This piece is a video installation built around a conversation between two characters, exploring one research question: can the beauty of fear become a way for people to face trauma? I created four fantastical short stories, each exploring how people confront the "frightening" things in the world — insects, nightmares, death, and technology. Insects: faced by transforming fear into affection Nightmares: faced through meditation and direct confrontation Death: imagination itself as an effective way to dissolve fear Technology: no answer is given — only a question remains: how should we face this anxiety in the age of AI?

The title "Meanwhile" is both an homage to a famous line from David Lynch's Twin Peaks, and a depiction of what happens in our minds when we use our great capacity for imagination to face reality.

Formally, the work is built from three screens: the main screen shows the dialogue between the two characters, using a frame-skipping technique to give it the fantastical, retro feel of stop-motion animation. The other two screens use acrylic hologram projection boxes, aiming to create the effect of a "transparent screen." The result conveys a sense of "imagination" — ghostly and unreal, yet truly present in the mind. The image changes depending on the viewing angle, disappearing entirely from behind, casting no shadow — much like a thought that exists only in consciousness before it is ever spoken.

The entire piece uses a custom program to precisely synchronize image and sound across the three screens, offering viewers an immersive audiovisual experience and highlighting the deep connection between sound and the brain.

AI-generated art is everywhere, and all of us—knowingly or not—are learning from it. Is what we call ‘originality’ simply a statistical remix of cultural fragments? Roland Barthes advanced a related argument about literature in 1967; generative AI now gives that question a technological form.

Ghost Musician takes this premise to an extreme: a DJ figure, trapped inside a box, endlessly tries to create ‘the greatest, most original music in the world.’ With a finite pool of source material, it can only imitate—and each round of imitation deteriorates a little further. An eternal ghost, caught in a loop of its own making.

This ghost musician embodies two concerns: the dystopian future that AI-driven art-making might lead us toward, and the absurdity of our claims to a uniquely personal, inner creativity in the age of AI.

Why a DJ? DJs create music through sampling. But what happens if the pool of samples is exhausted? This question led to the figure of a ‘ghost DJ,’ whose gestures echo a cycle of learning, imitation and degradation.

Why a holographic appearance? A holographic image can be seen but not touched. Here, it becomes a metaphor for the ‘original work’: a beautiful illusion that remains visible yet impossible to grasp.

Technique: Pepper’s Ghost The apparently holographic image is actually a Pepper’s Ghost illusion, a nineteenth-century stage technique associated with Dircks (1858) and Pepper (1862). An angled transparent surface reflects a concealed, illuminated image, making it appear to float in darkness when viewed from the front, while remaining invisible from behind. This ghost’s presence is made of reflected light—something that can be seen but never held.

Not the same creativity—the same collapse? Ghost Musician does not claim that human and machine creativity are identical. It asks whether, as we learn from a world increasingly saturated with AI-generated output, we might be heading toward a ‘model collapse’ of our own. A response begins with taking care over our sources and creating from lived experience, rather than in a vacuum.