The Art of Dying in a Digital World: How Death is Represented in Digital Art

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5753/jis.2024.3818

Keywords:

Digital Art, Death, Information Technology, Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

With the rise of computing, human rituals and cultural practices have increasingly interwoven with digital technologies. In this milieu, the cultural facets of death and art are particularly noteworthy. The realm of art has undergone a seismic shift due to computing, developing new artistic forms and enhancing the reach of older forms. Concurrently, aspects of death are now integrated into digital technologies, manifesting in unique ways such as the retention of data from the deceased, digital expressions of grief, online memorials, and the like. In light of this, our fundamental, qualitative, and exploratory study endeavors to map out and discuss digital art pieces that delve into themes of death, mourning, and digital afterlife. In doing so, we probe the intersection of art, death, and technology. Our findings delineate the primary methodologies and technologies employed in digital art centered around death, and the nuanced modalities through which this subject is portrayed in digital media.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Bell, D. J., Loader, B. D., Pleace, N., and Schuler, D. (2004). Cyberculture: The key concepts. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203647059.

Beppu, F. R., Maciel, C., and Viterbo, J. (2021). Contributions of the brazilian act for the protection of personal data for treating digital legacy. Journal on Interactive Systems, 12(1):112–124. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/jis.2021.1654.

Brubaker, J. R., Dombrowski, L. S., Gilbert, A. M.,Kusumakaulika, N., and Hayes, G. R. (2014). Stewarding a legacy: Responsibilities and relationships in the management of post-mortem data. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI ’14, page 4157–4166, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557059.

Duchamp, M. and Cabanne, P. (1990). Engenheiro do tempo perdido: entrevistas com Pierre Cabanne. Assírio & Alvim.

Edmonds, E. (2010). The art of interaction. Digital Creativity, 21:257–264. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2010.556347.

Elias, N. (2001). A solidão dos moribundos, seguido de envelhecer e morrer (p. dentzien, trad.). Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Ed.

Ennis, H. (2011). Death and digital photography. In Cultural Studies Review, volume 17, page 125–145. UTS ePress, Broadway, NSW, Australia. [link].

Gach, K. (2019). A case for reimagining the ux of postmortem account deletion on social media. In CSCW 2019 Workshop on Life Transitions and Social Technologies: Research and Design for Times of Life Change, Austin. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.29754.75205.

Galvão, V. F., Maciel, C., Pereira, R., Gasparini, I., and Viterbo, J. (2019). Talking about digital immortality: A value-oriented discussion. In Proceedings of the 18th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, IHC ’19, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3357155.3358464.

Gil, A. C. et al. (2002). Como elaborar projetos de pesquisa, volume 4. Atlas São Paulo.

Graham, C., Gibbs, M., and Aceti, L. (2012). Introduction to the special issue on the death, afterlife, and immortality of bodies and data. The Information Society, pages 133–141. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2013.777296. 2013.

Hayles, N. K. (2009). Literatura eletrônica: novos horizontes para o literário. São Paulo: Global.

Laamarti, F., Eid, M., and El Saddik, A. (2014). An overview of serious games. International Journal of Computer Games Technology, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/358152.

Lieser, W. (2009). Arte Digital. Ullmann Publishing.

Maciel, C. and Pereira, V. (2015). Post-mortem digtal legacy: Possibilities in HCI. In Human-Computer Interaction, Part III, HCII 2015, pages 339–349. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21006-3_33.

Maciel, C. and Pereira, V. C. (2012). The internet generation and its representations of death: Considerations for posthumous interaction projects. In Proceedings of the 11th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, IHC ’12, page 85–94, Porto Alegre, BRA. Brazilian Computer Society. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2393536.2393548.

Maciel, C., Pereira, V. C., Prates, R. O., and Pereira, F. H. S. (2020). Tecnologias associadas ao pós-morte. In Computação e sociedade: a tecnologia-volume 3, pages 224–258. EdUFMT - Editora da Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá. [link].

Marcos, A. and Zagalo, N. (2011). Instantiating the creation process in digital art for serious games design. Entertainment Computing, 2(2):143–148. Serious Games Development and Applications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2010.12.003.

Ntelia, R. E. (2015). Death in digital games: A thanatological approach. Antae Journal, 2(2), pages 90–100. [link].

Nunes, F. O. (2003). Web arte no brasil: algumas poéticas e interfaces no universo da rede internet. Dissertação (Mestrado em Multimeios) - Instituto de Artes, Universidade de Campinas, Campinas., pages 35–46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.47749/T/UNICAMP.2003.289132.

Nunes, F. O. (2022). Web arte no Brasil em tempos pandêmicos. Texto Digital. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5007/18079288.2022.e83914.

Ohman, C. and Floridi, L. (2017). The political economy of death in the age of information: A critical approach to the digital afterlife industry. Minds and Machines, 27:1–24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-017-9445-2.

Pereira, V. C. (2022). A poesia digital em arquivos online latino-americanos: convergências e divergências. Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada, pages 224–244. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/2596-304x20222446vcp.

Pinheiro, T. S. d. M., Valério, C. C., Maciel, C., Rodrigues, K. R. d. H., and Nunes, E. P. d. S. (2016). Revisiting empathy games concept from user comments perspective. xx Simpósio Brasileiro sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais. ACM. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3472301.3484359.

Rodrigues, M. A. (2012). Arte digital. PhD thesis, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Rothblatt, M. (2016). Virtualmente humanos: as promessas e os perigos da imortalidade digital. Jeferson Luiz Camargo (Trad). São Paulo: Cutrix.

Santos, D., Maciel, C., Pereira, V. C., and Nunes, E. P. D. (2018). Analysis of the perception of users of empathic games in discussion forums and their relation to death. In Proceedings of the 17th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274192.3274198.

Simanowski, R. (2014). Digital and net art. In The Johns Hopkins guide to digital media, pages 133–138. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Starck, N. (2006). Life after death: The art of the obituary. Melbourne Univ. Publishing.

Townsend, C. (2008). Art and death. Art and Death, pages 1–168. [link].

Trevisan, D. and Maciel, C. (2023). Panorama de pesquisas sobre aspectos educativos da morte no contexto da educação básica a partir de uma revisão sistemática de literatura. Revista M. Estudos sobre a morte, os mortos e o morrer, 8(15). DOI: 10.9789/2525-3050.2023.v8n15.e11204.

Trevisan, D., Maciel, C., Pereira, V., and Pereira, R. (2023). Dead users’ profiles on Facebook: Limited interaction beyond human existence. Interacting with Computers, 35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwad003.

Venturelli, S. and Teles, L. (2008). Introdução à arte digital. Creative Commons at [link].

Viana, G. T., Maciel, C., Souza, P. C. d., and Arruda, N. A. d. (2020). Analysis of terms of use and privacy policies in social networks to treat users death. In Communications in Computer and Information Science, pages 60–78. Springer International Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46130-0_4.

Wazlawick, R. S. (2009). Metodologia de pesquisa para ciência da computação, volume 2. Elsevier.

Weiss, M. C. (2019). Sociedade sensoriada: a sociedade da transformação digital. Estudos Avançados, 33(95):203214.

Downloads

Published

2024-03-18

How to Cite

CORREIA, G. A.; PEREIRA, V. C.; TREVISAN, D.; MACIEL, C. The Art of Dying in a Digital World: How Death is Represented in Digital Art. Journal on Interactive Systems, Porto Alegre, RS, v. 15, n. 1, p. 252–264, 2024. DOI: 10.5753/jis.2024.3818. Disponível em: https://journals-sol.sbc.org.br/index.php/jis/article/view/3818. Acesso em: 27 jul. 2024.

Issue

Section

Regular Paper

Most read articles by the same author(s)