“All these cases show just how open the human corpse is as a median of expression of different social values.”
Douglas James Davies, ‘A Brief History of Death’
Despite a general abhorrence to war the First World War was expected to be relatively short. It was so drawn out that everyone on the front line came to live with the possibility of their death thrust upon them on a regular basis. This, Sigmund Freud recognised, had changed everyone’s attitude towards death . Death became day-to-day preoccupation, something thing that was actively anticipated and prepared for. British artists responded with work that communicated the dread wastefulness of war such as John Singer Sargent's ‘Gasses’ featuring some walking wounded and hundred of bodies left dishevelled and prone. Working more subtly, ‘We Are Making a New World,’ by Paul Nash hints at the waste of life by excluding obvious bodies but showing the remains of bombarded trees, split and hollow, and many mounds of dirt.
From the late 19th century to the mid 20th century, as health care and awareness improved, people were more likely to live a longer life and to die at home. The corpse would be embalmed at home and life in …show more content…
The Internet’s aesthetic is clean, divorced from the dirt and physical decay of human experience. Death, as practiced on the Web, is something one constructs out of personal desire from personal tragedy, projected through words and images; It is an interpreted experience; HTML is a meagre substitute for the body. So far our most cutting edge technology is struggling to make an impact on this most human of experiences.
This essay is a speculation demonstrating how digital technology could change the way we deal with anxieties around death, in particular the grieving phase of the bereft. I attempt to do this by speculating about my reaction to the death of my brother to create an imaginary case study of how the machinations of the proposed system work from
Douglas James Davies, ‘A Brief History of Death’
Despite a general abhorrence to war the First World War was expected to be relatively short. It was so drawn out that everyone on the front line came to live with the possibility of their death thrust upon them on a regular basis. This, Sigmund Freud recognised, had changed everyone’s attitude towards death . Death became day-to-day preoccupation, something thing that was actively anticipated and prepared for. British artists responded with work that communicated the dread wastefulness of war such as John Singer Sargent's ‘Gasses’ featuring some walking wounded and hundred of bodies left dishevelled and prone. Working more subtly, ‘We Are Making a New World,’ by Paul Nash hints at the waste of life by excluding obvious bodies but showing the remains of bombarded trees, split and hollow, and many mounds of dirt.
From the late 19th century to the mid 20th century, as health care and awareness improved, people were more likely to live a longer life and to die at home. The corpse would be embalmed at home and life in …show more content…
The Internet’s aesthetic is clean, divorced from the dirt and physical decay of human experience. Death, as practiced on the Web, is something one constructs out of personal desire from personal tragedy, projected through words and images; It is an interpreted experience; HTML is a meagre substitute for the body. So far our most cutting edge technology is struggling to make an impact on this most human of experiences.
This essay is a speculation demonstrating how digital technology could change the way we deal with anxieties around death, in particular the grieving phase of the bereft. I attempt to do this by speculating about my reaction to the death of my brother to create an imaginary case study of how the machinations of the proposed system work from