In the emerging Fifth Industrial Revolution
In the emerging Fifth Industrial Revolution, the boundary between the physical and digital world is becoming increasingly blurred, changing the way we experience memory, presence and death. This talk explores the growing relationship between extended reality (XR), digital immortality and the architecture of remembrance, asking: What happens when the body no longer needs a physical place to be remembered?
From South African cemeteries and QR-coded gravestones to AI avatars, virtual memorials and holographic resurrections, we will explore how mourning is moving into the Metaverse. As technology reshapes the rituals of grief, what does it mean to visit the dead in virtual reality, speak to an AI version of a loved one, or preserve a life in digital form? At a time when our online selves may outlive our physical bodies, this talk considers whether these new technologies bring us closer to those we have lost, or simply create new ghosts for the living.
Speaker Bio:
Jason Wiggin spends an unhealthy amount of time thinking about death, ruins, memory and forgotten places. A Senior Lecturer in Interior Design at Norwich University of the Arts, his research wanders through cemeteries, adaptive reuse, digital afterlives and the curious ways people choose to be remembered. He believes interiors don’t end at the walls of a building, they extend into stories, rituals, landscapes and, perhaps, the Metaverse.
Curated & Hosted by
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon
Don’t worry if you can’t make the talk live on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
