Medium: Vertical monitor, webcam, ML5 FaceMesh–powered interactive digital video

Dimensions: 21.3 × 10 × 36.7 in (W × D × H)

As a Korean-born artist raised between Australia and the United States, I have experienced identity as something constantly negotiated through the gaze of others. Encounters shaped by warmth, misunderstanding, prejudice, and recognition have left me questioning how belonging is formed — and by whom.

A formative memory remains with me: before leaving Australia at age eleven, a teacher looked directly into my eyes and told me, “You are Australian.” That moment of recognition complicated rather than resolved my sense of self. It revealed how identity can be affirmed, imposed, or destabilized through something as simple as sustained eye contact.

Your Gaze Completes Me is an interactive digital canvas activated by the viewer’s gaze. Using ML5 FaceMesh, the system detects eye contact and triggers layered visual and sonic fragments drawn from my cultural history: Aboriginal sound textures, the Korean Taegeuk symbol, the howl of the bold eagle, and poetic references to independence and memory. The work proposes the gaze as both bridge and boundary — an intimate yet political act through which identity is projected, interpreted, and completed.

The work invites a reciprocal encounter: who defines whom, and how do our exchanges shape the boundaries of belonging?

*Developed as my graduate thesis project at NYU ITP and presented at the ITP Thesis Exhibition, New York.