On March 27, 2005 at the Big Easys charmingly bizarre Barristers Gallery, artists will experience what afterlife will be in a virtual death memorial group show Hydriotaphia: New Orleans Artists Design Their Own Funeral Urns. Barristers Gallery owner, Andy Antippas will act as curator with artist, Dan | | Teague. To spice up the show and heighten enthusiasm for it, Antippas declared, What are memorials to the dead but touchstones for the great post-mortem popularity contest He whose gravestone draws the biggest crowds wins
Digital artist, David Sullivan plays off the self-esteem type of virtual death memorial by coming up with his Ego Machine. In order to put the fun back into the funeral, this project of Sullivan uses Google, as protector of his soul into the future. His concept for the Ego Machine was that the vanity of death memorials levels off with the use of the internet like a vanity mirror. He had also emphasized todays geeky technological interests robots, artificial intelligence, DNA replication and cloning that somehow are manic on immortality.
The Ego Machine has an urn for Sullivan that was visually interesting, gives chance for user involvement and allows citation of his physical body. His remains will be integrated in a computer processor. As a memorial, a virtual agent shall run on the computer containing his ashes and scour the web for mentions of his name. Once mention of his name increases across the web, an image of Sullivans younger self will morph on-screen. However, once mention decreases, his on-screen image will age, diminish and ultimately fade away.
The program that powers Ego Machine was authored in Macromedia Director. The program uses a web-spider that goes through the web gathering and indexing specific information automatically, the data being mentions of Sullivans name. The data found, containing the originating web address, context and date, where Sullivans name was mentioned will be logged into a mySQL database. The Director program then accesses the gathered data through a plug-in called xMySQL.
The Ego Machines prototype will be presented in the virtual death memorial gallery. Hes to encourage visitors to link into his website, discuss him on their blogs or visit the Ego Machines beta version and manipulate his store of after-life points. Meanwhile, the gallery visitors will be given a chance to interact directly with its non-beta version.
Other graphic design artists also created pieces for the show. An urn that holds the remains of Roy Ferdinand, an artist who lost his battle with cancer on Dec. 3, 2004, will also be shown. Two artists are commissioned by Antippas to create Ferdinands urn that displays some of the things he treasured and his artworks, after Ferdinands sister handed over Ferdinands ashes to Antippas.
The show simply showed that even as we are |
| | his battle with cancer on Dec. 3, 2004, will also be shown. Two artists are commissioned by Antippas to create Ferdinands urn that displays some of the things he treasured and his artworks, after Ferdinands sister handed over Ferdinands ashes to Antippas.
The show simply showed that even as we are practically mortals and all, not entirely permanent in this world technological advances may help in making us virtually immortal. -30-
About The Author
Lala C. Ballatan is a 26 year-old Communication Arts graduate, with a major in Journalism. Right after graduating last 1999, she worked for one year as a clerk then became a Research, Publication and Documentation Program Director at a non-government organization, which focuses on the rights, interests and welfare of workers for about four years.
Book reading has always been her greatest passion -- mysteries, horrors, psycho-thrillers, historical documentaries and classics. She got hooked into it way back when she was but a shy kid.
Her writing prowess began as early as she was 10 years old in girlish diaries. With writing, she felt freedom to express her viewpoints and assert it, to bring out all concerns -- imagined and observed, to bear witness.
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This article was posted on March 11, 2005 |
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