afterlife & death in a digital age

afterlife & death

afterlife & death

in a digital age

in a digital age

1 day seminar at the National University of Singapore (NUS): Saturday 17th April 2010

All events will be held in the Shaw Foundation Building, on Kent Ridge Drive at the National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge Campus unless otherwise stated.

The poster exhibition (0900-1100) will be held in the foyer of this building (level 1). The welcome and opening invited talk (1100-1230) will be held in the AS7 Auditorium in the same building. The presentations (1345-1700) and closing invited talk (1700-1745) will be held in AS7 Meeting Room A (Level 6), also in The Shaw Foundation Building.

Presentations (other than main talks) will be 15 minutes long (maximum) and allow at least 5 minutes for questions and discussion. A Mac laptop will be provided and a projector and speakers will be available. Presenters can also use their own laptops to present but are encouraged to test their presentation before their session.

Details of the program are below . This may be subject to minor changes.

DAY ZERO (Friday 16th April) – Meet and Greet

1900

WELCOME DINNER


Zsofi Tapas Bar, 68 Dunlop Street, Singapore 209396.

Public transport and parking information is available from the Zsofi venue page. Use gothere.sg to get directions if you need them. We have booked a table outside upstairs.

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SEMINAR DAY (Saturday 17th April)

0900 - 1100

Registration/Coffee


Foyer AS7 Level 1

0915

POSTER EXHIBITION OPENING


Foyer AS7 Level 1

0920

POSTER EXHIBITION


Foyer AS7 Level 1

1045

POSTER COMPETITION RESULTS


Foyer AS7 Level 1

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1100

WELCOME


AS7 Auditorium (Level 1)

1115

OPENING INVITED TALK: Grieving and Griefing in Contested Zones: Negotiating Rules of Play in Massively Multiplayer Online Games


AS7 Auditorium (Level 1)

Dr. Martin Gibbs (Interaction Design Group, Department of Information Systems, The University of Melbourne)

While not necessarily common or frequent, the practice of holding weddings, funerals, birthdays, dance parties and the like in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) are well known. The practices of 'griefing' – taking actions to deliberately frustrate, annoy or harm other players – in these online worlds are also well known. The above events that occurred in the MMOG, World of Warcraft, are noteworthy because members of Serenity Now made a video of the event and posted it online. Like much on the Internet the video has been posted and reposted, recycled and rehashed. The video can be found in dozens of locations, has been viewed millions of times, and has been discussed by tens of thousands of people in various online forums. With each reposting, discussion and debate and controversy over the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of the actions depicted have emerged. In this presentation Martin will follow the public debates that have raged across video hosting sites, bulletin boards, blogs and other online forums where the video has been posted and chart the terrain of the controversy surrounding it. Was Serenity Now in the wrong for crashing the funeral or were the organizers of the memorial in the wrong for holding the memorial in the first place? The legitimacy of certain activities within online spaces is also debated. Are memorial services legitimate activities for these online worlds? Does playing the game by the 'rules' and ‘as intended’ legitimize the actions of Serenity Now? As well as these ethical questions, aesthetical issues are also at stake. Is holding an online memorial service, or is crashing it, in bad taste? [full abstract] [slides]

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1230

Lunch


Cafe on the Ridge, Kent Ridge Guild House, 9 Kent Ridge Drive, Singapore 119241

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1345

PRESENTATIONS ONE: 3 papers


AS7 Meeting Room A (Level 6)

Has Death no Future? Cybernetics and the Hecatomb. John W P Phillips (Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore) [abstract] [extended abstract] [slides]

Empty Forms: Vestiges of Sacred Play. Anne Marie Schleiner and Xuanming Zhou (Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore) [abstract] [extended abstract] [slides]

Designing for a Pleasurable and Creative Death. Denisa Kera (Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore) [abstract] [extended abstract] [slides - unzip file to run]

1450

Coffee/Refreshments


Foyer outside AS7 Meeting Room A (Level 6)

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1515

PRESENTATIONS TWO: 4 papers


AS7 Meeting Room A (Level 6)

Grieve with a View. Martin Constable (Nanyang Technological University) [abstract] [extended abstract] [slides]

Design Reflections on Ancestral Remembrance Customs in Singapore. Chew Lin Kay [abstract] [extended abstract] [slides]

Death, Remembering and Media in Community Settings. Connor Graham (Independent Researcher), Denisa Kera (Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore), Mark Rouncefield and Keith Cheverst (Computing Department, Lancaster University) [abstract] [extended abstract] [slides]

Suicide Effects: Transportation Network of Tokyo. Jess Mantell and Jan Rod (Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University) [abstract] [extended abstract] [slides]

1645

Break


Foyer outside AS7 Meeting Room A (Level 6)

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1700

CLOSING INVITED TALK: Beyond Mummification and Resurrection in Digital Media


Professor Lanfranco Aceti (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University)

This talk discusses issues with the ephemerality, deterioration, transformation and destruction of digital art forms. The suggestion is that the digital need not be more durable than the analogue. The talk questions the need for preservation and argues that regardless of this need, preservation is cultural, economic, social and technical process. [slides]

[CANCELLED] The Era of Technology Heirlooms and Pervasive Monuments


Dr. David Kirk (Mixed Reality Lab, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham)

We are at a curious moment in history whereupon aspects of our lives are becoming increasingly vested in digital media. Never before has the opportunity for this existed. As we reach the end of our lives however, this poses some curious challenges for the unprepared. What happens, or should happen, with the digital residua of a life? The digital footprint, as it is being termed, will come to be seen as a commodity which an individual has a right to exploit within their life, and which will be something they actively manage on a day-to-day basis. This digital footprint then becomes a digital legacy at the point of death, and this has consequences for how it might be appropriately managed or curated. Dave's current investigations at the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham (and in conjunction with Horizon Digital Economy Research and Microsoft Research Cambridge) are seeking to explore potential aspects of such digital footprints, embodied within the concepts of 'technology heirlooms' and 'pervasive monuments'. Dave's talk will outline the work that we have conducted thus far, exploring both technology heirlooms and pervasive monuments and the inherent difficulties of researching in such spaces. It will consider how concepts of digital longevity can be used to shape the design of new forms of technology and new forms of interactive experience; and it will also consider how such design poses critical questions about the nature of our evolving relationship with digital technologies. [full abstract] [slides]

about 1730

CLOSURE & NEXT STEPS


AS7 Meeting Room A (Level 6)

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1900

INFORMAL SEMINAR DINNER


Next Door Cafe, 34 Arab Street, Singapore 199733

Another map is available from the Next Door Cafe's Location page. Use gothere.sg for directions if you need them.

2030 for 2100

EXHIBITION & AFTER PARTY


hackerspace.sg, 70A Bussorak Steet, Singapore 199483

Use gothere.sg for directions if you need them.

Please, bring the hardware and data which you would like to mourn and bury in our collective digital ritual. We will also burn some high tech offerings for our beloved dead digital pioneers Alan Turing, Vannevar Bush and John von Neumann!

[CANCELLED] No Fake Flowers - Just Fake Tears for my Multiple Digital Deaths


Professor Lanfranco Aceti (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University)

Have I ever celebrated the death of my hard drive when suddenly it collapsed and years of accumulated memories and work went lost? The celebration – if it could be ever called that – was characterized by unmentionable swearing, pounding on the table, threats issued to the dead shell of what had been my companion of long nights and travels, but all this – although happened several times – could not be defined as a ceremony of farewell. Do we really die digitally? Or is it our sensation of attachment to all that is material – and the digital is material – that restrains our behavior and thinking? Are we really getting freer by not carrying all of these networks, connections, memories and notes of our lives digitized in a myriad of electronic formats: .avi, .doc, .jpg, .psd, .mov, .tiff, etc.? Or we are actually dying off while the digital survives us?

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