Created by Amy Whittle, Artificial Afterlife is a personal interpretation of technology through spiritual phenomena. It focusses on mystifying technology, using exposed wires, apparatus and sockets physically connected with the dead.
“As a non believer I too desire a form of afterlife, as an interaction designer I believe these notions can be realised with the help of technology.” – Amy Whittle
Inspired by galvanism and the famous novel Frankenstein, an analogue electronic circuit was created using deceased animals as an energy source. The deceased animal (donated by a local animal rescue center) is the circuit’s key, generating red and blue visuals on a monitor screen. Without this source, the monitor will not be powered nor will it produce any visuals. With this set-up Amy is trying to introduce a combination of opposite theories: technology and spirituality.
To create the ‘machine’, Amy tried to think of a simple circuit that could visualize the decomposition of the duck. Inspired by the Albert Einstein ideas about how “energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another”, Amy created a circuit which is mostly “analogue”; consisting of: relay -> power supply -> oscillator -> VGA cable -> monitor screen and visualises the energy of the deceased animal.
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