Han of Machine

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

Prototype presented at The Wrong Biennale 2025/26

Han of Machine is an experimental film that explores how technology meditates on diasporic memory between Korea and the San Francisco Bay Area. Machine-learning-based algorithmic composition processes sonic traces of my childhood in Korea, recombining them with the environmental rhythms and haunting resonances of everyday sounds in my new home, San Francisco. Its visual field evokes systems of notation and measurement that are repeatedly disrupted through distortion and interruption, frustrating the spectator’s impulse to interpret them. These two places remain unreconciled as their visual and sonic fragments shift between recognition and abstraction. Image and sound thus function as both material presences and temporal forces, carrying the diasporic body forward before a sense of belonging can settle into place. Here, han emerges from the tension between memory’s resistance to resolution and its need to change in order to endure.

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

Related Sound Works

The following sound works extend the sonic research for Han of Machine. Using recordings of traditional Korean instruments as source material, they explore machine-learning-based timbral transformation through a custom-trained RVC model in Applio.