Secondhand Life

Secondhand Life is a game that responds to Wendy W Fok's speculative project "Live With Data", where data servers are built into furniture pieces, bringing people physically closer to data.

Secondhand Life envisions the sequel of such furniture being sold at secondhand market. Thereafter, the data stored in those furniture pieces becomes owner-free and flows freely on the market chain. 

The game starts with a secondhand furniture collector who does not collect or sell secondhand data for profit. He shows us a stool he just purchased, and then reveals to us what traces of data people sold and leave behind.

*Secondhand Life is not just a game about getting secondhand furniture but also secondhand data. Essentially we ask: 

-To what degree do we own our data? 

-To what degree can we own other’s data? -Is it important that we can access our data physically?

-How much does data constitute in our life stories?

The game utilizes AI such as GPT4 and Stable Diffusion to reconstruct stories in data, as AI can also be seen as a big appropriation machine that learns from our digital lives.