We cannot not leave traces (Merzeau, 2009)
Having initially explored decollage and digital decollage I felt I had not quite got to where I wanted. I liked the final images but the digital versions in particular, had become too stylized and lost some of their depth and ‘edge’.
In parallel I had been working on my project sketchbook and it felt like that was getting closer to what I wanted. Having reflected on it I think this is to do with a sense of knowing and not knowing; my own death and digital afterlife by their nature being unknowable. On that basis a set of six images seemed inadequate to do justice to the breadth and meaning of the topic. I decided that my project sketchbook better represented my research and creative responses (this was submitted as my final assignment for Digital Art and Culture, OCA).
My explorations have led me to think about issues of digital legacy and how my affinity for Nature Morte is now interconnected with Digital Morte. While I may not have been born digital I will certainly die digital, what is known as a digital immigrant. We are now having to confront our digital afterlife and what this means both practically and philosophically.
The digital afterlife literature covers several areas:
- The practicalities of managing a digital estate and assets
- The impact of social media on mourning practices and grieving
- The interplay between physical and digital objects, and issues of materiality
- The nature of personal digital death and afterlife and the traces we leave (either consciously or accidentally)
It is this last theme that I have focused on exploring. As I tried various approaches my thoughts turned to the interaction between the material and the digital, forgetting and remembering, creating and destroying. While my accounts and digital assets may become memorialised or deleted I will have no control over how my images may be appropriated and altered, or how the technology will change, and the formats may become redundant.
In creating the project sketchbook, I have combined metaphors of the internet and the digital realm with the symbolism of death and dying. I have attempted to create a dialogue between past, present and future to examine my emotional response to my digital afterlife and the traces I will leave.
A ‘digital identity’ is the collection or the sum of digital traces – be they written, audio or video documents, logins, online purchases, or browsing sessions… (Ertzscheid, 2009)
References and citations
Ertzscheid, O. (2009). L’homme, un document comme les autres. Hermès, La Revue(1), 33-40.
Merzeau, L. (2009). Présence numérique: les médiations de l’identité. Les Enjeux de l’information et de la communication, 2009(1), 79-91.