S 1
Introduction Semester 1
Project Themes
The Long Version: The themes of this project were generated from interests and preconceptions I had coming back into masters, as well as a unique studio material first approach. Every time I present this project in person, I always refer to a short personal anecdote which acted as the thematic catalyst for this project. This anecdote begins with the use of Facebook. The platform has been present in my life since my early memories, and every major milestone since that point has been processed and logged on its servers. This is true not just Facebook but other areas of the internet such as cloud-based memory storage and third-party data capture (cookies etc.). Not only have fragments of my life been preserved but also that of my friends and family. These fragments have been linked, tagged and algorithmised for the viewing of present and future generations. Social Media was always the same in the beginning - posting, liking and sharing things with the living. The key word in this intended usage is ‘living’, which led me to think about what happens to this plethora of data when someone passes? When one of my family members did pass around 10 years ago, I thought nothing of the profile left behind, but in recent years I found myself returning to this profile to reference an image posted by that individual. What I noticed was that the profile was still active. Those fragments still accessed and shared by connections of the deceased, returning at key milestones to not just publicly share those frozen fragments but also add to them, another part of the story added in the comments by another.
