Many of the recent articles have addressed the idea of digital immortality. Old scrapbooks are often compared to social media profiles, but I feel that the whole “Life in the digital world is forever” concept requires a little more unpacking than these articles are willing to dive into. Specifically referring to Alexandria Sherlock’s article “Digital Resurrection and the re-Enchantment of Society”, the jump from a digital memento to symbolic immortality is made almost immediately. This opens up numerous avenues for interesting discussion, but I feel that it is not quite an accurate description of the phenomenon at hand. In last semester’s FMS 321 class, “Interactive Digital Narratives” we discussed the new layer of portrayal that modern technology allows. Along with visual, auditory, and more sensory-focused portrayal in art, we can now functionalize our art as well. Video games are an example of procedure-based art, and the digital reconstruction of humans is just another expression of that art form.
Take the 2-Pac hologram, for example. It resembles the likeness of 2-Pac, but the art on display is a procedure-based musical performance which doesn’t embody 2-Pac’s personality, but only makes reference to it. For example, When Snoop Dogg asked 2-Pac, “What kind of party is this?” 2-Pac responded by singing “Ain’t nuthin but a gansta party” making reference to a previous song. This is an example of Benjamin’s assertion that the “aura” of something must be connected to the original. Procedure-based artistic design lends itself extremely well to this, as seen in the episode of Black Mirror where the reproduced Ashe essentially accesses the “aura” of the original Ashe (via his Facebook profile) in order to seem more authentic. It becomes a procedure-based art form to construct a recreation of a being that can interact and interface with the viewer in an authentic way. Due to these likenesses being only portrayed in their own art form (rapping, acting, ect.) they are permanently bound to that space and become the spectacle themselves.
Ultimately, it is important to be cognizant of what is actually happening with digital recreations, and not go too far off the edge with postulation.