Living With the Digital Dead

Researchers across a number of disciplines have noted that the internet, and especially the increasing ubiquity of social media, is changing the ways in which the dead figure in the lives of the living. New means of commemorating, remembering, forgetting, interacting with and even denigrating the dead have emerged in online contexts, from online memorial sites, to new conventions of public mourning, to Facebook users continuing to post on the walls of deceased friends, to speculative new technologies that will create interactive avatars of the dead. Such practices raise important questions about the ontological, ethical, and social standing of the electronically-mediated dead and the digital 'remains' in which they are instantiated.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers working on this topic from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, media studies, cultural studies and sociology.

If you would like to attend this workshop please email Neil Henderson ([email protected]); attendance is free but registration is required for catering purposes.

The workshop will be held in the East 1 Meeting Room, Level 2, Building BC, Deakin University, Burwood Campus (see http://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/273158/bcc-map.pdf)

Schedule:

9:00       Welcome

9:05:      Adam Buben (Leiden University College, via Skype) "Technology of the Dead: Objects of Loving Remembrance or Replaceable Resources?"

9:50       Hyeyoung Kim (Freie Universität Berlin, via Skype) "The Ontological Status of the Digital Dead"

10:35     Morning tea

10:50     Patrick Stokes (Deakin) "Do We Have a Duty Not to Delete the Dead?"

11:35     Margaret Gibson (Griffith) "Digital Objects of the Dead: negotiating electronic remains"

12:20     Lunch

12:50     Bjorn Nansen (Melbourne) "#Funeral"

1:35       Audrey Samson (City University Hong Kong, via Skype) "Digital Data Funerals and the Network's Undead"

2:20       Afternoon tea

2:30       Martin Gibbs (Melbourne) "Memorials, Commemorative Practices and Digital Games"

3:15       Helen Heath (Victoria University NZ) "Using Poems as Thought Experiments"

4:00       Tyson Wills (RMIT) "There is something alive in there": Media Folklore and the Uncanny Presence of Electronic Technology"

4:45       Close

This event is being held as part of "Online Interactions With The Dead" (http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/centre-for-citizenship-and-globalisation/research/research-grants/deakin-grants), a one-year research project funded by Deakin University. The workshop is hosted by the European Philosophy and the History of Ideas group: