Vital ties : digitally mediated intimacies with the dead / Molly Hales.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hales, Molly, 1985- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Death--Social aspects--History--21st century.

Death.

Death--Psychological aspects--History--21st century.

Bereaved persons--Effect of technological innovations on--History--21st century.

Bereaved persons.

Memorialization--History--21st century.

Memorialization.

Bereavement--History--21st century.

Bereavement.

Grief--History--21st century.

Grief.

Social media and society--History--21st century.

Social media and society.

Digital media--Social aspects--History--21st century.

Digital media.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2026.

Summary:

Vital Ties depicts an emergent form of intimacy with the dead mediated by digital technologies. In southern Australia, a game developer crafts a virtual reality experience, reuniting his best friend with an avatar of his late father. In Northern California, a woman creates a smartphone app to log moments in which her deceased mother appears. In Chicago, a high school teacher visits her late brother's Facebook page, hypnotized by the shifting content that animates and reanimates him. As digital media offer ways to bring the dead to presence, the living and the dead are haunted in new ways, affecting relationships to both media and death. Lyrical and moving, Vital Ties offers a powerful rethinking of death, memory, and mediation in the digital age.

Contents:

Bodies of the dead: Mike and George in virtual reality

A database of fragments: Frank and Lois's Facebook page

Animating memory: Erin and Patricia's app

Homes for the dead: Corey and Marty's online memorial.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-5017-8668-7

9781501786686