What will happen to you data when you die?
Data Defen.se is a set of licenses you can chose to determine should happen with your data when you die (analogous to Creative Commons licenses).
* Select the Data-Public license to donate your data to the public, in which case you also allow free remixing of your data and algorithmic recreations of your former self.
* Select Data-Erase to counter data remanence by all possible means, or perhaps chose Data-Fake if you don't think it's possible to erase data but prefer to create smokescreens and have your data scrambled and continuously updated even past your death such that it's impossible to divine who you actually were.
* Data-Science: Donate your data to Science but ensure all any insights derived from your data are posthumously attributed.
* Data-Friends/Family allows friends and family to impersonate you online.
* Data-Private keeps things under the covers and lets them decay with the half-life of a hard drive.
The site has a .se top-level domain since the project was initiated at Art Hack Day Stockholm.
For the exhibit we held an ID stamping performance where visitors could select a data license and stamp their government issued IDs to declare what posterity should do with their data.
Data Defen.se thus inscribes itself in a long tradition of ID manipulation by artists (after all your ID card is, along with your organ donation card, perhaps the most emblematic form of personal analog data).
The ID stamper was made from old typewriter bits and scrap metal such that anyone in the world can re-enact the performance. The logos for the data licenses mirror the typography of typewriter bits. The inverse 'E' in the stamper reflects the logo for the 'Data-Erase' license.
Future performances include a live tattoo parlor for data license branding.
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