ScottJonesStudio

Eternal Eidolons

Art Practice

Project Overview

This experimental project investigates digital representations of the self and personhood in digital public spaces.

I use ai generated music, image sonification, normal maps from 3D platforms such as Unreal Engine and Meta Human and incorporate hidden data from my own social networks to expose a picture of a synthetic self.

The poem, sections from Walter Whitman’s ‘Eidolon’, is read by an AI version of my own voice.

And with every networked interaction we construct our immortal post-organic avatars. Beings built using artefacts from our online experiences, running autonomously in the cloud. Is this an afterlife? A hi-res heaven? A background task perhaps? What can be digitally captured as the essence of our consciousness? My voice, my appearance, a mannerism, my likes, my dislikes, my reactions, now all tracked and recorded ready for my resurrection.

When am I ‘saved’? Will it be a better me? A truer me? A me worth remembering? A self built Idol? An Eidolon. Will it continue to learn, to improve it/myself? Can I already access it? Where is it?