Pre-arrival

2021

An 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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webVR

Small Aspirations

2022

Small Aspirations is based on aspects of critical play that critique, subvert, and explore alternatives to the misunderstood immigration experiences especially in the current climate of extreme turbulence leading to increased displacement and migration inside and outside of the United States.

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 web-based VR experience inspired by fortune-telling custom in which a baby is given three objects to choose from at their first birthday. Each of these objects symbolizes a path that the child will aspire to take when they grow up. Only this time it is the player who is envisioning their life as a first-time immigrant in the U.S. choosing less glamorous but essential professions such as nail salon tech or seasonal farm worker. 

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VR

Immigration Documentation

2019

Immigration Documentation allows immigrants to keep track of their passport, entries, visa, and visa application status. It also alerts the user if/when immigration policies changes take place. The core of the application is a centralized, more actionable, and improved version of what is offered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Travel Documents. Each of these websites comes with its own set of issues and challenges, in addition to the fact that they are separated.

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UI/UX/IxD

Inadmissibility

2022

The pandemic experience of immigration heightened the otherness experience and simultaneously widened the distance between my overseas family and I. The effects of Covid-19 on immigration processing at U.S. Land Borders and my home country caused unprecedented anxiety for us, in addition to the pain from potential years of being separated. I share my experience of the pandemic by capturing the more abstract component of the borders: the policy and procedure updates.

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AR

Quilt Stop

2020

This project uses the quilt being reimagined as a cross-cultural object, technological implementation capacities, and the selection for digitalization of traditional folk art patterns.

Quilt Stop responds to the tragic event of the 39 Vietnamese immigrants who died in the Southeast of England in November of 2019 in a frozen ice truck. The project uses generative arts to construct a digital quilt in order to facilitate empathy through intimate and evolving folk art patterns.

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P5js