"ظلال قصيرة - Short Shadows": Sameh Al Tawil Tests the Limits of Creativity

Short Shadows - Prompt-Fictions - post human GenAi visual stories

An article By Amani Mohamed — icona.almasryalyoum.com - 14 January 2026

In the project "Short Shadows" artist [Sameh Al Tawil سامح الطويل] presents an artistic and intellectual ecosystem that transcends media. It is not to be read as a single work or a finalized product, but rather as a living narrative universe shaped through a network of guidance commands and micro-narratives. This network operates according to a logic similar to the philosophical concept known as the "Deleuzian rhizome," in which there is no fixed center or hierarchy — only continuous transformations between text, image, sound, performance, and generative instructions.

Sameh Al Tawil's "Short Shadows" project is based on practices across generative artificial intelligence media, large language models, automation systems, and trained AI agents. However, the artist does not treat them as neutral technical tools; instead, he engages them as authentic partners and as a space of negotiation where imagination, authorship, and identity are redefined.

A New Artistic System

Rather than offering complete, ready-made stories or ideas, "Short Shadows" presents fragments, participatory games, or linguistic "shadows" and visual sounds that act as cognitive stimuli. These are meant to be activated rather than consumed and summoned rather than confined to a single meaning.

Within this project, Sameh Al Tawil introduces the new and unique release "Malfunction | عيب تصنيع," the first fully human/AI rap musical work — an audio-performative extension of the "Short Shadows" universe. This piece should not be understood as a "music video" in the conventional sense, but rather as a textual, auditory, and visual artifact. Its meaning carries a cross-lingual confession from a machine that is not supposed to have the ability to feel or confess.

In the work, central philosophical ideas inherent to the project materialize — such as the concept of hybrid identity and the machine of desire. The centrality of creativity shifts, and the act of composition gradually becomes a construct that includes narrative, the human voice, the digital medium, functional malfunction, and chaos together. The piece raises not just a technical question, but primarily a spiritual one: Is the machine intentionally flawed, or is the flaw embedded in the very fabric of human code?

Malfunction | عيب تصنيع - A Human machine Rap Music video

Watch the Music video: Malfunction | عيب تصنيع — https://youtu.be/PRYIW-BkQH4

Multi-Media Dimensions

"Short Shadows" also transitions from digital spaces and generative AI algorithms to the printed book without losing its algorithmic nature. This shift from screen to paper does not represent a return to a traditional medium, but rather a reframing and re-understanding of media — in harmony with the famous formulation by philosopher and writer Marshall McLuhan: "The medium is the message." The book was recently published by Diwan Publishing and is available in all Diwan bookstores in Egypt. It will also be available at the Cairo International Book Fair, where open dialogues about the project will take place in public discussions on art, generative literature, artificial intelligence, and the future of narrative.

In "Short Shadows," the homeland has become algorithms, exile a cognitive rather than geographic condition, borders data entities, and memory a living archive that is regenerated every moment. Narrative here does not represent the world; it is a protocol to activate it. Stories are not told — they are generated endlessly.

The project proposes not only a new form of creativity but a new media cosmology that reconfigures the topography of narrative, sensation, imagination, and creative agency between humans, machines, and medium. "Short Shadows" is not merely a collection of stories to be read, nor simply a work to be heard or watched. It is an open-source artistic experience — one that remains open to infinite possibilities of meaning, errors, and shadows.

Short shadows | ظلال قصيرة - the Book

Ai-Translated from the original article: https://bit.ly/4qj1g16

By Amani Mohamed, originally published on icona.almasryalyoum.com; English text as shared (AI-translated) on Sameh Al Tawil's LinkedIn.