→ In Shame I will Find Paradise (2024)
I ’m the voice inside you, 2024
website, projector, zoom recorders, audio installation
As a Korean American non-binary digital artist and designer, my thesis research, In Shame I Will Find Paradise (2024), have focused on using voice as a medium to articulate nuanced feelings of displacement and the intricate relationships between language, identity, and expression. This journey expands beyond my personal experiences with gender dysphoria, delving into the lives of non-binary and transgender individuals undergoing gender-affirming voice therapy.
I think this is my gender
The blending of things I want
And also
what society expects of me…
whatever it is I’m transitioning into
The blending of things I want
And also
what society expects of me…
whatever it is I’m transitioning into
-Excerpt from ‘Cause your voice is same as me, 2024
‘Cause your voice is same as me, 2024
website, 21:58 audio and video installation, mirrored plexi floor panels
Screen recording of the ‘Cause your voice is same as me website
Through my thesis research, I have developed interactive multimedia installations inspired by dialogues with individuals such as Umico Niwa, who traveled to Korea for voice feminization surgery, and Jeong Yoon Lee from Hyperlink Press, a four-year participant in Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). During our conversations, Jeong revealed how a 2000s-era karaoke machine provided him with control over his body and time, enabling him to monitor his voice as it navigated through text prior to his transition. This experience inspired me to create an time travel based absurdist visual poetry piece utilizing the broken karaoke machine as a portal to manipulate time and voice, culminating in a multimedia portraits which manifested as two multimedia installation: ‘Cause your voice is same as me (2024) and I’m the voice inside you (2024).
In Shame I Will Find Paradise, 2024
Neon sign, cnc cut plexi mirror
Diagrams as World-Building
The discourse surrounding gender-affirming surgery often showcases a limited binary perspective, shaped by a cisgender, heteronormative medical viewpoint. These discussions resonate with my own experiences related to the Korean diaspora, which involve complex issues of language, gender, and nationality.
-Tiger Dingsun, Chimeric Worlding: Graphic Design, Poetics, and Worldbuilding
I drew inspiration from avant-garde Korean writers and poets such as Yi Sang and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, who explored the themes of displacement and erasure experienced by once-colonized cultures through their innovative use of language. Similarly, the transgender community has a vibrant history of playfully exploring and redefining their identities.
time travel diagrams, 2024
Prototyping From Speech, Body, and Interaction
Early sketch of 3D larynx model and reference images
My project centers on 3D web technology to create interactive storytelling methods for queer survival and a tool to imagine euphoria. 3D software to create myriad protorypes to articulate realize the 3D models into reality felt adjacent to my personal grappling with queer bodies, familial bonds, grief, and love. To emphasize the entangled nature of body, language, and gender, I choose to design an audio viduslizer based on larynx using three.js and text to speech function.
Thesis review announcement using larynx audio vidualizer, I’m the voice inside you
Screenshot of the audiovisualizer website, I’m the voice inside you
3D renderings of installation mock ups from 2023-2024