Date of Award
Spring 5-2-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Film and Media Studies
First Advisor
Andrew Demirjian
Second Advisor
Hans Tammen
Academic Program Adviser
Andrew Demirjian
Abstract
Island Child is an immersive audiovisual installation that explores how sound-based memory sustains personal and cultural identity. At its core, the piece reflects on the quiet yet shared emotion among those who have left home—the inevitability of departure, and the complex act of holding both loss and love. For many, leaving is not a choice, but a necessity. Yet the act of leaving leaves a permanent mark, etched in memory, time, and body.
This project creates a contemplative space for those silent truths, using sound and image to express the tension between separation and continuity. Traditional Korean lullabies, my grandmother’s recorded voice, and ocean imagery become bridges between generations, connecting what was left behind with what remains.
A key method in Island Child is the use of appropriation as an artistic strategy to blur the boundaries between past and present, private and collective. By layering and recontextualizing borrowed sonic and visual materials, the work questions authorship and originality, and invites viewers to experience memory not as fixed, but as fluid, collective, and constantly reshaped.
Through experimental animation, projection mapping, and multi-channel sound, Island Child transforms sound into a new visual language—one that invites the audience to reflect on their own experiences of migration, memory, and identity.
Recommended Citation
Oh, Rachel J., "Island Child: Sound, Memory, and the Diasporic Imagination" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/1399
