Jordan Daily - The interactive installation, one of eight projects selected from 74 applications, will explore how people leave signs and preserve memories- from ancient inscriptions in Jordan to digital traces in contemporary Hamburg.
Artist Rawan Al Adwan’s project From Stone to Screen: Ancient Symbols, Contemporary Signs and the Human Need to Communicate has been selected for the 2027 programme at Projektraum DOSE in Hamburg, Germany. It is one of eight projects by different artists chosen from 74 applications and is scheduled to be presented in October 2027.
The project examines how people communicate, express identity and record their experiences across time. Its point of departure is the Safaitic inscriptions carved into basalt rocks in the Jordanian Badia. Dating broadly from the first millennium BCE to the early centuries CE, these inscriptions preserve traces of names, journeys and lives connected to the landscape.
Al Adwan brings this ancient visual language into dialogue with contemporary signs, including emojis, hashtags, digital maps, messaging icons, QR codes and transport symbols. Rather than proposing direct translations between old and new, the project considers the shared human purposes of these marks: communicating, expressing emotion, locating oneself, documenting movement and leaving a trace.
Conceived as an indoor and outdoor installation, *From Stone to Screen* will combine photography, projected imagery, sound, sculpture and mixed-media works. A sculptural wall made from cardboard and other materials will evoke the texture of weathered stone, bringing inscriptions inspired by the Jordanian landscape into visual conversation with digital symbols. Photographic and audiovisual material from the Badia will be set against references to Hamburg’s urban environment, including its harbour, transport systems and digital maps.
Audience participation will form a central part of the installation. In an activity titled Leave Your Trace: From Stone to Screen,visitors will be invited to create a personal mark on a small stone. The mark will be photographed or scanned and incorporated into a digital projection; the stone will then join an outdoor arrangement. As contributions accumulate, they will form a collective archive of signs and memories. Alternative materials will be available for visitors who choose not to carve stone.
The project’s soundscape will combine sounds associated with stone carving and the desert with recordings from Hamburg’s city and harbour, as well as electronic tones. Spoken words in Arabic, German and English will reflect the work’s engagement with different cultural and linguistic contexts.
At the heart of the project is a question: If people in the past left messages on stone, what traces do we leave on screens today—and how long will they last? Moving between landscape, material and digital media, Al Adwan’s installation invites audiences to reflect on how communication changes over time, and on what remains of the marks people leave behind.
