Memory Processing Unit (2021)

How does our memory work? How does computer memory work? Can we represent our memory’s biased, easily influenced nature to a computer? These are all questions I had while creating the Memory Processing Unit (MPU).

Originally, this project was centered around a single video I made during my foundation year. The video was made with the prompt of a “Self Portrait Without Yourself”. The result was a video that centered around my life at home, sharing a room with my sister. I wanted to revisit that video because it was made during the same time of year as I would be making this work in 2021. I wanted whatever result came out of revisiting that video to be my output and my finished product.

In a turn of events, I found myself creating a system that became more and more intricate as the time went on. This system was originally a second thought, a means to an end for the output I wanted. However, during a demonstration of my work in progress, I realized how important this system was to my goal of refabricating my own memories and mediating them through a computer system. This shifted my view from this being a project about a video I created in my first year, to a system that I would like to apply to future projects and to share amongst other people so they can generate their own content, however that may look.

History of Hon (2021)

A twine project about memory through music, online identity and online archiving.

The amount of voice memos that I’ve left for myself is what drives this project. That and the various small pieces of music I’ve played around since I was little, involving vocal covers and other such things, to audio introductions and more.

There's not much else to add other than I want to experiment with text and audio, kinda going through an introspective of my life alongside music, branching off to thoughts, to ideas, to contexts and what I gravitated towards.

Casita (2023)

a microfilm about the house ive lived in since i was 5. its a house that not even my closest friends have ever gotten to seen and will possibly never get to see.

it touches on the disorientation, dizziness and claustrophobic realities that come with the buildings called "houses".

pawznet: the movie (2023)

An endless webkinz soap opera, captured for only 7 minutes.

My film Pawznet: The Movie was created using an application I created in Max MSP called Memory Processing Unit. In short, I add in video clips to the program and the program remixes and rearranges the clips into one live generated video output. The films are essentially the recordings of a whole live-generated video that can basically be played forever. I typically use my program and this process for live installations, so these films are more or less another way that I decided to feature this process.

I aim to capture the foreverness feeling that this process creates. It takes many rewatches to even get a solid grasp of everything that happens within the film, but with something so heavily time-based, it ends up being a fleeting moment where you find yourself sucked into the visuals that often repeats itself. It's thanks to the limited pool of clips that overlap and weave within each other that gives the audience familiar clips once they're in the middle of the film, but presented completely differently than when they first saw the clip in the beginning of the film! It keeps you very engaged and wondering how the video will keep evolving!

My main inspiration for the film was to draw on my first introduction to Youtube. During that time I was a kid who was very obsessed with Webkinz, and so most of the videos I'd watch were these fanmade films created by kids who narrated and played out these dramatic scenarios through their Webkinz dolls. I really wanted to pay homage to these videos by making my own movie with the Webkinz stuffed animals that I've kept to this day and record funny and absurd lines that make no sense. Because to me when I think back on those homemade movies, I found them very whimsical and dramatic and almost soap opera-esque with all the plots these stuffed animals would partake in. I really wanted to do the genre justice!

Spring Soon (2022)

Spring Soon is an emergent, generated film that closely portrays how I feel about February: a recorded, feeble hope for change to come via the turn of the season. It is a recollection of memories that do not follow strict patterns. Of memories in disorder that transform into a self-reflective film that remixes two February pasts and reconstructs them into the present.

Made using Memory Processing Unit (MPU) by combining The Orbit Around the Sun and a personal IPhone video.

Skylines (2020)

Created by merging two skylines from different locations, this score focuses on the different scales of our environmentsーthe macro and the micro.

The macro is the black skyline that persists through the entire image, while the micro are the photos in the background, which were objects present around us while shooting. All photos were taken on walks through our own neighbourhoods.

The Orbit Around the Sun (2019)

A video made for the prompt of “Self Portrait Without Yourself”.

The result was a film that centered around my life at home, sharing a room with my sister during the winter.

GRWM (2019)

An experimental video made with gathered GRWM videos from Youtube. GRWM stands for 'Get Ready With Me', a type of video format that centers around a person getting ready in front of the camera. The videos were filtered by the most recently uploaded.

Is Coming Even If You Go Upstairs (2018)

A short video that served to explore what Youtube considered the most "saddest scenes" in films. It aimed to both erase, distort and amplify the emotion found in these scenes, either interrupting or informing the viewer's original context of these popular scenes.

The text in this video was generated by enabling automatic closed captions on the original scene on Youtube. The title is a reference to one of the captions generated.

Second Generation (2019)

Taken at a local mall that I've lived by for my entire life. Using double-exposure, I wanted to capture the familiar sights that I grew up with and that ultimately will forever morph as time goes on.

valley of demos I (2023)

A selection of demos that are found in my voice memos!

alternate pop dimension (2021)

Made for a sound composition class! An EP composed of single K-POP song samples.

week by week (2021)

Made for a sound composition class! A few sound experiments.

Bear (2019)

Bear is just a bear that I stumbled across one day in a Miniso store. He was all alone and the only one left of his kind. He has then joined my life and has wowed many people with how cute and fuzzy he is, but he is really showing his age now! They grow up so fast! He is also very sensitive to the world around him, and prefers to be squished and cuddled with.

Bear has been a part of one performance piece where I told his tale and passed him around a group of people. He has also recently been a part of an installation piece called "Home Work" (2022). Bear also has a best friend called Bunny and they both love being around each other! They both currently live in my home.

Divination Box (2019)

Divination Box was performed in a small group consisting of 20 people. In the middle, the performer lays in a pile of blankets on a hard stone floor. Beside him is a smooth, fabric covered box that is connected to a laptop, whose screen remains black. The room is dark, with the only light coming from a warm lamp off to the side.

The performance consists of the performer pulling out wires with copper diodes attatched to the end from the box. He then quietly lays down and ritualistically runs the ends of the wires against his face and exposed arms for several minutes. After the ritual is done, he sits up and meticulously puts away the wires back inside the box. He presses one button on the laptop, and the screen is projected onto the wall; the Divination Box's final result.

i was only 14 (medusa’s blessing) (2018)

A performance about coming to terms with a common childhood trauma; getting catcalled at the age of 14. I retraced the steps I took back then while wearing Medusa's Blessing.

The costume is handsewn and hand coloured.

Receipt (2023)

A small book I created from mini-collages I made that are made with collected paper and plastic scraps, mainly receipts that I've gathered.

I focused a lot on the different textures that the text on receipts would make, as well as the physical texture of the paper itself. Anything that isn't a receipt is sourced from my daily life.

The book is hand-bound with copper wire I had on hand.

Collages (2023~)

An assortment of collages that I have made in a sketchbook of mine! They all have different themes and this section will be updated as more collages are made.

Dykefag (2023)

The intersection of once identifying as a lesbian to finding out that I am a trans man is the main centerpoint of this zine. It is meant as a love letter to the family and community I found solace in within the lesbian and WLW community. It is where I explored my gender safely for the first time. It is where I realized that I am something other than a "woman". I made this zine out of love and with the hilarity that comes with looking like a lesbian couple with my fiancé publically when we are both trans men. Feel free to print the zine out for yourself!

why do you think i can’t dream of you anymore? (2023)

I had fun combining the various materials I collected for the overall project. The acetate has yelp reviews and facebook comments about the mall printed onto them. It also has printed scans of myself scanning the acetate that have the reviews. I was really focused on the idea of memories folding into themselves and also being physical layers that are weirdly cobbled together. The acetate is sewn onto pieces of watercolour paper that had a cyanotype solution washed onto them. Bits of fabric, glass and string debris can be found inbetween the acetate and paper, making a sort of memory sandwich. Compared to the specimens piece in the same project, this piece is more embellished. I consider it more like windows on a wall.

This piece is a part of my research into my local mall. I specifically focused on the portion of the mall that was demolished in 2013 during the mall's renovation. I was interested in the ideas of fabricated memories and media preservation, especially when it is compared to our present day saturation of vlogs and tagging systems and media advertising public locations. The portion of the mall that I was interested in seemed to have 0 video preservation aside from one Youtube video that wasn't even directly taken in that location, instead using that portion as a background for only 3 seconds. As for photos, there is practically 0 of them aside from a few photos of the outside. Do demolished buildings get an afterlife?

august 28, 2013 (2023)

A quilt made of the scraps that came out of my experiments with cyanotypes on fabric. I like imagining this blanket as something I'd sleep under after it's made off the research of a destroyed building.

This piece is a part of my research into my local mall. I specifically focused on the portion of the mall that was demolished in 2013 during the mall's renovation. I was interested in the ideas of fabricated memories and media preservation, especially when it is compared to our present day saturation of vlogs and tagging systems and media advertising public locations. The portion of the mall that I was interested in seemed to have 0 video preservation aside from one Youtube video that wasn't even directly taken in that location, instead using that portion as a background for only 3 seconds. As for photos, there is practically 0 of them aside from a few photos of the outside. Do demolished buildings get an afterlife?

guildford town centre (assorted specimens) (2023)

Pinned against the wall with nails, this piece consists of 8 specimens that consist of two printed acetate sheets that are soldered together with either a piece of fabric or paper inside. The piece inside the acetate sandwich makes me think of translucent shrimp where you can see their insides. The acetates have various things printed onto them including: a Yelp review page of the mall, facebook comments about hating the renovation, images of my experiments using a scanner with acetate sheets, and edited photos from the little documentation I could find of the mall. The pieces are slightly warped and reflect light a lot. They also are slightly away from the wall, allowing them to slightly wobble whenever someone moves by it too quickly.

This piece is a part of my research into my local mall. I specifically focused on the portion of the mall that was demolished in 2013 during the mall's renovation. I was interested in the ideas of fabricated memories and media preservation, especially when it is compared to our present day saturation of vlogs and tagging systems and media advertising public locations. The portion of the mall that I was interested in seemed to have 0 video preservation aside from one Youtube video that wasn't even directly taken in that location, instead using that portion as a background for only 3 seconds. As for photos, there is practically 0 of them aside from a few photos of the outside. Do demolished buildings get an afterlife?

Home Work (2022)

An installation that blends my many realities into one condensed space. I consider this space as the most diluted version of my identity and my living conditions. Objects are strewn around the floor and noise from various sources within the installation fill the space.

Bunny and Bear make an appearance in this installation, the two best friends enjoying watching the various people who walk by.