Publications
1 / AI Afterlives: digital memory and synthetic pasts
Kidd, J., & Nieto McAvoy, E. (2026). Bloomsbury [part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Digital Cultures series].
Nieto McAvoy, E., Kidd, J. and Jones, B. (2026) in Media/Culture Journal. https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3285
Kidd, J., & Nieto McAvoy, E. (2025) in Memory, Mind and Media (4), doi:10.1017/mem.2025.10013
Nieto McAvoy, E. & Kidd, J. (2024) in Memory, Mind and Media (3), doi:10.1017/mem.2024.10
Kidd, J., & Nieto McAvoy, E. (2023) in Convergence, 29(3), 620-640. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221149839
Other
Eva Nieto McAvoy introduces the research context and key project concerns in a 5 minute digital story.
2 / R.I.P [Rest In Protocol] 'deathbots' video
Jenny Kidd introduces our 'deathbots' work package in a 5 minute video overview.
At the end of 2024 we hosted a series of events and workshops for people in the museums/heritage sector to engage with the project and its themes. Following those interactions we produced a Workbook for cultural professionals to learn more about and reflect upon ‘AI Afterlives.’
The project team has been involved in a range of different creative and public engagement across the project. This includes podcasts, events and workshops.
5 / Website
This website is a reflection of our critical-creative approach to synthetic pasts. It is inspired by the work of scholars in adjacent and overlapping fields:
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Jenna Ng whose video essay and work on The New Virtuality has been so instructive to our approach.
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Lev Manovich’s artistic and foundational work in new media studies.
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Joanna Zylinska’s ‘hybrid’ enquiry, combining philosophy and artistic practice.
6 / Zine
Bethan Jones created a zine inspired by the project's themes: 'Is Anybody There?'
Image outputs
One of the concerns of Synthetic Pasts is how AI systems interact with images; in their creation, manipulation and circulation. When we started the project, we leant into generative AI as a way of visualising these concerns, but in recent months we have challenged ourselves to find alternative ways of representing them. Some of our approaches are digital – making films and games for example – and others embrace more analogue and hybrid approaches – monoprints, cyanotypes, collages. Many of these feature public domain images. A few of the results can be seen on this page and across the website.
A number of these images hare available in the Better Images of AI library and can be re-produced with attribution. All images on the website have been created by Jenny Kidd, some including original creative re-workings of public domain source materials.
