Create-A-Date: A Storage Unit to Die For
Our Create-A-Date duo for this issue is Adam Haddow, director of SJB Architects, and Paul Garbett, director of Sydney graphic design studio Naughty Fish. We photographed them as they applied the finishing touches to their concept for a storage solution- a “new gravestone” designed to encrypt the traces of your digital life and store it together with your mortal ashes.
Read what they have to say about their design and see some images of their work in progress…
Lived_ by Adam Haddow and Paul Garbett
In death our mortal lives are celebrated. Rituals are diverse, attempting to both capture and release the spirit of the individual; dependent on individual beliefs and desires. Our belongings are divided among friends and family, and our memories are scattered between those who knew us. Occasionally manifestos of our life’s toil are found, in the form of diaries and journals, providing a deeper insight – often at odds with the person we thought we knew well. There are those who slip away quietly, carefully ensuring only memories remain, and there are those who leave with great pomp and circumstance, donating memoirs, artefacts and documents to our public institutions for future reference
Churchill famously said that history would be kind to him because he intended writing it himself; a luxury no longer afforded. Our digital life is becoming increasingly dense, a history of our experiences and thoughts, actions and monotony captured forever in the ether that is the web. Bank statements, photographs, Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts are active digital repositories of our lives. But in death what becomes of this documented path? What becomes of the digital history that traces our lives? As the first generation of digitally-savvy individuals begins to age there seems to be a need for a service to capture our digital life and store it. Lived_ is a service that collects, collates, stores and in some cases deletes your digital life. You can decide who can and who can’t access information, ensuring that you are able to be remembered as you see fit.
Lived_ captures your data, encrypts it and injects it into a form along with your mortal ashes, simultaneously cleaning up the mess of your digital life and enabling a new form of burial; between cremation and a personal plot.
Lived_ gives you the opportunity to condense your mortal and digital lives. These new gravestones become both the receptacle of your mortal body and your digital life. Collective burial sites become libraries of individuals’ knowledge, libraries based around personal knowledge rather than specific topics. Imagine it, burial sites would no longer be places to wonder but would become places to learn.
Take part in Create-A-Date
Monument Create-A-Date brings together two individuals from creative fields and asks them to work together to design a nominated object for publication. If you think you’re up to the challenge, register your interest in taking part in a future issue by emailing monument@pacificmags.com.au