Connected Kin
👉 This is part of My Virtual Soulmate
We can’t always be physically close to the things that matter the most to us: family, home. But innovations are finding new ways to hold them close in our hearts.
Evidence A: Postcards from Home
The Families Reunion Project exists to connect undocumented families in the US with the people and places they left behind. Using VR, AR, volumetric capture and 360 video, they create virtual postcards from the homes that they cannot return to. The project created the room-scale interactive experience ‘Home with América’ in 2019, following the story of Gladys, to publicly demonstrate the private experiences that the project has facilitated for over a dozen families.
Evidence A: The Online Afterlife
In the past 10 years, the question of digital immortality has emerged. As AI becomes more humalike, allowing us to create digital replicas or ‘brain uploads’ that mirror the visual likeness, quirks of language and thought patterns of particular individuals. South Korea is forging ahead in this space with Re:Memory, which allows you to create a self-avatar that your family can visit; whilst documentary ‘Meeting You’ reunited grieving family members with the deceased one last time.
