Small Aspirations
2022-2023Small Aspirations uses critical play theory to expose and subvert the contradicting perceptions and realities of immigration labor. I draw from both the traditional form of play (e.g., three object play) as well as video game play (e.g., puzzler) to inform the design of a virtual reality experience taking place in overlooked public, private, and domestic spaces: a restaurant, a construction site, a bathroom. I am fascinated by how a modern still-life painting can convey new understadings of the ephemerality of dreams both in the figurative and literal sense as well as of the brevity of human life in the particular context of immigration and migration. I am inspired by the fortune-telling custom in which a baby is given three objects to choose from on their first birthday, each of which symbolizes a path the child aspires to follow when they become adults. It is a custom that is not American, but our culture deeply ingrains that labor defines a person's worth, especially if they are first-time immigrants.
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Augmented Reality Wayfinding And Identity System For Queer Art at the Museums
2023In collaboration with Elise Coatney & Chenin Rowe
Through augmented reality typography, Amorphous bridges the gap between physical and digital spaces through a compact learning experience for queer art activists and enthusiasts, consisting of an identity and wayfinding system and a digital archive. The experience is designed to blend seamlessly into traditional as well as alternative and guerilla exhibitions, transforming the printed descriptions on the wall into a portal of sorts, leading visitors to a larger network of curated similar or related queer works. Using the portable and powerful mobile device, onsite wayfinding and offsite exploration are both possible.
Amorphous is an 8-week project funded by an internal grant at California Polytechnic State University's College of Liberal Arts to hire and mentor undergraduate students on a creative and scholarly research project.
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Pre-arrival
2021-2023An Extended Reality (XR) immersive experience into a digital typography experimentation of the geometry of the lights and shadows. It depicts the journey of undocumented immigrants in a poetic spatiotemporal typographic landscape built on the words of the poem The New Colossus by American Poet Emma Lazarus. The experience is built using the Unity Engine.
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Transitional Threads
2023In collaboration with Amanda Stojanov (https://amandastojanov.com/)
An immersive virtual reality experience about migration as a complex multigenerational process in which the player interacts with sculptural types that carry sentimental meanings. Each of these words that we wrote together is a word that tells our story in two parts: one of us leaving from elsewhere, and the other arriving from elsewhere, both wanting to be truly at home here in the United States.
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Immigration Documentation
How we treat each other is based on not only our social interactions, but on how political structures shape our perceptions of people. As technology takes on a greater role in that structure, I examine how it carries patterns of bias and discrimination that need to be interrupted. In addition to demonstrating the personal aspect of the legal immigration process, I also wanted to demonstrate how it is subtly dehumanizing at the same time. Mobile technology bridges the gap between abstract processes and petitioners, but it also reduces individuals to a few lines of legal fee receipts. With the help of a tracking system that compares "non-citizens" to consumer products, the entire person is distilled into data, barcodes, and numbers. I am interested in the larger picture of immigration being more than just physical borders. Human bravery will overcome obstacles to a better life for as long as poverty, inequality, war, and inaccessibility remain.
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