The best conference venue I’ve ever seen – then checking out the Saudi digital/AI-art scene.

Salam, folks – from Saudi Arabia!

I was there last week at the Internet Governance Forum in Riyadh, where I was invited to give a speech about some of the lesser-known evils of the internet – and about our ideas regarding what to do to best tackle those evils. Traditionally, this annual forum has been attended by politicians and other government officials, representatives of international organizations, and so on. Only relatively recently have they started inviting folks from commercial companies – seemingly so as to get a better handle on the home truths about what’s really going on across the internet.

Since the event wasn’t dedicated to my core field (JIC: cybersecurity!), I didn’t stay around to listen to the other speeches. Thus, that’s all for today about the actual conference! However, I just have to tell you about the place where the event took place…

The forum took place in the enormous… palace (I can’t describe the building any other way) called the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center. And it seems it’s so luxuriously-exclusively grand and ritzy that there’s hardly anything about the place on the internet (e.g., no Wikipedia page) – yes, that same internet the governance of which the forum is dedicated to! Here’s how it looks from the outside:

Inside – breathtakingly beautiful opulence; here, for example, is the entrance hall:

The main hall:

Like? Then let’s take a closer look…

Back there – the entrance gate. From there to the palace it’s just 200 meters – but all the same golf buggies were kept very busy ferrying the exercise-phobic to and fro ->

We enter…

Oh my grandiosely sumptuous! ->

Here’s another hall – this one for exhibition stands:

Now, I’ve been to a zillion conference/exhibition venues around the world, but this one – by far – is the most impressive I’ve ever seen…

Here’s our modest stand (with an internet-security theme). “Behind the wheel” there is our K-employee from the Paris office, who, while chatting with us, told us how attendees had been coming up to her to ask if she’s from Russia and whether she speaks Russian! ->

A side corridor ->

The main hall again:

Saudi Arabia is changing at breakneck speed. The 2013 version of the country (which I saw on my first trip to Saudi), and today’s version are two completely different things (but I’ve written about this before so I won’t repeat myself here). And the latest trend in the country is attracting tourists to it: repairing and smartening up historical objects, and building new recreational zones – for example, Diriyah and Al Bujairi Terrace…

I can’t imagine what it’s like here in the summer – besides it being unbearably hot – but in December, with a temperature around 20°C, it was most comfortable.

Alas, the old royal palace was closed…

…So we decided to check out… the Diriyah Art Futures museum of modern digital art. What? Museum. Modern. Digital. Art? Just a decade ago that would have been difficult to even imagine!…

First up, somewhat counter-intuitively, some retro (1980s) pieces from back when the first plotters appeared ->

And so it goes on, with most works created with computers – be they static or dynamic, and sometimes reflected off mirrors:

History explainer:

A per for a modern-art museum, there are plenty of “what the?…” artifacts. But in among them there were some that stood out for me and piqued my interest:

These flowers sway from a simulated cyber-draft:

Many compositions are dynamic – you need to view them either in the flesh of on video. Alas, I take mostly static photos.

These are “alive” too. Mountains with roads and cars; waterfalls; and quarries and tipper trucks (plus the ocean) down below. I found myself staring at this one for ages ->

Digital ants:

But when you stand in front of those ants, they come together and take on your outline form; here’s me taking a selfie! ->

…Not for the myrmecophobic!

A painting robot:

AI? Looks like it…

…At least – AI trained on the work of Jackson Pollock ) ->

This reminds of TeamLab in Tokyo:

An interactive stand: you make shapes with your eyes through the VR headset…

Then those shapes are transformed into an object with a 3-D printer.

The resulting works are then placed on the wall ->

In all – a very interesting museum. Btw – the expositions are due to be changed February 15…

And a few photos taken by my travel companion, NK ->

Me on the vast stage in the vast hall:

Back to the museum ->

That evening – on a somewhat smaller stage – I was back to my public speaking thing, only this time I was addressing our corporate clients from the region – all 200+ of them. Yes – our future’s looking bright in Saudi!…

And that was that – Saudi-2024: done! Time to be heading home…

Ooh – it’s Christmas Day! Merry Christmas folks!…

All the pics from Saudi Arabia are here.