1. The Sound of My Hard Drive Dying Still Haunts Me
Screened at Maryland Institute College of Art, 2019
In my video work The Sound of My Hard Drive Dying Still Haunts Me, I explored the complex emotions of loss and the struggle to find meaning in a fragmented digital age. The destruction of my hard drive symbolized a irrevocable loss of personal memories, files, and creative endeavors, evoking feelings of grief that mirror the stages of personal and collective trauma. From the initial shock of realization, through anger at the inevitability of loss, to bargaining for a chance to recover what's gone, and finally confronting the acceptance of irreversible change, I document this journey visually.
The video interweaves abstract representations of digital fragments—images, sounds, and code snippets that once existed but now exist only in memory—with glimpses of the physical world. Here, the boundaries between the virtual and the tangible blur, creating a sense of dislocation. While the digital realm appears to coalesce into an uniform, seamless whole, each individual within it remains distinct, a witness to the resilience of identity despite the erasure of external markers.
In this duality—of loss and recovery, of fragmentation and wholeness—I find both the pain of irretrievable moments and the strength to move forward. The video is not just about mourning what’s gone but celebrating the possibility of renewal, of finding new ways to archive and preserve our stories in a world increasingly defined by the intangible. Through this work, I aim to bridge the gap between personal loss and the universal experience of disorientation in a digital age, creating a visual narrative that resonates with the collective struggle to keep pace with technological and existential shifts.