Year:
2024
Focus:
Data Viz
For:
Personal Project
PROBLEM
Emerging technologies have redefined grief
Death is a deeply personal and difficult topic for me. Beyond fear, it is the loss itself that I struggle to process. After my grandmother passed away, it took years to come to terms with her absence. These feelings resurfaced while working on my previous piece, Lola AI, a short film that explores identity loss after my first visit to the Philippines. In it, I wished I could seek guidance from my grandmother, or lola in Tagalog.
To explore this, I used old audio recordings to recreate her voice and built a chatbot from stories shared by my family. While the process felt cathartic, I was acutely aware that it was not truly her, no matter how much I wished it to be. This experience made me reflect on the lengths people will go to revive memories of loved ones. With AI advancing rapidly, it became clear that this is increasingly possible. This raised a bigger question for me: what really happens to our data after we die?
THE VISION
Synthesizing my findings to conceptualize themes
My research explored the question of what happens to our digital presence after death. I found that digital death is not just about preserving memory; it is deeply tied to power, ethics, and fragility. Decisions about who and what gets remembered are increasingly influenced less by families and loved ones and more by corporations, algorithms, and the contested politics of digital legacy. Social media platforms, cloud services, and AI tools determine how data is stored, displayed, or even monetized, raising critical ethical questions about ownership, consent, and the commercialization of grief. This research highlighted that our digital lives are both fragile and powerful, and understanding the structures that govern them is essential for designing technologies that respect legacy and autonomy.
KEY ITERATIONS
The initial concept of my research focused solely on the legality of post-mortem data. While this approach provided valuable information, it felt distant and impersonal. What truly resonated with me were my own experiences online. My life, like that of many others, has been shaped by the internet, and I began to ask broader questions: how has the internet influenced my identity and the identities of others? Our digital and physical selves are deeply intertwined, making it difficult to discuss digital life without considering personal experiences, emotions, and concerns. These questions go beyond legislation, touching on ethical, emotional, and societal dimensions.
To gain more perspective, I interviewed people about death and digital data, gathering insights into how individuals perceive their online presence after death, their concerns about privacy and legacy, and how personal experiences shape their expectations of digital inheritance. These conversations helped shift my work from a purely legal focus to one that also considers the human side of our digital lives.
Memory and Identity: My Personal Connection to the Internet
I wanted to explore how the internet acts as a repository of memory and a lens for identity. I traced my life in a timeline of digital data and revisited the online spaces that shaped my childhood curiosity and creativity. It highlights how our online presence preserves experiences, reflects growth, and shapes how we understand ourselves.
Grief: How It Appears on the Internet
I also investigated how grief manifests in digital spaces. Online platforms allow for memorialization, mobilization, and shared expressions of loss, creating new ways to process and witness mourning. It also considers the role of AI in bringing back the voices or presence of loved ones, raising the question: is it so wrong to use technology to reconnect with those we have lost?
Power & Law
This theme examines who controls our data after we die and how technology companies monetize our grief. It highlights the tension between personal legacy and corporate ownership, questioning the ethics of digital inheritance and the commercialization of memory. By exploring legal, social, and technological frameworks, it asks how we can ensure that our digital presence respects our intentions and preserves our identity beyond life.
OUTCOME
Exploring multiple facets of the digital afterlife
The second version marked a complete revamp of the initial idea. Instead of focusing narrowly on the legality of post-mortem data, I developed a series of themes that all connect to the broader concept of digital life after death. This iteration took the form of a zine that examines the digital afterlife through multiple lenses, blending research, personal reflection, and storytelling.
The zine highlights how our sense of immortality online is ultimately dependent on fragile infrastructures controlled by corporations, governed by law, and shaped by shifting cultural norms. It explores the tension between the permanence we imagine in digital spaces and the impermanence inherent in the systems that store, display, and monetize our data. By framing post-mortem data through these intersecting perspectives, the project emphasizes not only what happens to our digital selves after death but also how this reflects broader questions about identity, memory, and the ethics of technological control.
