ageing and death in China

"Imagine a country in which the population is rapidly ageing and yet people do not want to talk about how to care for the elderly because they think it could bring bad luck." Martin Patience - BBC News, Beijing.

Read his brief but interesting article about China and its cultural attitude towards death and dying http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12334284

death and the web

In the last few days I came across three interesting debates on identity on the internet and what remains of it when we die... I post them here while I think about them...

http://ideasbazaar.typepad.com/the_ideas_bazaar/2011/01/death-digital-remains-and-the-network.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09Immortality-t.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/12/death-and-digital-gh.html

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addition as per 31/03/2011:

The Luca Coscioni Foundation just released a Facebook app, "The Last Wish" where users can identify two candidates (e.g. friends, family members) who, in case the user dies, can unlock through a procedure (e.g. filling in some forms) a message left by the user for after he or she died.

http://pappagallo.posterous.com/il-testamento-biologico-si-puo-fare-su-facebo#comment

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other addition... nice blog @Death Reference about Facebook and dying: "19,000 Facebook Users Die Each Day. Here is How FB’s Memorialization Mode Works"

http://deathreferencedesk.org/2012/02/05/19000-facebook-users-die-each-day-here-is-how-fbs-memorialization-mode-works/

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image @Flikr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarniebill/3447801705/ by sarniebill1

Research Assistant in Ethnography and Design at the TRIL centre

We have an opening for a new position as a Research Assistant in Ethnography and Design at the TRIL centre (www.trilcentre.org)!

job description: https://hrweb.ucd.ie/pls/corehrrecruit/docs/0000063240.pdf

to apply: https://hrweb.ucd.ie/pls/corehrrecruit/erq_search_package.search_form?p_company=1&p_internal_external=E

DOLL FACE

Check the "Doll Face" short movie by Andrew Thomas Huang

http://www.andrewthomashuang.com/MOV_Doll_Face.htm ;

a mechanic female creature tries to emulate the "doll face" she sees in an old TV that moves away from her... interesting visualization of the dynamics media and visual technologies create around the female (traditionally, but increasingly no longer exclusively female) body. A process of "dollification" if you will...

(image from http://dekku.nofatclips.com/2007/03/andy-huang-doll-face.html)

Top 3 Selling Photography Books of All Time

1977 NYC Camera World & Sound Store Window By Whiskeygonebad

I am thinking a lot about photography these days... check the "Top 3 Selling Photography Books of All Time" http://elizabethavedon.blogspot.com/2010/11/top-3-selling-photography-books-of-all.html by ELIZABETH AVEDON. I still remember vividly the first time I read On Photography by Susan Sontag and Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes; both very small (materially speaking) books with almost no photographs in them, manage to embody much of the essence of the way “we” (as 20^th century westerners) relate to photographs and photography.

Photographs 'toohardtokeep'

a project on photographs that are 'too hard to keep'... exactly like the photographs I am currently thinking about...

read the article http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/11/09/131188172/snapshots?ft=1&f=97635953&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter by MITO HABE-EVANS

an archive project by --Jason Lazarus see http://toohardtokeep.blogspot.com/

Text/textuality/data in the digital world

an old video but I just discovered it... made by (then?) Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology Micheal Wesch the video briefly explores language, text and textuality (and importantly data...) in the digital ecosystem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

photo By eyesplash Mikul @Flikr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyesplash/4121161376/

(here you can add tags if you recognise the languages in the sculpture)