths of preparation for hosting Expo 2030 Riyadh, as site, infrastructure and construction development work continues at an accelerated pace, in parallel with the development of operational plans and qualitative experiences that will contribute to shaping the features of the event and enriching the experience of its visitors.
“Expo 2030 Riyadh” will be held during the period from October 1, 2030 until March 31, 2031, under the slogan “A Vision for the Future” and across five main regions, bringing together over a period of six months more than 200 official participants.
The exhibition, which will receive 42 million visits, will constitute a global forum that enhances cooperation and the exchange of ideas and experiences between participants from different parts of the world, through national pavilions, cultural programmes, innovation and interactive experiences.
