Marrakech – FAN 2025 (Digital Arts Khouribga Festival), held in Benguerir and Khouribga has brought together a generation of digital artists pushing the boundaries of creativity, technology, and immersive experience.
Across workshops, VR experiences, and augmented reality installations, the festival offers visitors a glimpse into the minds of the artists shaping Morocco’s digital arts scene and beyond.
Youssef Lyoussfi: from lines to butterflies
The day started with Youssef Lyoussfi, a student and digital artist at 1337 Khouribga.
On stage, he talked about his workshop “From Lerp to Bézier Curves,” guiding participants through the magic hidden in simple lines and curves.
Lyoussfi shared with MWN how his childhood fascination with video games grew into a career that blends design and development.
“Since I was a kid I was fascinated by how games look and I wanted to make games, so I started first by learning design,” he told MWN.
“Then later when I joined 1337, I added to my skills the dev side as well, so that’s how it combines both my backgrounds.”
His interactive piece “Stillness Attracts,” drew audiences into a subtle dance with technology.
“The idea of the project is that if you stay still, the butterflies are going to gather up and create your silhouette,” he explained.
“Basically, the butterflies have two brains and they either wander or gather up and create silhouettes,” Lyoussfi added.
Using Unity and a Kinect V2 sensor, he transformed motion into magic, showing how even simple interactions can spark wonder.
Inside Yann Minh’s virtual worlds
Next, the audience met Yann Minh, the French-Vietnamese artist whose work blends cyberpunk aesthetics with classical art.
“I am very pleased to participate in this festival to show my augmented artworks, that are, in a way, half science fiction, half cyberpunk art creation, numerical art creation,” he stated.
Minh’s centerpiece at FAN 2025 was a digital reinterpretation of Velasquez’s Les Menines.
“Velasquez is a famous painter. He is the first painter that makes video games. It’s a provocation, of course, but in the Velasquez painting, ‘Les Menines,’ you are the avatars of the king and the queen of Spain,” he explained.
“This is a trick, a projection in the canvas through a conceptual game.”
He calls his piece Aristopunk, a nod to the aristocratic roots of Velasquez mixed with futuristic cyberpunk sensibilities.
“I decided to work on Velasquez’s painting, and I made this self-portrait of myself as Velasquez. And I call this portrait ‘Aristopunk,’ not cyberpunk… because Velasquez was an Aristopunk.”
Minh continues to explore digital worlds using Unity, 3D modeling, and AI — a practice he’s pursued for over 40 years.
His first virtual work was exhibited in the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1983.
El Mehdi Alislami: tTime, travel, and AI conversations
The final stop took audiences to El Mehdi Alislami, whose work spans VR, AI, and video art.
Alislami’s fascination with time shapes his work.
“It’s about time. I try to conceptualize time in some sort of way. And I got this style that showcases how time is projected into our daily life objects, like objects that you see every day,” he highlighted.
His VR experience “Milestones of Ibnu Battuta” allows visitors to retrace the legendary explorer’s journeys from Morocco to Egypt.
“You follow him to different places that he visited, and you see the places that he has seen and how they were that time before,” Alislami explained, inviting audiences to walk through history themselves.
Alislami also presented “Echoes of Intelligence,” an AI installation where machines converse independently.
“It’s three artificial intelligences that are speaking with each other. And they are unlike the typical interaction that we do with AI,” he said.
“These AIs, you don’t speak with them. They just speak with each other. And you start hearing what they say. You notice that they are speaking about us. They are criticizing our civilization, culture. And they just keep speaking the whole day.”
Cheers to FAN 2025
Through these conversations, we can agree that FAN 2025 proves that digital art is more than screens and codes.
The festival proves that it is experience, reflection, and imagination brought to life.
If Silicon Valley fuels tech, FAN fuels creativity: a one-stop hub for artists who are building new worlds, one curve, one avatar, and one line of code at a time.
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