Han of Machine

5:53 | Single-channel Video, Stereo Sound (in progress)

sound version presented at The Wrong Biennale 2025–26

Han of Machine is an experimental film that examines how technology mediates diasporic memory between Korea and the San Francisco Bay Area. Through machine-learning-based sound generation and algorithmic composition, the timbres of traditional Korean instruments remembered from my childhood are transformed and recomposed with the environmental rhythms and haunting resonances of my new home, San Francisco. Rather than reconciling two places into a coherent whole, the work exposes the unstable threshold of living between them.

The film neither reconstructs an authentic past nor translates sound directly into image. Its visual field approaches systems of notation and measurement without settling into either; distortion, interruption, and disappearance continually unsettle the spectator’s impulse to read. Recurring rhythms of everyday noise and human voices act as both material presence and temporal force, carrying the diasporic body forward before a sense of belonging can settle into place.

Here, han emerges as the tension between resistance and continuation: the machine does not restore what has been lost, but reveals how memory changes in order to persist.

*Han (한; 恨) is a Korean term associated with accumulated grief, longing, and unresolved personal loss that carries both pain and resilience.

Related Sound Studies

Machine-learning-based timbral transformations were created with a custom trained RVC model using Applio.