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Projections 2:
Cultural Fragments
2026
MA Graphic Communication Design, Central Saint Martins

Experimental \ Academic \ Print

This is the second-half project of the final term of my study at the course. We were asked change a parameter of our previous project — in this case, a new medium with the same enquiry question. on how our inquiry projects to an audience or community. This project explores how memory is reshaped, changed, or broken when visualized in interactive media.

This project takes the nuanced, complex sociological phenomenon of the Third Culture Kid alienation and translates it into an interactive interface, where the literal alignment, misalignment, and audience particiption mirrors the psychological construction of the self

Participants engaging with the interactive installation

Translating as Remembering

Cross-cultural kids (CCK) migrate across borders into new worlds, often following their parents because of work, study, or dire circumstances. Their childhood is colored with multiple cultures, confusion, and constant goodbyes of entire worlds. Collecting cultural fragments or sacred objects — reminders of the past, becomes a habit because it gives them a sense of stability in an alien world.

CCKs hold sacred objects dearly to remember a world entirely left behind. Those who don’t have proper chance to say goodbye often experience a grief hidden from people because most don’t understand their struggle.

Sacred objects are useful for a time. Eventually though, they need to come to terms with the present: letting go of the past. Honouring memory without being consumed by it, allowing grief to be named rather than carried in silence.

How does translating memory into mixed media help negotiate what is lost and gained in displaced cultural identities, and resist its decay?

Installation Documentation and Observation

Sacred Object: Creamy Spinach

Each image cycles through a cluster of three stages: the Original Fragment — a sacred object carried from home; the Equivalent Replacement — something found in the new environment that holds comparable emotional weight; and the Perceived Reinterpretation — how the surrounding culture received or transformed its meaning. These clusters are navigable through the button console.

The term "sacred object" comes from Pollock and Van Reken's Third Culture Kids which are objects Cross Cultural Kids (CCKs) instinctively carry to anchor themselves in unfamiliar places.

This fragment cluster below is from Nathanael who is an (CCK) Indonesian born in Germany:

Original Fragment
A warm soft creamy spinach as comfort food in a cold German day.

Equivalent Replacement
Moving to Indonesia, Instant noodles and street food replaced the original which carry equivalent emotional weight.

Perceived Reinterpretation
A european twist to lunch boxes during school made it exotic to classmates as they helped themselves to sample some.

These images representing sacred objects are then designed into postcards, then fed into a TouchDesigner program. The nodes then break down information and elevated with effects and interactivity with buttons and webcams.

Interface

All memory fragments’ Originals

Selected from the images are then connected to a prepared digital synthesizer (VCV Rack2) that produces unique tones for each image, giving voice to memory.

I used a Javanese pentatonic “Slendro” scale that self harmonizes whichever notes are played, reinforcing a harmonious relation between fragments.

Buttons

The buttons was a crucial part of the installation. It is the connecting bridge betwen the program with the observer. I took piano keys as inspiration to echo the concept of the singing images, and the audience as part of the work, playing the instrument.

Basic buttons layout with three to navigate memory sets, and one to toggle different filters.

New 3D-printed buttons shell design completed for the CSM Gradshow

Full Node System

Participants became part of the project by literally projecting themselves onto the images of memory, altering its shape and producing unique sounds. An invitation to share memories and shoulder them together

The cultural fragment images from the previous postcards project are fed into TouchDesigner to be fragmented further into a point-cloud aesthetic.

Anonymous’ familiar dried spicy food packaging from China she could find in the UK while being a foreign student.

Neyomi’s memory of riding the Tuk-tuk in Thailand as a child who moved from India.

My memory of Bretzels as a childhood street-snack in Germany before I moved to Indonesia

Hyunjin’s favorite stuffed rabbit she brought from South Korea to live in Vietnam

Walk through every cultural fragment clusters

CSM Graduate Show 2026

Exhibiting my final project installation on a monitor, accompanied with the predecessor interlocking postcard set that you can check out here.

The work proposes that cultural fragments are not random, but interwoven threads that together form something meaningful.

The nodes system used by TouchDesigner became the underlying method of understanding how memories undergo translation from one context to another: fragmented, reinterpreted, then reconstructed. A node a node (often called an Operator) is the fundamental building block of a visual programming workspace. Each node represents a distinct task or function—such as importing an image, generating a mathematical curve, or rendering 3D geometry. By connecting nodes with wires, you build a "network" that processes and controls your project. These nodes therefore take fragments of the the JPG’s hidden values — such as the RGB (Red, Green, Blue), reinterprets it depending on the type of node, then reconstructing data to be used by another node connected to it.

The reinterpretation in each nodes however is not random, and instead is directed with intention by the designer (myself) to connect in specific ways and create the final work. A question then arises how translation of cultural memories point toward a designed structure, therefore are not mere chaotic random tragic instances, but instead pointing towards a creator (designer) with transcendent intention.

Looking Ahead

The project celebrates the relationship between different cultural fragments from different perspectives, connections that make it possible for the house of post-cards to happen. These memories hold pleasant and wholesome emotions, but also painful, traumatic, and confusing ones too. Considering the ethical implications of cases of alienation or estrangements among peers due to assimilation processes, a new question could be raised: What is changed and even cut off from ourselves that made it possible to adapt and connect with a culture foreign to us?

Projections 1:
Cultural Fragment Cards
Review the previous version of this project that used interlocking RISO-printed postcards.

Central Saint Martins Works

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