Datagården is a teletext cemetary with obituaries of people’s online lives, made by Raquel Meyers, Possan and me at Art Hack Day – Larger Than Life, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, 2013.

It works on an standard TV, operated with a standard remote control. The headphones enhance the experience with eerie music of mine.

Datagården on page 100 is a speculation about how automatic obituaries might look like in the future, by scraping together all the data trails we leave behind. In Datagården some of the information is actually taken from the internet, while other is pure fiction.

The DIYobituary on page 200 uses a webcam to show your face in teletext in realtime. Otwituaries on page 300 shows obituaries taken from Twitter.

Thanks to Peter Kwan for developing some of the tools we used.

Teletext is often described as a dead medium. But in Scandinavia it is still one of the most popular media. In Sweden, 20% of the population uses it everyday.

And on a more philosophical note, teletext exists somewhere inbetween digital and analogue, text and graphics, video and data, screen and stream. You can’t record teletext because it’s inbetween everything. Just like death. Uh, or life?

█ Article in Computer Sweden (in Swedish)
█ Photos/pictures by Raquel Meyers
█ Photos by Possan
█ Read my overview of teletext art

We also filmed the TV and fed it back to the TV.

Video feedback, blasted through transparent teletext, is one of the wonders of the world.