My research asks how virtual environments can hold cultural memory, and what people experience when they step inside a place rebuilt from memory. Drawing on classical art training in Lahore, five years in game and real-time 3D production, and an MFA in Computer Art, I study immersive media both as a maker and as a researcher, treating each virtual world as an artwork and an experiment at once.
Research interests
Computational aesthetics and cultural computing
How the material qualities of digital media, such as its errors, compression and reconstruction, become an aesthetic language for representing culture and place.
How the material qualities of digital media, such as its errors, compression and reconstruction, become an aesthetic language for representing culture and place.
Experience in immersive media
How presence, embodiment and spatial design shape what people feel, remember and learn inside virtual environments, from heritage reconstruction to therapeutic and educational uses of VR.
How presence, embodiment and spatial design shape what people feel, remember and learn inside virtual environments, from heritage reconstruction to therapeutic and educational uses of VR.
Human and machine creativity
How generative and AI-assisted tools are changing authorship, artistic identity and creative agency, and what new forms emerge when people and machines make work together.
How generative and AI-assisted tools are changing authorship, artistic identity and creative agency, and what new forms emerge when people and machines make work together.
Thesis
The Fluid Archive
Syracuse University, 2026
Syracuse University, 2026
An immersive VR and AR installation that reconstructs the Mughal-era architecture of Lahore's Walled City and reimagines it as a speculative future. The thesis examines how virtual reconstruction can preserve, question and reshape cultural memory, extending the experience through projection mapping, QR-activated AR and 3D-printed fragments.
Exhibitions and recognition
MFA Show Award, Syracuse University, 2026
Exhibition, Microscope Gallery, New York, 2026
Exhibition, Warehouse Gallery, Syracuse University, 2026
First Prize, CNY Arts, "Syracuse My New Home," 2025
First Prize, CNY Arts, "Art for Peace," 2024
Exhibition, Microscope Gallery, New York, 2026
Exhibition, Warehouse Gallery, Syracuse University, 2026
First Prize, CNY Arts, "Syracuse My New Home," 2025
First Prize, CNY Arts, "Art for Peace," 2024