Digital legacy: designing with things

This paper explores how theories of things can create new forms of agency for the dead. It considers how meaning is constructed through the use or translation of our diverse collections and environments online. These memorials and rituals offer a plurality of narratives, experiences and aesthetics, which have the potential to give a wider scope for constructing a durable biography after death. The paper draws conceptual links between digital and physical materials and aims to expand interdisciplinary discourse around the way design can create new forms of legacy through rethinking the role of digital things in our lives

Material Legacies Exhibition

Material Legacies is a five-year collaboration with The Hospice of St Francis. This research advocates how artistic collaborations with the bereaved create alternative spaces for a person’s physical and digital legacy, developing new approaches to bereavement care using co-design. These collaborations add to the discourse of continuing bonds theory by combining situated design methods, transforming the bereaved’s home into impromptu studios and co-design methods that explore how crafting hybrid artefacts construct a durable biography for the deceased. These durable biographies are activated by combining digital and physical legacies through co-curation and exhibition. The exhibiting of outputs as products of a co-design process creates new forms of discursive knowledge that other hospices can use to further integrate digital and public engagement through the development of research governance that supports transparency, personal choice and collaboration. It was recently disseminated by the Hospice of St Francis at the Hospice UK National Conference: Transforming Palliative Care (2018). The exhibitions were covered by FuneralZone, one of the UK's largest funeral information services, and featured on BBC Three Counties Radio. They ran for three weeks each and were evaluated through surveys that captured perceptions from the local community describing the works as inspiring, interesting, insightful, challenging, moving, thought provoking, peaceful, therapeutic, healthy and refreshing. The exhibitions were funded by Berkhamsted Town Council, Macmillan Grants and the University of Greenwich

Intimate technologies: The ethics of simulated relationships

This paper considers the complex relationship between ethics and social technologies. It is particularly concerned with what it means to be intimate or share ideas of intimacy with robots and avatars. Looking to the world of theatre and situating our ethical framework within two specific plays we are able to examine new technological narratives that inspire critical reflection on our current and future relationships, sexual taboos and ethical practices. It also poses the question of the role of the arts in preparing society for large technological and social shifts that challenge what we might think of current norms and values, noting that the shifts are not gender free. This allows us to open up to new ideas and modes of being that play with the boundaries of what it means to be intimate, including the entanglement of notions of vulnerability, immersion and control

Research & Development Project GIFT AR (DATUM INNOVATE UK) and public output DONATE YOURSELF (HUMAN CELL ATLAS)

As our lives become increasingly virtual AR GIFT (DATUM) offers the opportunity to bring depth to our connected relationships, across time and space. Whether a quick thank you or a special present this platform enables fast and beautiful gift giving within the blended environment of AR (physical and virtual), enabling action on environmental sustainability and yet enhancing and extending the unique intimacy of gifting. AR GIFT (DATUM INNOVATE UK) is a mobile app/web-based gifting platform enabling the user to choose, customise and send an AR gift to a friend/colleague, wherever they are in the world, eliminating unsustainable physical gifting practises. These virtual gifts exist on the platform as AR assets, both ready-made and customisable, which are sent by the gift giver and collected by the recipient at a time and location of the gift givers choice. Each bespoke choice by the gift giver is an intimate act in itself. The platform is responding to the need for intimate gifting (thank yous, get well wishes, birthday greetings or condolences) into our connected world, local to local and local to global, brought to the forefront in our times of global pandemic lockdowns, isolation and quarantine. It is in direct response to the growing need, through social distancing, for deeper remote intimacy interactions, and the post-lockdown requirements for collective and intimate experiences that are conducted in a safe and responsible manner. While at the same time, this platform encourages ethical consumer behaviour and runs alongside the re-opening of sustainable commerce post pandemic. AR GIFT Team - body>data>space (BDS Creative Ltd) Ghislaine Boddington - Creative Director Tadej Vindis - Lead Producer Nick Rothwell - Technical Lead Ivor Diosi - XR Developer The first commission output for AR GIFT is Donate Yourself, an Augmented Reality experience co-created by artist Stacey Pitsillides with Ghislaine Boddington and the body>data>space collective. It blends sound and 3D visuals to spark debates about our organs, tissue and body data, accessed by the public through augmented reality via QR codes. This new work was encountered in several ways. It premiered as a walking tour around the Ouseburn Valley area of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK (29th October – 30th November). There, on this trail of five locations, you found the Donate Yourself banners and, by scanning the QR codes on these banners with your mobile phone and listening to the audio stories, you will take part in an inspirational journey. The work also was shown in Oxford, London and Cambridge across November / December 2021 and is still touring. The digital objects that you encounter will be seen through your phone imposed on the landscapes behind and, with the audio in your ears, stories of care, trust, immortality, consent and futures will unfold, exploring the important role our bodies play in scientific discovery. Each experience questions how we see our body after death; as a collective source of knowledge for humanity, as a material to explore our biological make up, or even as a way of immortalising ourselves in cells. These AR sound and visual objects examine diverse perspectives on what donating parts of yourself mean to different people. See lungs breathing posthumous digital data, view eyes blooming up above us and neurons radiating from a petri dish, hear the unfolding audio stories as you walk, imposed on the real world around you. What role can our bodies play in scientific discovery? Could we see ourselves as a collection of cells? Does donating organs or tissue make you immortal? This sci-art project shares artistic interpretations of scientific imagery with the audience, from interviews with experts from the Human Cell Atlas research initiative and visual/written data from a series of artists workshops which are expanded through this unique digital experience. Gathered from a range of communities Stacey Pitsillides and body>data>space created this AR experience to help us all consider the legacy of our bodies in this digital age. AR GIFT (DATUM) is created and produced by body>data>space (BDS Creative Ltd). The project was developed as part of DATUM R&D, an Innovate UK funded project with partners ZU-UK (Lead Partner), body>data>space and University of Greenwich (Innovate UK Sustainable Innovation Fund: Round 1 (Temporary Framework) 2020), and in further partnership with CLEI Co-creating Liveness in Embodied Immersion, BHRE Business, Human Rights and Environment, and LETS Law, Emerging Technologies & Science Strategic Research Groups at University of Greenwich. Donate Yourself - co-created by Stacey Pitsillides with body>data>space (2021). A One Cell at a Time commission with the Human Cell Atlas research initiative: The digital AR experience has been designed and co-created between Stacey Pitsillides and the body>data>space team using the b>d>s AR GIFT development project: Ghislaine Boddington (Creative Co-Direction), Tadej Vindis (Project Development and Production), Nick Rothwell (Sound Design and Technical Development) and Ivor Diosi (AR Development and 3D Animation). With research and insights from Holly Standing and Luke Sellers. Donate Yourself is produced for One Cell at a Time by Dominic Smith. Donate Yourself is created as part of the AR GIFT development project at body>data>space, supported by Innovate UK and the University of Greenwich (2021-22)

Taboo Or Not Taboo: (In)visibilities Of Death, Dying And Bereavement

The notion that ‘death is a taboo’ pervades private, public and academic discourses around death, dying and bereavement in contemporary Western societies. The rise of digital media within the last decades further complicates the appreciation of the stance that death is a taboo, given the increased opportunities afforded in social media environments for embracing death, fostering new intimacies with strangers and semi-strangers but also for turning death into a spectacle (Jakobsen, 2016). The study of death-related practices online and the tensions they raise has rapidly been growing in the interdisciplinary field of Death online studies. However, in this field there is a need for developing shared conceptual and analytical frameworks and ensure methodological and theoretical robustness in line with developments in the study of social media communication. There is a need to synthesize insights from death sociology and interdisciplinary death online studies in order to shape an agenda for an integrated study of the offline and the online that can capture continuities and shifts in death-related practices (see also Borgstrom and Ellis, 2017). This panel collects four papers presented by six interdisciplinary scholars from Denmark, Sweden, Israel and the UK. Focusing on the (in)visibilities of death, dying and bereavement across contexts - online and offline - the papers critically revisit the ‘death is taboo’ thesis by investigating the particular conditions under which death, dying and bereavement are talked about, storied, and made socially visible and the ways in which technology plays a vital part in coping with mortality

Tickets for the Afterlife

Sound Design for Website / App Platform Tickets for the Afterlife aims to introduce people to planning end of life wishes. Through visual communication, interaction and personal decision making. It uses artistic research methods that position diverse rituals and potential futures as options to be chosen within the digital experience/ website. It also uses the library's collections of books as a way of giving people personalised recommendations for further inquiry. The Tickets for the Afterlife website was creatively directed by Dr Stacey Pitsillides with graphic designer Elena Demireva, web developer’s Parvin Asadzadeh Birjandi & Tom Hegarty and sound designer Emma Margetson. Content research and co-design with Dr Claire Nally and the Death Positive Library team. Together this team have investigated the role of Death Positive Libraries during the pandemic through author/Filmmaker Q&A’s, death cafes and A Grief Spoon Room with the Loss Project. This project has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, Carnegie UK, and The Wolfson Foundation and has recently been awarded the Health and Wellbeing Award from Libraries Connected, an organisation which promotes and represents libraries as important resources at the heart of communities. Presented online and at Redbridge Central Library, Newcastle City Library and Kirklees Libraries between 27th October - 19th November 2021

Death and Memory in the Twenty-First Century

Technology has always played a key role in holding onto some of the precious experiences we collect over our relatively short lives, in order to pass them on to the next generation. This can even be linked to communication practices which pre-date language. The connection between external communal memory and symbolic meaning may even have already existed as a practice during Neanderthal times. This was enacted through the shaping or engraving of found objects, like shells. Over time these non-functional or ornamental objects became integrated into many day-to-day practices, signifying the connection between material culture and communication skills (D’Errico and Vanhaeren 2009). As society developed so did our understanding of materials, particularly those most close to hand, like clay. By exploring hand production through the physical transformation of a malleable material into a fixed form, we were able to form an external representation of self and to imagine more specialized uses and meanings for the objects that have been created. This was key in forming both a physical and virtual ‘memory’ of our making and indeed our presence in this world. As human beings continued to learn and develop, so did the complexity of the objects and of the systems surrounding the creation of those objects. The culture of making was also further industrialized with the growth of mass production, which meant more sectors of society could have larger collections of personal objects. However, it could be said that it was during the boom of individualism, consumerism and the development of the global village, which created mainstream capitalist democracy after the middle of the twentieth century, that the objects we chose to own and keep over the course of our lives became one of the defining characteristics expressing ‘who we are’ (Bernays 1971) and thus how we would be remembered after death

Co-Designing with the Bereaved: how Curatorial Dilemmas become Ethical Reflections

This paper explores how co-design can challenge the role of collaboration within hospice-based research. It demonstrates how an exhibition of co-designed artifacts creates new forms of discursive knowledge and ethical considerations. This research aims to reflect on a holistic collaboration with bereaved stakeholders who are intuitionally considered as vulnerable by Research Ethics Committees and to break-down their role within the research. From re-defining initial research questions through to co-curating two public exhibitions across a five-year collaboration. It considers how exhibitions can be used generatively to close the design cycle and allow for knowledge to be expanded across various interdisciplinary audiences. Through this it reflects on the ethical underpinning of exhibiting sensitive works by exploring how the details of a curation such as typography, labeling, lighting and structure show how a researcher respects an individuals work, allowing for the continuous negotiation of power and hierarchy. This constructs a set of principles for co-designing with the bereaved that provides a flexible structure for other researchers to use when designing their own interactions with stakeholders. By using a range of principles, it aims to avoid tokenism and puts collaborators at the heart of the research process

Love After Death (2016 - 2018)

Love After Death is an installation that questions how futuring technologies and aesthetics augment our relationship to end-of-life planning? It was commissioned by NESTA for their own international flagship public engagement event: FutureFest and was recommissioned by Redbridge Library for Dying Matters Week in 2018. By designing an installation that invites the public to engage with an alternative Last Will and Testament for the future of their Creative Bereavement or Dead Body, this project produces new knowledge about people’s relationship to their physical and digital legacies. By creating diegetic prototypes that tangibly explore the relationship between technology, creativity and death, it uses co-creation and design fictions as part of an iterative design cycle. It explores how we are entangled with things – and our post-death bodies and digital remains are wrapped up in these relations. The output consists of two installations, a documentation film and the legacy documents. It shows how digital, physical and hybrid legacies move beyond a human-centric analysis of the paraphernalia of death. FutureFest established the baseline of the research within a highly knowledgeable and tech savvy audience. Redbridge Library showed that the project could also be used to reach diverse communities across London. This research is significant as it aims to actively re-balance how the public engages creatively with their own mortality by giving people agency in conversations with funeral directors about the range of options and approaches available. These end-of-life conversations need a flexible, neutral space to create a far-reaching public platform that makes future legacies more inclusive and meaningful. The installation was covered by associated press and shortlisted for the ‘Best Death Related Public Engagement Event' of 2017 by the Good Funeral Awards. This installation was funded by NESTA, the Wellcome Trust / Carnegie Trust, Redbridge Vision and the University of Greenwich, as part of their REF competitive funding round

Digital Death: The Materiality of Co-crafted Legacies

Our relationship to death is changing. The prevalence of death and dying online has created new ways of understanding those we have lost. This includes the diversification of aesthetics traditionally associated with mortality. Online environments have provided new opportunities for interacting with the dead, putting the theory of continuing bonds into practice but also creating a data boom that is an overwhelming digital legacy. The question of how we can make meaning from the things left behind will explore the entanglement of people with data, documents, traces, things, collections and archives both online and in our homes. This develops an understanding of materiality that considers the digital as a unique material, incorporating the affordances of digitality into our experiences of personal collections. It uses crafting, narrative and curation to draw these collections together, offering a plurality of experiences and aesthetics. In association with The Hospice of St Francis, this research uses co-design as a methodology for constructing three unique collaborations between the bereaved, a creative practitioner (art therapist or designer) and the collection itself. These collaborations create an emergent process for exploring the qualities of inherited things. The co-design process informs the use of materials and concepts, with the aim of creating meaningful artefacts for exhibiting. The participants are able to steer the overall direction and focus of this practice research from the first session, narrating the collection to the final construction of crafted responses. It follows through into the public exhibition where the use of language, curation and aesthetics are developed collaboratively. This research can be applied to hospices developing a creative and digital agenda, in addition to public engagement through the collaborative exhibition. It also has strong relevance to the fields of art therapy and co-design, bringing them into conversation and sharing methods