AI + the afterlife: Melbourne Design Week public workshop

What is the future of looking back? What role will AI play in how we tell stories about the past, represent our personal legacies, memorialise our loved ones, and understand our cultural heritage?

Join us for a creative public workshop as part of Melbourne Design Week to explore the future of generative AI and its impacts on issues of storytelling, personal legacies, and cultural heritage. 

The workshop will feature individual and group creative activities, so expect to share your thoughts, ideas and questions with the group. This workshop will contribute to a research project—the participant information and consent form is available here. Participants will be asked to sign the consent form on the day at the beginning of the workshop. Participation is entirely voluntary—if you do not wish you to participate, you do not have to. 

The workshop will be led by:

Associate Professor Jed Brubaker (University of Colorado Boulder): Jed Brubaker is a human-computer interaction scholar who studies how our identities are designed, represented, and experienced through technology. He is an Associate Professor and the director of the Identity Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he has conducted research at the intersection of technology and mortality, with a specific focus on digital legacy, memorialization, and the role technology plays in how we are remembered after we die.

Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University): Larissa Hjorth is a digital ethnographer, socially-engaged artist and Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University. Hjorth has two decades experience leading mobile media projects to explore innovative methods around intergenerational connection, intimacy, games, play, loss and death in the Asia-Pacific region. Hjorth’s Future Fellowship explores mobile media mourning rituals.

Please note the venue is not wheelchair accessible. If you have any questions about the workshop please contact Dr Caitlin McGrane: caitlin.mcgrane[at]rmit.edu.au