Digital Legacy – I Wish I Could Die
Rouxi Pan
The design of the project is based on the topic of digital legacy, using the expression of virtual space to visualize the accumulation of digital legacy and the monitory by surveillance capitalism, challenging how to translate people’s behaviour on the internet into spatial forms. It also discusses personal data that we are not usually aware of and the issue of its privacy and the relationship between controlling and being controlled. I liken the attraction of the internet to people’s dependence on sugar, imagining a virtual sugar world after death using my own behaviour in the digital world as an example. Different types of spaces and materials are used to express the privacy and publicness and traceability of information. The project as a whole visually maps the online world with a gorgeous and colourful candy world, expressing the digital hegemony of surveillance capitalism and the beautiful emptiness behind the information explosion. It invites people to think about their digital legacy and the existence of individuals in both the virtual and physical worlds.
We live in a highly digital society and we are becoming more and more involved in the web. The pandemics that have occurred in recent years have advanced the digital process, as our participation in the actual physical world was limited at the beginning of the pandemic, which forced us to participate more in the online world. The digital format has made our participation in the online world more traceable, (for example we can look back on our previous activities well afterwards). At the same time the pandemic has caused many people to lose or voluntarily abandon their original jobs, giving rise to many online jobs as well as industries. This has increased the circulation of financial resources online. On the other hand, the development of the digital industry has also influenced the design and art industries, which creating many products that have real monetary value. For example, the recent topic of the metaverse has led to an increasing number of online artworks, and virtual artists. For example, digital paintings, virtual fashion products, virtual offices, digital characters, etc. Almost everything that exists in the real world or space can be moved to the virtual world. At the same time, it is no doubt that online communication has increased, whether it is for working or study at home or online consumption. which means our communication was verbally can be accessed repeatedly in text form.
Our lives are recorded more concretely on the internet. They are strung together into a digital autobiography that becomes our digital legacy after our death. Our data are monitored. We are in an age of surveillance capitalism, where our digital legacy is stored in different web pages and devices, which are fragmented and monitored by different platforms. The internet blurs the line between life and death, and whether we are still alive or dead, the surveillance of our digital material will never stop.
In conclusion, based on the above reflections, digital legacy became the topic of my research for this project. I want to present our digital legacy and its surveillance through a interior design approach.
Digital Legacy: I Wish I Could Die
A film showing the interior space and narrative development of the project – https://youtu.be/ZfqUiZcqE2c
