Digital Afterlife (2024)
The increasing proliferation of social media means that we are living more and more of ourselves online, sharing almost every aspect of our lives. Photographs, videos, blogs etc all serve to bring us closer together, but what happens when we die? Increasingly, the bereaved are keeping their loved ones’ profiles open and continue to share memories as if still living. This Digital Afterlife, predicted to outnumber the living by the end of the century, gives us the opportunity to stay close to our loved ones in a more dynamic way to traditional memorials. However, if the social media company is unaware of the passing, it behaves as if the deceased is still living, using the information gathered to target advertising, reminding them of key events in the lives of the living and collecting direct messages. This raises ethical questions about the privacy and respect afforded people who no longer have agency in the world.
This conceptual series of digital photocollages explores the complex relationship between the living, the dead and the digital afterlife from the perspective of ‘the machine’ that is social media as a technology and a business. It seeks to highlight the power struggle between what is morally and ethically appropriate behaviour towards the dead, our unawareness of how data is owned and used and what happens when we realise how embedded our digital selves are in these issues.
