Sana Akram
Sana Akram is a Pakistani urbanist, media maker, a Fulbright alum and an XR creator based in Toronto, Canada. In 2020, she graduated with an MS in Design and Urban Ecologies from Parsons School of Design, The New School, where she diversified her research-practice by implementing an interdisciplinary design approach. Her award-winning interactive documentary, Little Pakistan – Future Histories, has showcased at several international festivals and her research has been published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Currently, she is pursuing a doctorate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University as a recipient of the prestigious Elia Scholars Program Award. Her research-creation interests include immersive storytelling and performance, oral tradition, worlding and worldbuilding, emergent media, cocreation, and civic engagement.
Alam-e-Alam (The States of Worlding): Tilism Sazi
Interactive mixed reality experience, 2025
Sana Akram
Alam-e-Alam (The States of Worlding): Tilism Sazi is an interactive mixed reality experience comprising a series of veiled enchanted worlds conjured up through gestural performance and the creative breath. Situating all creation as agents invested with the spirit of magic defined by Ikhwan al-Safa as transformation directed by will and agency, combined with the position of talismans as efficacious technologies in Islamicate occult sciences allows a reading of talisman-performance assemblages—the elemental body in performance, the conjured image of the story-world through devices of wonder, and the spirit activated within the performative space—as assuming affective states that offer worlding potentialities in the realms of possibilities. The experience aims to serve as a transformative journey and foster a sense of wonder, connection, and enchantment.
The project draws on Akram’s ongoing doctoral research-creation focus on the historical Urdu language oral storytelling tradition and performative art of Tilismi Dastan from South Asia, which is uniquely coloured by Islamicate aesthetics along with Indic performance. This work is the first in a series of XR interactive experiences that reimagine the tilismi dastan with emergent media technologies and XR, and realize its transformative, generative, and creative potential for immersive storytelling, performance, and worldbuilding in the 21st century.