How can I live forever?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So far, so good, as Steven Wright says.

But this is a serious problem for me, warranting more than a mere quip.

I am an artist, the type(s) of art I create being immaterial here, so let’s just say I am a multi-media, multi-genre artist, and I am disturbed by the idea that I will die before achieving the ultimate goal of having my work enshrined in museums, private collections, etc. I don’t mind dying (much) but I do mind having my work enshrined in the town dump.

I don’t have any heirs, at least none willing to lift a finger to preserve my work, and right now the physical portion of my work is occupying several walk-in closets in my home. I imagine that when I die, whoever inherits my home will view the artwork contained therein as a nuisance, and it will be quickly destroyed.

Some of the work however is not physical. It is preserved on various hard drives and flash drives, and should be easier to preserve indefinitely, not requiring physical space to store it on. But even here, I need someone, or some entity, to preserve these files. Is there any way to ensure that these files can be preserved until such time as there is any demand for them?

The latter seems more practical, and the physical stuff can be digitized (I have files that consist of photographs of the physical art, though it doesn’t do it justice–texture is crucial to my work), but even there this problem vexes me. Is there any entity that I can ask to keep my digitized art, or is it simply going to be lost forever after I die?

I’m in perfect health, merely mortal, so no answer is required quickly. It would set my mind at ease if I could come up with a solution to this vexing problem. I am willing to spend a fair amount if that would help me find a solution.

2

Forever is a very long time.
Entropy will take its course and so far as we know, there is no workaround for that. The information will eventually be lost.

But you are only talking about relatively short term preservation. Hundreds of years perhaps.

The obvious answer is to set up some sort of simple trust with enough money that it can survive long term that only has the purpose of reserving your data. I’m sure that there are law firms that will only be too happy to set up such an entity. You are dependant upon the survival of our general financial and legal structures over time. But so far they generally seems robust enough for purpose.

Achieving some form of notoriety seems to help, at least for a while, as well.

If you thought you might die leaving a reasonable sum of money, without heirs to squabble over the money, you might endow an existing local institution with a fund, one that includes preservation of your works.

Whether anyone will suddenly find the desire to hunt out your preserved works down the centuries is another matter. You have a lot to compete with.

3

Hmmm. Hadn’t thought of this. Let’s discuss–what sort of institution do you suppose would be the most nearly permanent and the most willing? A university library? A museum? I wonder if there is some sort of national clearinghouse that specializes in this sort of thing.

I’m working on this. One of my pieces is legally enjoined from public showing --I took an unfinished work by one of my teachers, a very well-known artist, and finished it rather nicely IMO, but his heirs prefer for it to remain unfinished and unshown, so I’ve written a book describing my legal quandary regarding this work.

4

While most art / cultural institutions rely on bequests in wills or donations by the living, they are generally very wary of having any strings attached. If you were offering enough money to build and populate a new gallery wing, of course they will be pleased to call it the Scrooge McDuck Wing, but any donation of cash or art by artists or people of more modest means will be carefully scrutinised, and rejected if there are any obligations set on the institution.

In my field there have been cases where historic houses were donated to preservation societies who then found that they were obligated to use them in a way that bled money without furthering their objectives and couldn’t just sell them for the cash. I know of art bequests which have had the same consequence.

With that caveat that a ‘yes’ is not a given, I think a cultural institution like a regional or university gallery would be your best bet to approach, especially if you’re a recognised artist. Making it attractive by not insisting they keep everything would immediately make it less unpalatable, and focus in the region where you work or are best known.

If your opinion is that your entire oeuvre must maintain its integrity, that will be a much harder sell.

5

Fame. As Irene Cara (RIP) so memorably put it:

Although the performance doesn’t start until 0:53 into this clip.

You can try to preserve your work. You can try to pay somebody to preserve your work. Or you can cause other people to want to preserve your work for its own sake and their own sake. The latter approach is most likely to have some lasting power. And their want depends on your fame.

My grandfather was a locally semi-famous artist in the rather large art market of San Francisco. A few of his pieces survived in local sales galleries after his death as an elderly man in the early 1990s. Now? Some of his small extended family have a piece or two, but the vast majority is gone, moldering in some landfill someplace. Some buyers someplace may have a piece or two, but nobody but them know who they are.

Such is the nature of human existence. Ozymandias was on to something. Only the tiniest fraction off all human artifacts still exist 20 years later, much less 200 or 2000 years later. Immortality is, sadly, just not part of our realm of possibilities.

6

Unfortunately for me, the larger works are the least known, but it would be acceptable to bequeath digital versions to the institution. If I’m talking about large files, but very tiny amounts of actual space being occupied, it would seem to me to make sense for the institution to consider a monetary contribution of several times the maximum conceivable cost of storing a terabyte or two in perpetuity a fair exchange.

In a larger sense, this makes sense for both artists and institutions. The institutions wouldn’t even need (as far as I’m concerned) to make assurances that they would preserve the work for the indefinite future, only that they would preserve it for 300 years or so and would strive to preserve it from that point on. They could also keep the right to publish or display it if they choose to with no moneys reverting to my estate or heirs. Seems like a win-win to me, but what do I know?

I have several institutions in mind, one being the university archive where my teacher’s work is preserved, another being my undergrad college because it is a very well-endowed institution and very likely to be in existence for another millennium or so.

7

Also, I should note that I’m well aware of how egotistical this inquiry seems, and I have phrased the title question with ironical intent. No one lives forever, and I’m quite sure I won’t be the first, nor will my obscure work be revered by millions in some future enlightened time.

But on the other hand, I think my work is valuable and I don’t want it destroyed just because I’ve died. I’d like to die (and to live) thinking that there is a viable path for people to see my work and to enjoy it.

Even if it’s only a slim chance, I’d like to do whatever I can to maximize it, including spending some of the money I’ve accrued to make that happen. Knowing I’ve done that helps me feel at peace with my mortality.

The digital revolution has opened me to the viability of my aims here. If I had more skills in technology, in fact, I’d like to create a system of preserving people’s artifacts for future generations, and now that I think on it a bit, I’d be surprised if some tech wizard hasn’t already hit on this as a profitable venture.

Even if I (or my tech wizard) were to charge people a fee like $10,000 per terabyte, which is a fraction of what I’m willing to pay, I (or he) wouldn’t need very many customers to set up a perpetual corporation to maintain a viable database. But then I’m no tech wizard, so maybe this is more challenging than I’m supposing.

8

You’ll need a time machine. One that de-ages you as you travel back in time, so that you can relive the 80s and 90s over and over again, without getting decrepit.

9

My ex-father-in-law devoted his life to creating works of art. Unfortunately for him, this art was sculpture–huge heavy pieces of marble, and his family tried to keep it around their houses. I used to live in one of these houses, and I was constantly putting my foot down about acquiring more and more of this stuff. I didn’t like the man personally, but his family ( particularly my ex-wife) felt obliged to turn their houses into mini-museums because he impressed upon them the value of his sculptures. “I refuse to live in a Museum of Shit,” I would tactfully explain to her, although to give the man credit, it was skillfully executed and he was a highly trained sculptor with considerable artistic taste. I just disliked him and didn’t want to be reminded of him in every room of my house, which got resolved when I moved out of my ex’s now-house. My kids are both gypsies, so I don’t suppose they have any of his sculptures, and they don’t have kids nor does he have any other progeny, so his stuff will wind up in a landfill someday. I’m hoping to avoid, or at least to delay, that fate.

10

Believe me, I wish you well in your endeavor. But based solely on your OP I was unclear about whether you had a realistic appraisal of what you’re up against, and whether you’d gotten your psyche prepared for the likely outcome of your quest. From your subsequent posts it’s clear you do.

My 2.5 million words (!) on the 'Dope are my own quest for immortality in a way. Or at least some tenuous existence post-mortem. To be sure, the 'Dope could shut down tomorrow and it’d all be lost; I have no backup of my posts.

In a sense, what we’re all really after is mindshare. I expect you’d rather that future people know of your works even only as JPGs than that the works survive intact on a barren planet after all the humans have somehow vanished.

It’s a strange thing to contemplate: what if we did have innate knowledge of all our forbearers? Not as in reincarnation, but simply as something akin to instinct, wherein we each had familiarity with the personalities and foibles of our ancestors from long, long ago just as we know or knew our aunts & uncles & now long lost childhood friends?

11

Huge, heavy marble objects are very durable and stand a decent chance of surviving hundreds of years. Laser etch some biographical data into titanium or stainless steel or (better yet) gold and bury or submerge it with the sculpture someplace unlikely to be found.

Nomads?

12

Funny you should mention this. I’ve written a poem about a dead sculptor’s deranged son-in-law (who hates his guts) arranging to rent a helicopter to fly the man’s life works out over the ocean to dump them one by one so that they never will be seen by any living human ever again.

13

One wrinkle to this: You don’t just need your work to be preserved. You need for it to remain accessible. People aren’t going to say, 100 years from now, “Wow, this art was really revolutionary!”, if they’ve never had a chance to see it.

The fact that it’s (at least some of it) digital does simplify matters, though. Basically, what you want is a web hosting service, that will agree to a contract to host it in perpetuity. You’re still at the whim of the service itself going out of business, but you could mitigate that by mirroring it on multiple services. And perpetual hosting isn’t all that onerous: As time goes on, storage space continually gets cheaper, to the point that it’s often easier to just leave things in place, than to take the effort to delete it.

14

James Joyce re: Ulysses:

I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that is the only way of insuring one’s immortality.

15

Every single part of that project would be easier, faster, more effective, safer, and, especially, cheaper if you forget about a helicopter and just sink them off a boat. Further from shore, a lot less worry about weigh considerations, better placement options, etc. It goes from a never gonna happen fantasy to something that could realistically be finished over the summer.

16

Well (this is a bit of a hijack) it’s more dramatic from a helicopter. The most important thing, I realize, is that the aim is to destroy the sculpture but in fact the would-be destroyer is actually preserving the sculpture.

Hmm, a web-hosting service? Any ideas about how I would find one that would agree to a perpetual contract? Maybe I should partner up with someone who would know how to start such a company and we’d advertise to people in a similar situation to mine. There must be many out there.

17

Frankly all physical attempts to remind people of your existence are subject to decay. Structures decay or are destroyed, funds dry up, or are stolen or are repurposed and cannot be protected because governments are not eternal. In my opinion the best way to become eternal is to something either legendarily good or something legendarily bad.

18

I’m just looking to buy a little extra time. The OP title is ironic. Barely possible, and ideal, but any extra time would be comforting.

19

In a discussion about the preservation of Australia’s rare and endangered animals one of our eminent museum directors made the left-field suggestion that rather than habitat preservation, cloning etc we should consider making them either pets or edible, because then a whole commercial machine kicks in to ensure sustainable supply.

In an artistic context, rather than having the definitive collection of your works in one institution, you decentralise it as public domain art which exists as our collective future image of what it was like in the 2020s. An example might be the anonymous car designer of the late 1950s, whose invention of the tailfin now reappears in every movie, advert or music video of the 50s. No one remembers Ludwig Tailfin’s name but we all know his work. Hopefully your work or style is just as iconic.

20

Has anyone suggested not dying?