The Sabeen Mahmud Archive

A WebVR experience that allows viewers to get to know Pakistani human rights activist & entrepreneur, Sabeen Mahmud.

Visit Project

Sabeen Mahmud (1974 - 2015)

Sabeen Mahmud stood for community, culture and open dialogue and with these principles founded The Second Floor (T2F), a coffee house and community space.

T2F hosted a range of public events like; film screenings, poetry readings, stand-up comedy, and panels on human rights, science lectures, and other topics.

Sabeen brought poets, politicians, artists, and activists together to share ideas over a cup of tea. In 2015 after hosting a panel titled “Unsilencing Balochistan” Sabeen was shot at a signal as she was leaving the event.

A living archive embodies Sabeen's spirit of open dialogue, community, & activism.

Preserves her memory and transfers social knowledge, values, and identity to the next generation.

Content Catalogue

The act of collecting this data began in 2015 by members of the Sabeen Mahmud Forum. This involved photographing Sabeen’s spaces and belongings, scanning family albums, recovering blogs, tweets, social media posts by Sabeen, and interviewing Sabeen’s friends and family. After reaching a critical junction this project was let go as there was no consensus on what form this archive should take.

Stakeholder Map

Identifying stakeholders and their needs was crucial to designing something meaningful. Mapping people interested in Sabeen's legacy and the archive, along with their specific needs and motivations allowed us to focus on primary stakeholders

Early Concept

The initial concept arose out of a visit to Sabeen’s bedroom. Having been preserved just as she left it, this space evoked her and each object told a story. This is how I began to explore the idea of space as interface and artefacts as performers in this space. By linking artefacts with memories I started making associations that helped me select Images and audio files from the dataset.

Using the content that was shared a short trailer was created to explain the concept. This was shared Sabeen’s mother, Mahenaz Mahmud.

Recreating rooms from photographs and 3D scans led to gaps in spatial data.

For the initial prototype I began drawing the environments. This also solved the problem of scanning spaces that no longer existed or had changed since Sabeen’s death.

The rooms were drawn on top of an Equirectangular grid and then rendered using a watercolour paint style on procreate. The advantage of a digital drawing is also the low effort stake of adding and subtracting from it.

Designing The Identity

Using Sabeen’s signature and selected character from the last sticky note she wrote, we created a typeface that we could use to create the logo of the archive.

UI & UX Design

Developing the website required an initial wireframe of the interface, experience and userflows. To keep things simple the experience only allows viewers the option to view images, play audios and switch between rooms. These flows were roughly mapped out on Figma and are viewable below.

Exhibition Design

The project culminated in a one day pop-up where visitors were able to try the experience in VR and also learn a bit about the process of making this experience. The exhibition divided the space into three zones; introduction where viewers are oriented with brochures, a curatorial note, and a short introductory video, trial where they can experience the VR or try out on desktop, and feedback where they can leave a comment.