How Hollywood Represents Digital Immortality Through Technology
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Chapter 1: The Intersection of Technology and Grief
For many years, science fiction across films, television, and literature has tackled our innate longing to connect with those we have lost. With advancements in artificial intelligence, our visions of machine learning holograms and robots are becoming increasingly tangible. Recent films and documentaries have started to explore this groundbreaking technology, and my research delves into several narratives that illustrate our current standing in technology, science, and posthumanism.
In A.rtificial I.mmortality, filmmaker Ann Shin investigates the concept of digital immortality, highlighting the rapid progress in AI and robotics. Through interviews with tech innovators, transhumanists, neuroscientists, and spiritual leaders, she examines the broader implications of legacy and existence.
Section 1.1: Technology's Role in Legacy
The Wall Street Journal’s documentary, How Tech Can Bring Our Loved Ones to Life After They Die, presented by Joanna Stern, investigates how technology can preserve our stories posthumously. The film features Lucy, who, despite being wheelchair-bound, yearns to leave a lasting digital legacy. This narrative shifts the focus from death to the significance of legacy in enriching our lives.
Subsection 1.1.1: The Emotional Landscape of AI
Gavin Rothery’s science fiction thriller Archive explores how grief propels a solitary computer scientist to engineer an AI version of his deceased wife. As he creates increasingly sophisticated replicas, tensions arise between the AIs, highlighting the emotional complexities of loss and longing.
Section 1.2: Memory and Identity
One of the more profound cinematic explorations of grief and technology is the 2017 film Marjory Prime. The story centers on Marjory, an elderly woman with early-onset dementia, who interacts with Walter, a holographic android modeled after her deceased husband. Walter assists her in recalling memories, though the accuracy of these recollections can be questionable. After Marjory's passing, she is recreated as a prime to help her daughter cope with her loss, a role that Geena Davis describes as:
“a meditation on what it is to be human and how much of us and who we think we are is based on our memories.”
Chapter 2: The Future of Digital Representation
In a poignant scene, Davis’s character browses through old photographs and stumbles upon an image of her son who had died years earlier. His existence has been deliberately omitted from the primes’ memories, illustrating that some recollections are too painful to confront.
As we navigate the 21st century, technology offers the means to replicate the deceased, helping us manage our overwhelming grief through a legacy that is less tangible than a photograph but far more interactive. The question remains: can we adapt to this technological evolution, or will we, like we have for the past 150 years with photos, come to accept an interactive AI representation of our loved ones?
Ginger Liu is the founder of Ginger Media & Entertainment and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. focusing on photography, death, and artificial intelligence. She is also a podcast producer, journalist, author, artist, and filmmaker.
The second video titled Bringing Hollywood's Digital Humans To Life provides insights into how filmmakers are creating lifelike digital characters, blending the boundaries between reality and representation.