‘Interfacing Immortality’ by Bethany Crawford

‘Interfacing Immortality’ by Bethany Crawford

26.11.19 - 26.01.20

This work is part of an ongoing body of research critically assessing the implications of ‘digital immortality’ on central tenets of the human experience such as consciousness, death and time, as a preliminary mapping of the shifting existential paradigms of the digital age. The research attempts to establish the motivations of both digital and informational technologies enacting ‘immortalisation’, and the social and modal engagement with such media. Utility of the services offering immortality, through data accumulative replication and A.I technologies, allows for a collaborative human-machine interrogation of the new ontological dimension of digitality. Through examining the recent technological advancements that have expanded the social potential of a person’s surviving online presence, a trajectory of the digitally influenced transition from memorialisation to immortalisation is established.

‘Interfacing Immortality’ by Bethany Crawford is the second project in the new screening programme ‘Dialogue Model: I can’t hear myself without you listening’ for M8 Art Space curated by Edel O’ Reilly. 

Artist:

Bethany Crawford is an artist and researcher working in lens based media. Her practice examines the visual in relation to memorial, and how this translates over time, geography and technologies. She is a recent graduate of the Dutch Art Institute masters program and holds a bachelor's degree in Moving Image from the University of Brighton. Bethany is the co-founder of the Nightlife Institute with Joanie Baumgartner. She has upcoming exhibitions and events at Roodkapje arts in Rotterdam and M8 Artspace in Helsinki. Her work was recently exhibited in Aeroponic Acts at Silent Green in Berlin, the Cinecity Film Festival and the 15th International Festival Signes de Nuit in Lisbon.  Her undergraduate thesis ‘Moving Image as Political Tool: The impact of neoliberalism on the role of the moving image in postmodern warfare’ was published in 2017 in the second volume of TransMission: The Journal of Film and Media Studies.

List of works:

Screen 1 ‘From memorial to immortal’ 2019. Video with audio (22:45) 

Screen 2 ‘A joyful immortality through Lifenaut™ memesis’ 2019. Video with audio (42:57)  

Screen 3 ‘The evolutionary concrescence of Bethany Crawford’ 2019. Video with audio (29:04) 

‘Dialogue Model: I can’t hear myself without you listening’ 

Olivia Abächerli, Bethany Crawford, Lukas Malte Hoffmann, Amanda Rice & Assem A. Hendawi

‘Dialogue Model: I can’t hear myself without you listening’ is an extended exhibition over four screenings at M8 Art Space featuring adapted projects by four international artists. Commencing in September 2019 and running until December 2020, it shares screen-based artistic research into the philosophical and existential aspects of various developments in the field of electrical engineering such as digital immortality, human-computer interaction, empathic interfaces and algorithmic governance. While the format of the programme is a sequence of multi-channel works by each artist, it is intended as a one extended project with the context and sensibility of each of the screenings interlacing. These feedback loops trace lines of tactile thinking with our simulated selves, synaptic scripts and speculative scenarios.

For further information contact Curator Edel O' Reilly ([email protected])