Collective Digital Care

Growing up in America in an Asian household, I often felt a disconnect with my parents. I don't think this is any particular party's fault but rather just a combination of growing up with different lifestyles, cultures, etc.

Upon talking to others and reading similar stories online, I think also in Asian households the “love language” is different and we don’t necessarily express our appreciation and love for each other in traditional Western culture methods of words of affirmation or physical touch. And for me, as an Asian-American, growing up in the cross-section of these two very different cultures and how they express love, there was a lot of confusion and dissonance. I feel like this sentiment of an emotionally broken household is feel like many immigrant children. This website acts as a place for people to anonymously (or not anonymously) share things they wish they were able to confide in their parents with. These can be happy, sad, good or bad. I hope it acts as an outlet and that you find solace in reading the shared experiences of others.

The coding creates a loop for one of the "flags" and also generates random colors for the stripes at every mouse click. This pattern was inspired by the colors for LGBTQ+ flags. Of course these are not the exact colors but the pattern represents the vibrancy and color associated with many pride flags. It is often unknown there are many different pride flag colors and not just the rainbow one we see the most often.

This code creates a "fruit salad" where fruits are placed randomly in the mix of other fruits, incluidng bananas, apples, green apples and blueberries. The fruits also appear to have different variations as they come in different colors. The code was created so the background and each fruit color, location, and angled is randomized.

Work is inspired by @okazz and her works with the randomized flower collages. My obsession with fruit was revived as I also saw my peers create graphic designs using fruits in another class c:

For this program, I was inspired by traditional Korean emblems/seals/stamps, which tend to be in the form of an octagon. And I used various shades of red to resemble the red ink that is typically used. Move the mouse side to side to see the change in the darkness of the red hues.

My program creates purple, pink, and red hearts 
that change opacity at random speeds and floats along the canvas in random directions. By dragging your mouse 
along the canvas, the starting point for the hearts 
will follow your cursor. My work was inspired by a 
heart shaped cookie that my friend baked for me!

This creates a different pattern of flowers at every mouse click! Here are just 4! It gives me Betsy Johnson vibes. The pattern of flowers changes as well as the background color and color of the flower in the middle! The background color maintains in the green-blue hues as the flower middle remains in the red-yellow hues. 

3D particle system, uses algorithms of 2d smoke effect but with 3d cylinders

Inspired by ancient symbolism integral to my identity, the evil eye shaman reflects a mystic gaze into the future.

Using mirroring, symmetry and contrasting colors, the evil eye kaleidoscope can be customized based on your cursor's movements.

Considering the repetitive yet variable shape of clouds, I wanted to translate that to this particle exercise in object-oriented programming with a Cloud class.

Press SPACEBAR to create more clouds.
Mouse press to delete clouds.
Clouds will reappear at the left-hand side of the window to start their scroll again.

A reflection on the diversity of human irises. 

A hypertext narrative on insecurities and healing. TW: contains themes of sexual assault.

Web visualization of Bashō haikus.

This program lets the user draw a cityscape during golden hour by using simple shapes and the QWERTY keys. I was specifically inspired by illustrator Pascal Campion and his digital urban landscapes. 

This assignment was inspired by the existential crisis I am facing as I approach my 20th birthday which was 4 days after I made this. Turning 20 seems to be a big number and I am left wondering what I have to show for my two decades on earth. The background is a mixed-media piece I created in high school. There are 5 songs corresponding to the 5 pairs of legs. Each song is a meaningful part of my life and holds some sentimental value. 

Credits to Bazzi, One Republic, Maroon 5, Finneas, Vance Joy

This webpage was created as a way to spread awareness of the Hawai'i State Youth Commission (HiYC) and amplify youth voices in Hawai'i.

p5.js visualization using WEBGL with the music of Nujabes "Battlecry", a Japanese indie artist who passed away.

Welcome to the Museum of Laughter. Click around...if you dare.  

In part inspired by how I miss escape rooms, this is my twisted audiovisual version of an escape room, but instead of being led by sight, it is led by sound. The first room is a museum of laughter, where you can click around on the ten portraits and hear different laughter soundbites. Laughter, a mundane thing, can easily turn unnerving the more we hear it in isolated spaces. This uneasy feeling acts as a prelude to the second part of this project. When the mouse is clicked, you will be taken to a second room where you can only see a sliver of your surroundings. Your job is to figure out what the "key" to escape is. Click around and interact with the different elements and in particular, listen to how the distorted laughter shifts. The closer the laughter is to the original soundbite – the "normal-sounding" laughter – the closer you will be to finding your way out. Good luck and have fun!

This program calls the class star, assigns a random speed, random direction (though going towards the same general area) and shape of the object to animate a bunch of shooting stars. The inspiration behind the design came to me after I took a nighttime stroll in my neighborhood and from Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night. 

created with the intention to look beyond the sky that I see but what I know exists beyond

Project 2 is inspired by the tumultous sounds of New York City at night featuring popularized songs that reference the city. NYC is a place that I've never been and have always dreamt of going. I decided to focus on the city after I noticed I was daydreaming of finally seeing this place while I was sick last week. 

Pieces of You is an exploratory narrative written as a set of letters meant to illuminate how “coming out” isn’t always as easy or as safe as pop culture implies – especially within the increased normalization and visibility of the LGBTQ+ community, people who cannot "come out" are overlooked. Often, "coming out" is a much more complex process that requires more thought into which relationships you are willing to lose and the difficulty of not being able to be your true self in front of the ones you may love most. Each letter focuses on snippets – or pieces – of experiences that may feel relatable to others struggling with the same experiences, and is intended to provide a digital creative space for people with these sentiments to feel heard and know that they're not alone. Each letter presents a different visual narrative based on the metaphors in the letter and is meant to mimic fragmented pieces of identity, where there are similarities between each piece, but at times, they can be so drastically different that it might as well be two different people. This project can be enjoyed in any order, and is currently still a work in progress, with plans to add more letters and more resources.

The comfort women issue remains unresolved as Japan continuously neglects its liabilities and the victims remain critical of these so-called “settlements.” But the failures at proper reparation are concerning because these women have an unquestionable right to an apology—which are unfortunately being disregarded. In my aims to reinforce that right, I've created this website to encourage people not to shy away from a painful history. Discussion needs to be facilitated through education, as well as the sharing of stories, archives and resources.

But more importantly, I intend for this contribution to 
- Function as a significant platform to restore these women’s voices and unveil their truths 
- Propel their marginalized narratives to the forefront of international discourse 
- Help shift the paradigms for representing these women as willful prostitutes("comfort women") to victims of sexual slavery 
- Get people to care

With more attention drawn to the women themselves, prospects for a more-than-deserved proper acknowledgement, long-overdue apology, and victim-focused approaches of reparation become less insurmountable than ever before.

This project was inspired by a TikTok I saw about a tree frog. Someone created an instrumental song to the beat of the tree frog so I combined the song and the tree frog noise in Logic Pro. The eyes of the frog will follow your mouse cursor. By clicking on the frog, the tree frog will call. To play frog jazz and hear the sound of rain, click anywhere else on the screen. Clicking anywhere on the screen will also darken the sky/clouds and make rain appear.

This is an interactive pixel art based web experience. The hypernarrative allows the user to explore their relationship with virtual and physical spaces, encouraging a healthy balance between both.

This is a random color picker watercolor drawing tool! This is meant to be a chill, cozy painting space where you can either listen to the lofi playlist embedded or you can mute this tab and paint to your own song choices! I was inspired by watching YouTubers paint their rooms – I thought it must be so soothing to be able to take yourself out of a stressful state and just paint and vibe to music. So, I created a virtual painting space with mellow colors and music – hopefully the subtle softness of watercolor brings some comfort to you <333

P.S. click "." and click around the sketch for a special surprise ;)

This p5 sketch explores the use of primitive shapes and was created based on a silhouette shadow I saw of myself. This made me wonder, what is my shadow thinking?

Many people hold the assumption that South Los Angeles is “dangerous,” referring to the demographics and homeless population, without realizing that this preconception is a product of internalized racism. As a USC student, I have heard countless times that South Central is “not a good area.” However, South Central is not a “slum”; it is rich in history and culture. The area lacks funding in education, has limited job opportunities, and is deprived of political power due to its history of systemic racism, but not because of the people living there. Created by Megan Yeh, this site serves to educate those who hold negative presumptions about South Central and its residents. Only by learning about the history of systemic racism will we be able to dissolve their preconceived notions that South Central is a bad place and advocate for policies that strive for equity to compensate for the damage done in the past

This project identifies ableism through implicit bias and microaggressions as seen in commonly used phrases. While interacting with text in speech bubbles, the viewer is able to get a better understanding of how to identify and reconsider ableist language in everyday interactions.

I was inspired by our class discussion of poor image and contemporary interest in film grain as an aesthetic texture. This is a photograph with the "lens flare" of different soundscapes on top.

Trigger sounds by pressing on the a, s, d, f, g keys.

buzzing cicadas, radio babble, cars honking

This is an interactive concert experience of Queen's legendary performance at Wembley Stadium London for Live Aid in 1985. Re-imagine the historical event and hear different sounds by clicking the crowd, the guitarist (his upper half plays a solo from "Bohemian Rhapsody" and his lower half plays a solo from "Hammer to Fall"), any of the 6 tracks from their setlist, or Freddie Mercury (for his famous acapella). The tracks also include an amplitude-based visual animation.

the house is an interactive web experience that represents the haunted house as an uncanny valley of memory.

In gothic horror, the haunted house is a living entity, as much a participant of narrative as the disturbed inhabitant themself. Based on Flash walking simulators, bleary dreamscapes, and Gregor Schneider's architectural installations, the house exhumes how we conceptualize and narrativize space. The user navigates between pages by clicking on the arrow buttons of a directional compass. Each page displays a single black-and-white image of rural suburbia, but the images are not sourced from a particular house or geographic location. As the user travels back and forth between pages, the disparate images coalesce into the titular house itself, and multiple narratives emerge to further connect the closed neighborhood loop. Meanwhile GIF, animated text, and embedded atmospheric sound suggest the parallel existence of an other.

audio of crickets and birds for images featuring house exteriors. audio of oppressive, rumbling air for images featuring house interiors.

This code is a short music video for Freckles by Lawrence, a song about dealing with insecurities. I picked this song from my current playlist because it's just a feel-good song, and I replicated the same groovy, bouncy feel through this code. The inspiration was this Tiktok I saw of this girl that did a bunch of transitions with different makeup looks to reflect song lyrics, so I tried to replicate that same energy. This code has animations both behind and on top of the face, in correlation with the lyrics. Enjoy!

Visual result of broken synthesizer using p5.js sounds.

Visual narrative of the intro paragraph of the novel "Call of Cthulhu" by HP Lovecraft.

Visual narrative of the intro paragraph of the novel "Call of Cthulhu" by HP Lovecraft.

Meadow drawing tool.

I want to frolick in a meadow! Or at least look outside my window and indulge in the sight of one. But alas: there are no meadows nearby, and I can't really go outside right now. I was interested in how an entire dimensional landscape could be conveyed by just using different shades of green and single vertical lines. Inspired by @titsay's gouache paintings of grassy meadows and hillsides. Check out her work at twitter.com/titsay.

In creating art, it's easy to get frustrated with a single misplaced line or a lack of positive affirmation. Well, a meadow is a layering of grass and flowers, so there's no misplaced mouse click here. Also, feel free to press "ENTER" after you've finished for a creation well done (or just whenever you need it).

**Click and drag to draw your own meadow! Layer different grass brushes to create dimension.
**Press numbers "1" through "5" to change grass brush size and color. Smaller numbers provide a smaller brush size and lighter color. Larger numbers provide a larger brush size and darker color.
**Press "6" to draw white flowers.
**Press "s" to toggle between the original randomized grass placement and a linear grass placement.
**Press "BACKSPACE" to clear the canvas.
**Press "ENTER" for affirmation.

This p5 sketch explores the idea of traveling through time, especially with the warped dimension of time during this pandemic.  

created with the intention to remind users that words are powerful and ever-evolving.

it is the introduction to the glossary to be a good human. 

The evil eye moves to the beat. 

Collection of the shape we uploaded.

https://editor.p5js.org/popper123/sketches/ouzXgHBrx

Hey Popper, Welcome to your room.