Tiffany Chang
November 26, 2008
Computer Hacking
Prof. Coleman
Necrocam
The current “Face Time” campaign that Dentyne Gum is running claims that our proposed tech-savvy environment is leaving human interaction derelict and human life compromised. The United States Postal Service also rolled out marketing efforts to reposition snail mail in the consumers’ mind; people pour out their hearts and confess shocking secrets to online anonymous forums such as Post Secret; and in more recent and sad news, a Florida teenager used a webcam to live-stream his suicide. What all of these events point to is the undeniable fact that today’s world is dominated by technology, and that relationships are being redefined for our interactions with such digital outlets. Necrocam, a disturbing 50-minute film about live-streaming a corpse’s decaying process, brings to light a horrific reckoning with the realization that this cyberspace and technology is not just a new space of interaction and activity, but that the virtual world is being reinforced daily as an extension of life.
Necrocam opens with a tableaux of this digital world, in which a group of friends embody the wide range of hacker interests: they play video games with vigorous passion, are into robotics and web design, engage in hacking systems, and stalk the internet for interesting finds. Christine is a girl with cancer, who attempts to cope with death in an unconventional way, by proposing that she have a webcam installed in her coffin to track her decay. Christine and her friends pledge to install a camera in the coffin of the first to die. When one of them dies unexpectedly, the others, under pact, fulfill their promise to each other despite the protests of the grieving parents.
What this film illuminates is not merely a gruesome idea, but a notion that cyberspace can be so predominant in a life, as to be able to transcend its abstract state and become something embodied. Cyberspace is certainly separate from physical space, and as such, it has appeared that a digital body has arisen that is very different from the digital body. While Christine and her friends hoped for a way to cope with physical death by producing virtual immortality, such a macabre concept epitomizes just how alive and central the Internet has become to society. By claiming that there is a virtual life to be had, that a virtual life can potentially render more of a legacy than a physical life, Necrocam speaks wonders to our current context. While such a memorial to death is unquestionably disturbing, it is interesting to wonder: if technology is seen as an extension to life, then should it not be logical to see cyberspace as an extension to death?