Basem Tash
The Lowest Point
Class of: 2025
Major: Communication Design BFA
Medium: Mixed Media (Digital Print and Micron Pigma Pens on Illustration Board)
Faculty: Diana Shpungin
Prompt: Employing unique mark making techniques, students create an invented past and present/present and future landscape or portrait in two (or more) parts: half hand drawn in ink / half digitally rendered in Illustrator, with the goal of the hand mimicking the digital method and vice versa.
For my project, I chose to focus on a present and future landscape of the Dead Sea – the lowest point on earth. Being from Jordan, I’ve been to the Dead Sea before and experienced all the beautiful scenery it offers. I’ve also learnt, of how the Dead Sea is shrinking every year, and becoming a man- made ecological disaster due to scarce water resources.
Because of this fact, the dystopian future I visualize for the Dead Sea is it being transformed into a huge cemetery once all the water has disappeared. That way, the Dead Sea will still be considered the Dead Sea, but in a different, more alarming light.
The mark used throughout the piece is the Arabic letter “م”, which is found in the Arabic words for water ( ماء / میاه ) death (موت ) and salt (ملح ).
