TRACE
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Code As art
Trace is comprised of a total of 114,076 characters, 131 lines, and a total file size of 111.4 KB.
3 FRAMES
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3 FRAMES *
The final code is composed of three distinct compiled frames, each created independently. Each frame consists of two color vector layers on top of a black field. These finished frames are then animated layered on top of each other, resembling the technique used in traditional flip books. This approach effectively mimics a GIF format, which my work is known for. While the end result may appear simple, it involved extensive trials and errors, which were instrumental in refining and enhancing the final output. A key challenge during the process was minimizing the file size to ensure successful functionality on L1.
At first glance, it’s about surveillance. Digital erosion. The slow loss of self in a world where attention is currency and data is law. But beneath that, it’s about something far more personal: disappearance. The kind that doesn’t happen all at once—but gradually, quietly, painfully. The kind I know all too well.
I was deported from the U.S. when I was 17.
The day it happened, I was in Nashville, visiting my great aunt. She had taken me to a museum after hearing I hadn't left our small town for over 6 years. We had just finished lunch—nothing heavy, just a quiet afternoon. Then the phone started buzzing. First a text. Then a call. Then another. My friends were hysterical, crying. I just sat there, still. Like the moment didn’t know what to do with itself yet. I posted something vague on Facebook. I don’t even remember what I wrote. Who really does at that age? I think I was still hoping it wouldn’t be real.
We had overstayed our regular "non-visa" stay by over seven years. My mom didn’t speak English. And the paperwork— the legal stuff— was mostly handled by my step-grandfather, a 70-year-old high school dropout war vet trying his best with a shady lawyer who promised more than she delivered. We thought we did it right. We didn’t.
I was about to enter my senior year of high school. I’d finally built a tribe for myself after years of being the only Asian kid in a very white, very conservative school. People finally saw me for more than what I looked like. I was excited—prom, finals, dumb jokes in the band instrument room. And it was all gone.
Just like that.
I packed a suitcase. Threw in my clothes, my GameBoy, a laptop I got for Christmas. That was it. That was the whole exit.
It didn’t make me rethink what “home” was. It just confirmed I didn’t have one.
I was born in Norway. I’m Vietnamese. I was raised in the American South. And I didn’t feel fully claimed by any of those places. I hadn’t held onto my Norwegian roots. I had forgotten most of the language. My mom and I only spoke Vietnamese and broken English at home. And suddenly I was back in a country I barely remembered, expected to rebuild from a past I had outgrown.
At first, my friends back in the U.S. tried to keep in touch. They called, they messaged. For a while, it felt okay. But then it didn’t. I started slipping away from their lives. I blamed myself— I was grieving, spiraling, depressed. But I also knew their world kept spinning. Final years of school, college apps, their futures forming. And mine had hit pause.
There was a moment— cold, fluorescent, heavy. I was standing in a government building. A woman behind plexiglass told us we were banned from the U.S. for 10 years. And even after that, maybe we could apply to come back. No promises.
I remember thinking: this is it.
Half my life had just been filed away. I was labeled. Stamped. Gone. I felt dread. I felt grief. But I also felt something that surprised me: relief. A strange, brutal relief. That maybe now I could stop pretending I belonged somewhere I clearly didn’t. Maybe now I could root somewhere else. Or maybe I’d just float. Between worlds. Between languages. Between memories.
Some time had passed, we appealed the ban. We won. The lawyer disbared. I came back.
But I didn’t return to the same place I remembered. And I wasn’t the same person.
I had started calling it No Home Center. That space you live in when you don’t have a “before” to go back to, or an “after” you trust. Just a blurry, drifting now. Not citizen. Not tourist. Just surviving. Just observing. Just making marks to say: I was here.
That’s where Trace came from.
It’s for those of us who disappear from memory, from systems, from archives. The ones who don't get headlines when we're deported. Who don’t leave behind documents—only feelings, unfinished friendships, vanished futures.
Trace is a refusal to vanish quietly.
A mark.
A map.
A proof of presence.
For the ones who were told they didn’t belong, not because of who they were—but because of where they were. For the ones who had to grieve a life while still breathing.
You are not alone.
You are not data.
You are not erased.
You’re still here.
And I see you.
ON — Trace
Symbols as power?
Every system eventually seeks to institutionalize its own mythology. Even rebellion becomes a commodity.
Can you trace someone who was never allowed to leave a mark?
Most of those who are deported leave nothing behind— not even a whisper in the archive. But art remembers. Art leaves fingerprints on the walls of systems built to erase. On-chain provinance is forever. This is a refusal to let go of the undocumented, the undesired, the unseen.
Is anonymity liberation, or a symptom of erasure?
We live in an era where masks are both survival and statement. They are protection against recognition and protection against misunderstanding. But in masking ourselves, do we risk losing our reflection? Or are we finally claiming our right to be complex and unreadable?
Who gets to cross a border, and who becomes the border?
Walls are not always made of concrete. They are made of language, suspicion, and policy. The monster looming on the screen isn’t just fear—it’s narrative. It’s propaganda. It’s the criminalization of humanity. It’s a reminder that even a symbol of resistance, if co-opted, can become a weapon.
What does it mean to live on borrowed time in your own home?
To leave for school not knowing if you’re being followed. To build a life on the edge of erasure. The figure a reminder that I was here. I am still here.
When does protection become surveillance?
The city above this figure watches, not out of care, but control. “Alternatives to detention” they call it—ankle monitors, facial recognition, check-ins via app. They’ve traded bars for signals. Now, you don’t need to disappear to be detained. You just need to stay connected.