🕳️  SKYE XINYI GAO

Hallo! Nǐ Hǎo!   


I am Skye, a Creative technologist, Experience designer, and interdisciplinary Artist. 

I explore the possibility of Interaction Design and Natural Intelligence in the context of Emerging technology. 



Selected Work  
2024AlgaMatrixBio Design    
2024OS 1.1 (Page WIP)Public Installation
2024Wired Wild(der)nessWildlife Speculation
2023Wiggly Wally
Bio-inspired Robotic
2022Oblique ObstructionInteractive Installation
2022BITS OF ASHESComputational Design
2022THE CARESS OF THORNComputational Design
2021EmotionWareWearable System
2022(Int) CocoonOpenCV
2021Sentient ComplexInteractive Installation
2021Media ArchitectureMedia Design
2021The OutsideImmersive Media
2020Remember Me DigitallyMulti-media Exhibition
2019Re-shapingKinetic Installation
2018KaleidoShareInteraction Design
  
 

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Email: skyegao@gsd.harvard.edu


© 2024 Skye Xinyi Gao

Remember Me Digitally: Rethink Digital Legacy through Electronic Media




Type:
DIgital Death, Multimedia Installation, Interaction Design

Team:
Yanran Bi, Zhichen Wang

Affiliation: NYU Shanghai - Dean’s Undergraduate Research Funding (DURF)
Year: 2020
With digital lives extending beyond our bodily ones, fundamental topics of humanity such as death, loss, grief, and mourning have been increasingly transferred to and negotiated in digitized media environments. Digital media, along with its user-generated social networks, constitute an ever-growing archive of user assets, through which digital legacy is generated and available for grief-related practice. As the development of its tools and applications becomes more sophisticated, media technology shows its potential for extending the bonds between the living and the deceased.

This exhibition addresses the evolving topics of death, loss, and bereavement in a digitally mediated environment with a focus on grief-related practices towards digital legacy. Three sub-projects pertaining to themes such as the occurrence of death, preservation of memory, and choices of inclusion or exclusion of digital assets from archives constitute a journey through digital death. The experience aims to facilitate reflection on the posthumous meaning of digital assets and provide a medium for exploring the potential treatment of digital legacy at the individual as well as the holistic level.



Part One: Occurrence of Death  


The first piece of work deals with the ways in which people’s deaths are made public through various media platforms. It also integrates people's mourning and remembrance of the deceased through audio recordings.

Participants entered the gallery space beneath a series of cyberghost white LED door frames as they approached different stages of the exhibition. Free-standing speakers—each not much larger than a human ear—were posted at different heights and whispered recorded remembrances of the fictional deceased. To hear the intimate stories, audience members had to lean in or stand on tip-toe to reach each speak

An old Nokia phone sat quiet on its own podium across from a more recent model mobile phone that auto-generated a casual text message conversation about death to show how modes of grievance evolve with technology. Following this was a monitor displaying a US Standard Certificate of Death about a homeless guy and an outdated television set on the ground cycling a news report of a teen drowning. 



Part Two: Preservation of Memory


Through the display of photos, videos, and social media of a fictionary deceased person, this work explores the different media and methods through which digital assets can and will be preserved.  

Memories of a fictitious character are played in a stand-alone digital photo frame as well as a self-scrolling monitor that revealed activity on the deceased’s Facebook-feeling social media site. A VR experience is also included for the audience to immerse themselves into the memory and environment of the dead.


Part Three: Personal Choice


How will you deal with your digital legacy? What should happen to your data after your passing? Through an interactive experience, this work simulates the choices we will have to make for your data. Will you preserve, delete or share your data with the world?
The third and final part of the exhibition required the audience to make a decision regarding their own digital legacy by uploading a personal photo to a platform, setting a password, and choosing between ‘Delete,’ ‘Share’ or ‘Preserve,’ resulting in a printed receipt with a QR code depending on your choice.



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