Digital Death

Love After Death @FutureFest

Love after Death is an installation that guides participants through the live creation of a legacy agreement. It explores how people want to grieve and what they want to leave behind in future. This experience is based on current research and innovation, which is presented as speculative options for people’s future legacy.

Each legacy agreement documents a person’s ideas of mortality – to take away and reflect on. It introduces people to planning end-of-life wishes and asks all participants to think through key questions about being human at the end of life. Topics highlighted include; digital memories and data, social media and memorials, posthumous portraiture, reimagining ritual, eco-burial, 3D printing with ashes, energy from remains, re-animation and many more.

The activities are designed to lead people through a process, but with the level and duration of participation firmly in the hands of the participant. The installation was combined with a panel of expert talks on the social stage at NESTA’s FutureFest. This event overlaps with ongoing research in the Digital Humanities, Design, the Medical Humanities, Bioethics, and interdisciplinary Death Studies. Over the festival weekend 761 people interacted with the installation either through the panel or 15-minute bookable appointments across the festival weekend.