Wednesday 9 May 2018

Love After Death - an interactive installation for Redbridge Library’s The Final Party [18th - 19th May]





Following its debut at NESTA’s FutureFest16 (as part of Future Love) – Love After Death returns to reinvent itself for Redbridge Library’s The Final Party during Dying Matters Week on the 18th - 19th May. 

Love After Death invites you to explore your own legacy with experts in the field of death and bereavement. They will help you chart the myriad of choices in the future showing how death can be approached as creative affirmation - of love and loss.

Venue
Redbridge Central Library, 
Clements Road, 
Ilford, 
IG1 1EA

Timings
Friday 18th May: 10AM - 5PM
Saturday 19th May: 10AM - 5PM 

Expert Talks at 11AM / 2PM/ 4PM on both days. 

11AM – AndrĂ©ia Martins  – Talk: The Virtual Wake in Brazil 

AndrĂ©ia Martins is a journalist, anthropologist and a PhD student at the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society. Her netnographic research focuses on Virtual Wakes/ Funeral Webcasting in Brazil and the ways in which the Internet can help us deal with death and dying. 

2PM – Susana Gomez Larranaga  – Talk: The Agency of Online Personal Legacies

Susana Gomez Larranaga is an artist working with print, time-based media and installation. Her work recreates human manufactured imprints that merge and decay in nature. Derelict sites, turn into sites of intervention as archaeological repositories. When installing artwork, parallel dystopian realities are projected over the physical realm. In contrast to the ruin, the virtual world challenges the boundaries of human interaction and life-spans. Susana's practice-based PhD investigates the agency of online personal data over a physical space.

4PM – Audrey Samson – Talk: Digital Data Funerals

Dr Audrey Samson is an artist-researcher, resident at the Somerset House Studios and a Senior Lecturer in Digital Arts at the University of Greenwich. She has an active research profile, a thriving art practice and industry experience in digital media and network culture. She has developed numerous interactive installations, workshops and academic publications in the field of digital art in the context of death online, including Digital Data Funerals and has extensive experience thinking through the implications of digital technologies and translating this to engaging experiences for audiences.


11AM – John Troyer – Talk: The Future is Always Death

Dr John Troyer is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialisation practices, post-mortem bioethics, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. Dr Troyer is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk and the Future Cemetery Project, and he is a frequent commentator for the BBC.

2PM – Elaine Kasket  – Talk: All the Ghosts in the Machine: The New Immortality of the Digital Age

Dr Elaine Kasket is a psychologist who writes and speaks to practitioners, academics and the public about death and the digital. She is passionate about telling stories that show how the digital age affects how we live and how we die and has an upcoming book called All the Ghosts in the Machine: The New Immortality of the Digital Age that will be published in early 2019 (Robinson/Little Brown). It aims to get us all thinking differently about death and the digital.

4PM – Stacey Pitsillides  – Talk: Death, Design and the Digital 

Dr Stacey Pitsillides is a Lecturer in Design at the University of Greenwich. Her research actively inquires into how co-design can engage publics to speculatively explore their own mortality and legacy. Stacey's research is grounded in breaking down hierarchies between designers, institutions and users. Through a mix of ethnography, cultural probes and participatory design methods, she has collaborated with hospices, festivals, libraries and galleries to curate a range of interactive events aimed at specific communities e.g. tech innovators, educators and bereaved family members. She is also a public advocate for designing human-centred technologies with death in mind and has written broadly on the topic of death and digitality.

We wouldn’t want you to miss The Final Party!

Friday 9 February 2018

Death Online Research Symposium (DORS4): The University of Hull, UK, August 15 – 17 2018


The 4th Symposium of the International Death Online Research Network will take place at The University of Hull, UK, August 15 – 17, 2018. It will consolidate links between existing and new network members and provide opportunities for the discussion of ongoing and new orientations in the interdisciplinary field of death online. The meeting will explore the ways in which online connectivity is changing how, when and where we engage with death and dying and how we invest death-related practices with meaning in the online environment. We warmly welcome new members to the network as well as old friends. 

Confirmed Keynote Addresses: 

Professor Charles Ess, University of Oslo, Norway 

Dr Elaine Kasket, psychologist and author of forthcoming book: 
All the Ghosts in the Machine 

Themes and perspectives of the symposium 

For this 4th Death Online Research Symposium we invite abstracts for oral presentations of new, recently completed, or ongoing research or ideas for future academic research on all kinds of death related online practices. We welcome qualitative and quantitative work which expands our understanding of the current and future trends in death online research from a variety of disciplines, addressing any of the following themes: 

Digitally mediated dying and narrative 
Digitally mediated grieving and memorialising 
Death online and embodied experience 
Digital afterlife, post-mortem identity and digital legacy 
Technological developments in the death care industry 
Digital immortality 
Online vs offline experiences 
Theorising online life and death 
Ethical challenges for studying death online. 

The conference will host a special workshop for participating Post Graduate students and early career researchers. We particularly welcome submissions from these groups. All submissions will be peer-reviewed, and we envisage publication of selected full papers in a special issue of an academic journal in the field as well as a collection of writing from the symposium in an open-access online platform. 

Important information 
Submission format: 300 word abstract 
Submission deadline: March 15th, 2018 
Submission feedback: April 15th, 2018 
Registration open: May 1st, 2018 
Registration fee: £125 (£75 students). This will cover morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch for the 3 days and conference dinner on day 2. 

All submissions and enquiries should be submitted to Dr Jo Bell: j.bell@hull.ac.uk marked “Death Online Research Symposium Submission” in the subject field. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words. Please include full contact info (name/s, institutional / organisational affiliation and email address) in the submission. Submissions will be anonymised before review. 

The online registration and payment site will be open from 1st May 2018. There will also be information available here for booking options for accommodation. You can stay on The University of Hull campus at The Courtyard for £50 per night (including breakfast) or £45 per night (excluding breakfast). We will make cheaper options such as ‘air b & b’ available where possible. 


If you are interested in joining the Death Online Research Network, please contact Dr Stine Gotved: gotved@itu.dk.