Material Category

Thesis

Description

My project explores people's digital hoarding behaviors and corresponding psychological effects. Through an interactive website that visualizes my digital possessions, I explore how technologies are transforming our collecting behaviors in a personal context and discuss the massive and ephemeral digital collections that bring us more anxiety or contentment. To be safe, resourceful, and reliable, collecting things gives us a lot of pleasure and contentment. Besides preserving the values of attributes and anticipating future usage, collecting is also a way for us to relive past events and express care. Material things have gradually become our extended-self that trace our life and make sense of our self-worth and identity. The convenience of digital technology is fostering digital hoarding. How are people’s collecting behaviors changing? How does the digital world influence the meanings attached to the collections and the corresponding people's extended-self? How do we create and justify our attachments to digital possessions?

Creator Keywords:
Digital Hoarding Behaviours; Data Visualization; Self-portrait

Date

May 1 2020

Related people

Jiawen Xie (designer)
Chris Romero (thesis advisor)
Ethan Silverman (thesis advisor)
John Sharp (thesis advisor)
Barbara Morris (thesis advisor)

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ (copyrighted)
In accordance with The New School's Intellectual Property Rights Policy, copyright is held by each thesis' respective author. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron. (copyrighted)

Identifier

PC020402_2020_xiej295

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