Voice of God ( 2022 ~ )
voiceofgod.eunsunchoi.com
KoNLP, Animation generated by disco diffusion, Sound generated by real time voice cloning, Zine, Website
![]()
“ As the moon shone brightly on a silent night,
She sat in the living room
letting out tears, sighs, and words no one could understand “
“ 달빛이 환하게 비추는 고요한 밤,
그녀는 거실에 앉아 눈물과 한숨 아무도 모르는 말들을 내뱉었다 "
voiceofgod.eunsunchoi.com
KoNLP, Animation generated by disco diffusion, Sound generated by real time voice cloning, Zine, Website
“ As the moon shone brightly on a silent night,
She sat in the living room
letting out tears, sighs, and words no one could understand “
“ 달빛이 환하게 비추는 고요한 밤,
그녀는 거실에 앉아 눈물과 한숨 아무도 모르는 말들을 내뱉었다 "
This work began with a memory of my grandmother. She was deeply devoted to church, and when I went to college in Seoul I lived with her for a year. She often invited people from church to our home. They would sing hymns and pray loudly late into the night, and I remember feeling uncomfortable and distant from their rituals.
One night I woke up to get a glass of water. The living room was dark except for faint moonlight coming through the window. I saw my grandmother sitting alone, crying and speaking in tongues. I was frightened and confused. The moment felt unreal, almost like a dream, but it left a deep impression on me. Even now I cannot forget that night. For many years I wondered why religion meant so much to her. I wanted to understand her more deeply even after she passed away ten years ago.
My grandmother was a refugee from North Korea who fled to the South during the Korean War. She spent much of her life hoping to reunite with the family members she left behind. She even applied to the inter Korean family reunion program, a lottery system organized by both governments, but the chances of being selected were extremely small. She never saw her family again.
In this work I use artificial intelligence to recreate both my childhood memory and my grandmother’s emotional world, including her fear of war and her longing to reconnect with her family. Although the story is personal, it reflects a broader experience shared by many Koreans shaped by the divided history of the peninsula.
When I first created this project, tools such as ChatGPT did not yet exist. I was experimenting with early natural language processing techniques. Using the Korean NLP library KoNLP and a dataset derived from the Korean Bible, I fragmented and recombined syllables so that the resulting text became entirely nonsensical. The language mimics the fragmented sound of speaking in tongues and evokes broken memory.
I built a website where modified Korean Bible passages appear through an auto typing interface. The text is accompanied by sound generated through voice cloning. I then transformed the Korean text into English through phonetic translation. The English words sound like Korean but do not carry semantic meaning. For the voice I trained a model using recordings of an elderly woman with a North Korean accent. Since my grandmother had already passed away, this became a speculative reconstruction of a voice that resembles her presence without directly replicating it.
The website continuously plays on a screen within the installation, generating endless text and sound.
Another element of the installation is a moon animation created using Disco Diffusion. The prompt I used was “The full moon can only be seen in the North Korean sky.” In reality most people cannot easily travel to North Korea or witness its landscape. Through artificial intelligence I was able to imagine and visualize a moon from that unreachable place.
The animation is projected above a container of water so that the moon reflects on the surface. In Korean tradition people place clean water under the full moon and make wishes. The reflected moon becomes a symbolic space for my grandmother’s unspoken hopes, wishes that were never fulfilled.
Sound also plays an important role in the installation. In South Korea there was once a famous television program that attempted to reunite families separated by the Korean War. The theme music from that broadcast remains deeply emotional for many people. I embedded a transducer beneath the water container so that when the music plays, the vibrations ripple through the water’s surface.
The trembling water becomes a physical expression of memory, longing, and emotional resonance carried by that sound.
The installation also includes several kinetic sculptures that move slowly within the space. These elements express my grandmother’s regrets and wishes. Their subtle motion introduces a bodily presence into the installation, linking personal memory with mechanical movement and allowing grief, history, and technology to exist together in the same environment.
One night I woke up to get a glass of water. The living room was dark except for faint moonlight coming through the window. I saw my grandmother sitting alone, crying and speaking in tongues. I was frightened and confused. The moment felt unreal, almost like a dream, but it left a deep impression on me. Even now I cannot forget that night. For many years I wondered why religion meant so much to her. I wanted to understand her more deeply even after she passed away ten years ago.
My grandmother was a refugee from North Korea who fled to the South during the Korean War. She spent much of her life hoping to reunite with the family members she left behind. She even applied to the inter Korean family reunion program, a lottery system organized by both governments, but the chances of being selected were extremely small. She never saw her family again.
In this work I use artificial intelligence to recreate both my childhood memory and my grandmother’s emotional world, including her fear of war and her longing to reconnect with her family. Although the story is personal, it reflects a broader experience shared by many Koreans shaped by the divided history of the peninsula.
When I first created this project, tools such as ChatGPT did not yet exist. I was experimenting with early natural language processing techniques. Using the Korean NLP library KoNLP and a dataset derived from the Korean Bible, I fragmented and recombined syllables so that the resulting text became entirely nonsensical. The language mimics the fragmented sound of speaking in tongues and evokes broken memory.
I built a website where modified Korean Bible passages appear through an auto typing interface. The text is accompanied by sound generated through voice cloning. I then transformed the Korean text into English through phonetic translation. The English words sound like Korean but do not carry semantic meaning. For the voice I trained a model using recordings of an elderly woman with a North Korean accent. Since my grandmother had already passed away, this became a speculative reconstruction of a voice that resembles her presence without directly replicating it.
The website continuously plays on a screen within the installation, generating endless text and sound.
Another element of the installation is a moon animation created using Disco Diffusion. The prompt I used was “The full moon can only be seen in the North Korean sky.” In reality most people cannot easily travel to North Korea or witness its landscape. Through artificial intelligence I was able to imagine and visualize a moon from that unreachable place.
The animation is projected above a container of water so that the moon reflects on the surface. In Korean tradition people place clean water under the full moon and make wishes. The reflected moon becomes a symbolic space for my grandmother’s unspoken hopes, wishes that were never fulfilled.
Sound also plays an important role in the installation. In South Korea there was once a famous television program that attempted to reunite families separated by the Korean War. The theme music from that broadcast remains deeply emotional for many people. I embedded a transducer beneath the water container so that when the music plays, the vibrations ripple through the water’s surface.
The trembling water becomes a physical expression of memory, longing, and emotional resonance carried by that sound.
The installation also includes several kinetic sculptures that move slowly within the space. These elements express my grandmother’s regrets and wishes. Their subtle motion introduces a bodily presence into the installation, linking personal memory with mechanical movement and allowing grief, history, and technology to exist together in the same environment.
Zine
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
Website
![]()
Installation
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
Website
Installation
