Talking Xbits: Morocco

An interactive, multimedia exhibit.

How It Works

Open the camera app on your mobile device, and point it at the QR Code.
Don’t take a picture! Just let the camera read the QR Code.
Tap on the notification from the top.
Listen to the photographer talk about the image. You don’t have to keep pointing the device at the photograph when you do this!

Meet The Team

Jackie Spinner and Yad Konrad first collaborated at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani in 2010. Spinner was the founder and faculty advisor of the AUIS Voice, Iraq’s first independent student newspaper. Konrad was the paper’s first student design editor. He graduated in 2013 with a degree in Computer Science.

Jackie Spinner

Associate Professor

is an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago where she oversees the photojournalism program. Spinner is a foreign correspondent and former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post who has lived and worked in Morocco. Her first documentary film, “Don’t Forget Me,” which premiered in 2017 at the Rabat International Film Festival, is about how autistic children in Morocco are educated. The film was a winner at the Big Muddy Film Festival in 2018.

Yad Konrad

Machine Learning Scientist

is an independent applied researcher at Congruent AI where he explores the edges of machine intelligence. Konrad is the founder of Congruent AI, a research institute that powers independent researchers, their most recent research projects includes detection of deep-fake images and finding conversations in hours of recorded podcasts.

Meet The Artists

Photographers: Hakim Belabbes (MFA 99), Niki Cocorelis (BA 20), Hannah Faris (BA 20), Zackery Kearns (BA 20), Halie Parkinson (BA 19), Anjali Paul (BA 19), Caroline Sheets (BA 20), Colton Weiss (BA 19)

About The Exhibit

Talking Xbits is an entrepreneurial-research project between Columbia College Chicago and Congruent AI.

The photographs and video featured in the exhibit were captured in January 2018 during a documentary journalism course to Morocco taught by filmmaker and Columbia College Chicago MFA graduate Hakim Belabbes and former broadcast journalism professor Yolanda Joe. Students filmed on location in Boujad, Morocco. The Columbia College Chicago students worked alongside young Moroccan filmmakers from the Sahara Lab. The exhibit uses machine learning technology to enable viewers to listen to audio stories from the student and faculty creators and to view video shorts on a website accessible from a smartphone or other handheld mobile device.