F A C E B O O K E P I T A P H
Video Sculpture
Facebook Epitaph is a video sculpture and installation exploring the relationship between traditional places of internment like the cemetery or columbarium, and “the digital cemetery,” the vastly growing population of deceased users on social media sites like facebook. In these spaces, the living and dead exist alongside one another, creating new modes of interaction and facilitating new types of community grieving through mournful, casual and at times humorous technology aided interaction. The project uses the traditional cemetery memorial as a point of contact, suggesting that the unfolding new applications of social media to grieve community losses and continuing bonds with the deceased are not so different.
A digital screen scrolls through a year of posts to an unnamed user, embedded in green turf like a headstone. Viewers are invited to kneel upon the turf to read the laments, playful sharing of memories and hauntingly unanswered messages to the deceased that pass over the screen.
Facebook Epitaph is a video sculpture and installation exploring the relationship between traditional places of internment like the cemetery or columbarium, and “the digital cemetery,” the vastly growing population of deceased users on social media sites like facebook. In these spaces, the living and dead exist alongside one another, creating new modes of interaction and facilitating new types of community grieving through mournful, casual and at times humorous technology aided interaction. The project uses the traditional cemetery memorial as a point of contact, suggesting that the unfolding new applications of social media to grieve community losses and continuing bonds with the deceased are not so different.
A digital screen scrolls through a year of posts to an unnamed user, embedded in green turf like a headstone. Viewers are invited to kneel upon the turf to read the laments, playful sharing of memories and hauntingly unanswered messages to the deceased that pass over the screen.