Love(♡) → Independence(♥)
Min Kim
What is independence? When do we begin to feel it, and how is it recognized—by ourselves, our parents, or others? Is it even possible to ever become fully independent from those who raised us?
Love(♡) → Independence(♥) is an experimental web-based essay that explores these questions through a non-linear, user-directed narrative. In this project, independence is seen as an ongoing process of building relationships, forming memories, resolving conflicts, and healing—one shaped by accumulation, reinterpretation, and time.
The website is composed of nested fragments of text, images, and videos that users are allowed to navigate to a specific event, but not allowed to return. Each choice closes off others, reflecting the irreversibility of lived experiences. As users progress, their actions are recorded and translated onto a central figure, forming a visual and textual trace of each journey.
At the end of each session, a poster composition is generated, a layered composition of the figure and the decisions that shaped it. These outputs are compiled into a catalog, presenting multiple variations of how independence can emerge—each distinct, incomplete, and continuously in progress.