This page lists outcomes of the seminar including resources and references used in developing the call for abstracts.
GROUPS
A key outcome of this workshop is an interest group comprising people with relevant research activities, projects, themes etc. (indicated in parenthesis).
Mike Arnold |
University of Melbourne |
Nicola Bidwell |
University of Cape Town |
identity, the body/self and past realties in societies with societies that where dead exercise influence |
Paul Dourish |
University of California |
data/identity curation, data lifecycle, perimortem |
Pin Sym Foong |
National University of Singapore |
end of life decision-making | Elise van den Hoven |
Eindhoven University of Technology |
remembering and reminiscing about the deceased through tangible interaction |
Steve Howard |
University of Melbourne |
technologies of remembrance, the benefits of forgetting, digital alters, atheism, afterlife-mylife-yourlife, who owns history? | Dave Kirk |
Nottingham University |
digital archiving, memorabilia, sentimental artefacts, rituals and processes of bequeathing, technological heirlooms, pervasive monuments and digital footprints. | Ann Light |
Queen Mary, University of London |
social media, grieving and death | Natalie Pang |
Nanyang Technological University |
digital preservation, information quality, digital curation, and participatory records' creations |
Jose Rojas |
National University of Singapore |
generational differences regarding the preservation of personal digital information, emotional aspects of digital memories after death | Jolynna Sinanan |
University of Melbourne |
cultural issues with dying, death, afterlife and technology; new forms of grieving and commemorating via emerging technologies; the motivation, role and function of technological responses to mortality |
EVENTS
This is a list of links to relevant events and groups to this seminar.
International Workshop on Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies 2008 (SIMTech'08)
This workshop, held between 20th and 21st November 2008, attracted a stream of three papers on the second day on Death and Immortality. These papers addressed the design of digital memorials, ways of communicating commemoration through design and the design of digital heirlooms. Papers are available from http://mundanetechnologies.com/goings-on/workshop/cambridge/program.html.
Workshop on HCI at the End of Life: Understanding Death, Dying and the Digital
This workshop, to be held on April as part of the 2010 Computer Human Interaction Conference (CHI) Conference, aims to address technology and design, understanding social practices around death and dying, relevant perspectives from the humanities and cultural studies and research methodology and evaluation.
Art Exhibition: (Un)Inhabitable? - Art of Extreme Environments
This exhibition explores past, present and future visions of habitats and habitation through exhibits of environments rendered inhabitable through science and technology (e.g. Antarctica) and environments rendered uninhabitable (for some at least) through the same (e.g. Chernobyl).
Presentation on The Ethnosphere and ethnocide
This TED presentation by, an anthropologist at argues for the ethnic catastrophe of dying languages and cultures far exceeding the much publicised environmental catastrophe in extent and implication.
STORIES AND EXAMPLES
This is a list of links to stories and examples relevant to the seminar.
Story on "Moving the Dead to Make Room for the Living"
This story, about the relocation of the dead's remains in Singapore, addresses the practical concern of housing the dead and cultural sensitivities around death.
Online funeral desecration:
On ...a group of World of Warcraft raiders desecrated a memorial service for a deceased player by killing the player's character and the other characters paying their respects. This could, of course, be regarded as a fitting tribute to the player.
Blog on The Age of Warlords Cookbook
This blog discusses issues related to cooking (a truly practical concern) in a post-apocalyptic era via a cookbook for desperate times.
DESIGNS, TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES
This is a list of technologies and services relevant to the seminar themes.
Urban Design Project: LA Interchange: A Real-time Memorial
This project proposes an urban display in the form of an illuminated fountain that changes based on real-time accident data from the California Highway Patrol Incident Report website.
Avatarian Graveyard
This supposed service enables the destruction of avatars, digital identities and "other digital shadows" in support reintegration into everyday society. Details about how the service actually works are scant and it is unclear whether it exists in any usable form but this is an interesting idea nonetheless.
Remembering and instantiating the digital: http://www.fabjectory.com/
This service supports the conversion of avatars, online characters etc into physical objects so they can be "made real" and even celebrated and commemorated.
Architectural Designs: Arakawa and Gins' Architecture Against Death
Arakawa and Gins argue for defying death through the design of people's habitat. They design to sustain life through creating architectural features that promote resistance to death through "using the body in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium and...stimulate their immune systems" (Bernstein, year).
Total Recall Systems: Immortality through Digital Capture and Archive Technologies
Gurdeep Singh Pall (Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group) and Rita McGrath (Columbia Business School in New York) argue for a suite of technologies being available soon supporting archive and search of all our actions at corporate events such as meetings. They consider both positive (e.g. revisiting deliberations to establish accountability) and anti-Utopian (e.g. retrieving mistakes for use in litigation) outcomes of such 'Total Recall Systems'.
REFERENCES
This will be a list of all the references in call and the submitted abstracts for easy reference.
THEMES
We hope that particular themes will emerge from the seminar that can be written directly into a call for papers.
INSIGHTS
New insights provided through the seminar.
QUESTIONS
Research questions to pursue, generated through the seminar.
NEXT STEPS
We are planning a special issue of a journal.
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