Administrative Board
Hassan Choubassi Ph.D
Founder /Director
Associate Professor
Hassan Choubassi is an artist, researcher, and Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the Lebanese International University, where he also serves as Director of the Institute of Visual Communication (IVC). His work operates at the intersection of art, philosophy, and media theory, exploring how emerging technologies reshape perception, subjectivity, and the production of images.
Choubassi holds a PhD in Communication Media from the European Graduate School (EGS), Switzerland, where his dissertation examined the politics of mobile connectivity and the cultural implications of augmented communication. His research engages with artificial intelligence, post-human aesthetics, mobile media, and the semiotics of machine-generated imagery.
His artistic and theoretical practice investigates how contemporary technological systems participate in the formation of subjectivity and representation. Recent projects focus on artificial intelligence and the emergence of the synthetic imago, exploring how generative models produce images that reflect and refract human symbolic structures. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, as well as philosophical traditions and critical media theory, his work examines the possibility of a simulated psychic apparatus in artificial systems.
Choubassi’s research unfolds through artistic inquiry into AI image production, perception, and agency. His work reflects on how generative technologies transform the relationship between author, machine, and image, raising questions about creativity, representation, and the shifting boundaries between human and non-human intelligence.
Alongside his artistic and theoretical practice, he is actively involved in academic teaching and research in communication arts and media studies. His interests extend to the cultural and philosophical implications of emerging technologies in art, the aesthetics of algorithmic systems, and the evolving role of artists and researchers within technologically mediated societies. Through both scholarship and artistic practice, Choubassi contributes to ongoing conversations about artificial intelligence, art, and synthetic sentience.
Joe Elias
Co-founder
/Associate Director
Joe Elias is a designer, artistic researcher, and educator working at the intersection of visual communication, media, and emerging technologies. His practice combines artistic research, academic teaching, and design consultancy, examining how technological systems reshape visual culture, communication, and contemporary digital experience. His work focuses particularly on the relationship between design practice, cultural infrastructures, and the evolving role of technology in shaping systems of knowledge, perception, and interaction.
Elias is Co-founder and Associate Director of the Institute of Visual Communication (IVC) at Beirut International University (BIU). Through his work with the institute, he contributes to research-driven approaches in communication arts and media studies, exploring the relationship between design practice, visual culture, and technological transformation.
Alongside his research activities, Elias has been involved in academic teaching and mentorship for more than fifteen years at the Lebanese International University (LIU/BIU). Since 2007, he has taught courses in conceptual design, communication arts, animation, branding, and typography. Over the years he has held several academic roles, including Coordinator of Design Studies across multiple campuses, while also organizing symposiums, workshops, and research presentations at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He currently serves as Visiting Lecturer at BIU and contributes as a guest speaker at the Lebanese University (LU), in addition to delivering public lectures, including a TED talk.
In 2005, he co-founded Nimslabs, a multidisciplinary design laboratory operating between Lebanon and Germany. The studio has collaborated with cultural institutions, festivals, artists, filmmakers, and NGOs, developing projects spanning visual identity systems, publications, digital platforms, and media experiences.
Elias has also been actively involved in Lebanon’s cultural ecosystem. In 2013, he co-founded onomatopoeia – the music hub, a non-profit cultural space dedicated to supporting contemporary music and experimental sound practices in Beirut. Through educational initiatives such as the Music Skills Development Program (MSDP), the space provided training opportunities for emerging musicians while hosting concerts, workshops, and talks by local and international artists across genres including Arabic folk, jazz, electronic, and experimental music. Elias remained actively involved in shaping and curating the space until 2019.
Since 2019, Elias has served as Executive Committee Member and Organizational Consultant for Politics of the Machines (POM), an international conference platform exploring the intersection of technology, art, and philosophy.
Currently based in Germany, he works as a consultant advising organizations and global clients on digital transformation, creative direction, and AI-driven design systems.
Sahar Sharara
Media & Communication Manager
Sahar Charara works as a project manager in Deutsche Welle Akademie, Beirut office. She gives training and workshops in specialized communication, and consultancy on image building and Media Relations.
Sahar’s enthusiasm about Public Affairs issues and social injustice led her to a Master's in Journalism jointly from the Lebanese University + Universite Paris 2 Pantheon-Assas+ CFPJ, France.
For the past two decades, she was a teacher, advisor, and course designer at the Communication Arts and Media departments at the Lebanese International University where she taught Journalism and Public Relations classes, but also in ESP, Translation for Journalism, and Public Relations.
She has been publishing in French, Arabic, and English in local and regional print. Her interests revolve around anthropology, sociology, legislation, and culture, especially music and theater.
Sahar has completed the Master’s requirements in Linguistics, a Bachelor’s in Language, and a Teaching Diploma in Special Education all at The American University of Beirut. She is a member of Manchette Media Association, a Beirut-based community of journalists, working to improve the conditions, quality, and outcome of the industry.
Tarek Mourad
Board Member
Tarek Mourad is a Brazilian-Lebanese artist whose work revolves around the printed image, specifically in analog printmaking, such as intaglio techniques and lithography as well as analog photography. Most of his work tackles the relationships and defects within a society and space-time.
In parallel to his art practice, Mourad is the director of Beirut Printmaking Studio and is a part-time lecturer at LIU – Lebanese International University where he teaches graphic design.