Art Review - March Issue - (Page 130)
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DIGITAL Ashes to ashes, data to dust WHAT KIND OF AFTERLIFE AWAITS YOUR
DIGITAL PERSONA? words REGINE DEBATTY LAST SUMMER EMILY ADDED MY NAME TO
HER WILL. In the event of her death, I will inherit her three blogs. At
first this sounded like a mere eccentricity, but soon it plunged me into
deeper thought: what fate awaits our digital data when we die? Gone are
the days when our lovers’ letters were tied with ribbons and kept in a
drawer; today we store their emails in a file somewhere on a hard disk.
Do they have to disappear with us? The web has modified nearly every
aspect of our lives. We don’t flirt, shop, read the news or socialise
in the way we used to. But perhaps the most impressive sign of the web’s
omnipotence is that it is also engendering new rituals of mourning. As is
often the case with anything tech-related, we are taking our cue from
teenagers. Most of them publish all sorts of information and images about
themselves on the social networking site MySpace. The webspace, founded in
2003, is home to millions of users. Some of them have died prematurely. And
given that they were so very young, their relatives and friends have turned
the deceased’s MySpace page into something that lies somewhere between a
gravestone and that teenage bedroom that never gets touched after the son
or daughter has disappeared. A couple of years ago this practice was
systematised and framed by Yourdeathspace.com, a website that defines
itself as a ‘collection of dead MySpace users’. Another site,
MyDeathSpace.com, goes further by aggregating links to the pages of
MySpace users, along with stories, obituaries or blogs that detail their
lives and how they died. All of the above raises another question: will
the web one day become the first place we turn to when we want to pay our
last respects? The digital artworld has been fast to react to this
phenomenon. Michele Gauler’s Digital Remains project assumes a world in
which our data is stored on the network and remains accessible to people
who have been bequeathed the right to find solace in the browsing of our
virtual memories. Mission Eternity, by etoy, is even more ambitious: the
massive body of digital information we leave behind is not only accessible
after our death and archived in digital capsules for future generations but
it will also find a place in a physical sarcophagus. Now someone like
Elliott Malkin reckons that we might not want to forget about stone and
earth graveyards immediately. His Cemetery 2.0 networked devices connect
directly between a physical burial site and the online ‘presence’ of
the deceased. Visitors to the grave can view related online memorials on
the device display, while online mourners will recognise that their
browsing is associated with the actual grave. I for one have no idea about
what should become of my blog were I to disappear, but I know that, whether
you believe in the afterlife or not, you’d better make sure that its web
equivalent will treat the memories you’ve placed into its care as well
as they deserve. from top: Cemetery 2.0, linking headstone to online
memorial, courtesy Eliott Malkin; access key for logging on to the
deceased’s digital remains, courtesy Michele Gauler p ARTREVIEW 130
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Art Review - March Issue
Manifesto
Dispatches
Consumed
Tales from the City
David Lynch
Marcel Dzama
Future Greats
Art Pilgrimage: Moscow
Mixed Media: Moving Images
Mixed Media: Photography
Mixed Media: Digital
Reviews
Book Reviews
On the Town
On the Record
Art Review - March Issue
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