In this post I would like to summarize the design areas I’m working with at the moment. In short, the first one is about managing your data and identity during and after life; the second area deals with the importance and the functions of memorials; the third remembers me of the richness of the the differences; the last one is the on-site interaction.Graveyards are a very complex domain to deal with. They envolve many implications and can be analysed from different point of views. I have spotted four main design directions. Even if they are not exclusive, it is good to discuss them separately.IdentityIdentitiy is about who we are and we have done in our life. Today we are able to manage our identity through the web since our data is collected and stored in digital form. Think about emails, music, bookmarks and so on. Almost all our preferences are online and can define ourselves wel enough.What if we could have richer and more complete memories?One of the biggest problem of recalling our past is that there is always something missing. Even if we have a very good memory we can’t help but the digital media to have a clear view of that moment. Persons are important too since they are a very powerful media and a storage of precious informations about us.Recalling is like putting the pieces together and we know that doing that around a table with our family or friends is more productive thatn doing that alone.Everyone wants to leave a trace on this world and would like to be remembered in some ways. Our traces are becoming more and more digital and this allows the technology to trace our preferences, purchases, connections. In other words our identity. But what happens after our death? Are our data still useful or they could be deleted forever? Michele Gauler calls them “digital remains”. We should underline that our identity is always a node in someone else’s network.This interesting design area is also a difficult one since we would have to deal with privacy issues: who is going to read my data and how can I decide that? Can I really manage the idea of me people will have? What about misunderstandings?
Fig. 1 Michele Gaulere’s Access Keys
Anyhow, this is a very potential topic that can really express where the digital technologies are heading towards. We should express, on one side, the need of having the control of our data and, on the other, the richness of sharing them with others. It should be clear too that our identity are all interconnected in a huge data network.Memorial“These memorials are reflections of genuine emotions experienced by real people, and they are surely entitled to be respected as such” Dave NanceAnother manner to look at graveyards is as memorials. I spotted two different kinds of memorials.Commemorative Memorials: these are a sort of historical document often built after a tragedy. They are collective because represent more than one person’s death and they are often designed to communicate a strong message like frailty of life (e.g. holocaust monument in berlin). Often they are built because the community wasn’t able to recognize all the dead persons.
Fig. 2 Berlin – Holocaust MonumentContextual Memorials: the most famous representative of this group is the roadside memorial or descanso which means resting place (Actually, in the wonderful way of the Spanish language, it literally means “untiring place”. Descanso are used as landmark by people to mark a place for something: in the beginning, they were built were the funeral stopped to rest – there were no cars to carry the coffin – but now some of them are pieces of folk-art). This kind of practice was born in New Mexico. Descansos are very interesting because they are very dependent from the context: this is the biggest difference with the graveyard where everyone is buried in the same place. Moreover, people build descansos in a very personal way and feel free to leave on the resting place gifts and artifacts related to the loved one.
Fig. 3-4 Descansos (www.watson-online-art-gallery.com)An important function of these kind of memorial is that of warning (In France, the administrations are putting black figures on the roadside to warn about dead people): for instance, they could warn drivers of the possibility of a car accident. They are also a way of protesting against the local administration [ Transmission, by George Walker, is a proposal to insert a transmitter into the road at the site of each non-motorist (pedestrians or cyclists) fatality, communicating the name of the person killed and the number of days since they were hit. - from wmmna.com].The interesting things about memorials is that they have to communicate not only with the bereaved but with almost everyone. Unlike tombstones, they are capable of interact with people in a more interactive way, even if there is no technology behind them (with some exceptions for some memorials). Probably, this happens because they are not enclosed in a cemetery where all the conventions and behaviour models come up. But also because they are designed and built in a different way: in a lot of them you can receive a message, wherever it is.Cultural DifferencesEvery culture and religion have developed different explanations to the mistery of death and different are the pratices associated.We live in a global world where almost everything is interconnected and becoming more and more contaminated. Global versus local is one of the hottest theme of our times and we know that it is not so simple to mix them together without losing the peculiarity of the localism or the mixtures of the globalism. Anyhow, there are good examples of g-local that can really show all the potentials embedded in the mix.
Fig. 5 Biopresence, some religion associate the deceased with a treeGraveyard or, more extensively, the buring practice is very different from country to country and from religion to religion. There are so many themes and cultural issues envolved that even, for instance, in the same religious community, there are peculiar differences.The point is that the differences have a common ground. They are the expression of the same event and maybe they are not so different. Anyhow, we should appreciate this non-homogeneousness and elicit the good in it: every difference has is own reasons and, especially in our times [Our times area characterised by the end of the grand récit (J.F. Lyotard, 1979): we have no more ideologies and all the voices deserve to be listened (G. Vattimo, 2000)], they all are valuable and truthful.On-Site InteractionThe fourth design area is related to the very physicality of the graveyard and to the interactions that occurs between the bereaved and loved ones. In this case we have already a sort of interface that is the tombstone. After some fieldwork I have spotted some invariants in the structure of the tomb:A peculiar element is the fence: it spots an “inside” and an “outside”. In doing that it works as a privacy guard and a deterrent for the interactions since only the bereaved will open and enter in the “inside”. Anyhow, a lot of tombstone have not a fence and are more integrated with the environment.On the headsto
ne
where you can read the name, date and often an epigraph. The headstone aims to communicate the identity of the deceased, obviously this is not so much significant if you do not know already something about the deceased.
Fig. 6-7 Gift ZoneAnother element is the bench where people can sit and pray: on a bench you can reflect and think of the deceased better. It has also a resting function for older people but I think that it fits better with the act of thinking and praying. The bench is not always present too.The most interesting element from the design perspective is what I call the “gift zone”. It is often a square or a stripe where people leave gifts like flowers, seafood shells, fruits. This is the very interface between the deceased and the person since it is the place where interaction occurs. Its position is also relevant: it is always between the headstone and the bench. This means that it is a sort of mediator between the two worlds. Moreover, it has also an important role in communicating with other people: one of the interviewed said that she cares of what people think how the tomb appears to them. A very strong social issue.
Fig. 7-8 Close vs OpenI’ve categorized the tombs in two couple of categories that are open\close and decorated\not-decorated so that I can have a clearer view of the different instances.
Fig. 9-10 Decorated vs AbandonedINTERVIEWS AND SECONDARY ANALYSISI’ve done some interviews to analyse what people think of the graveyard and how they recall their memories. I was not looking for statistical data but for design triggers. Some answers where very interesting, this is a short summary of these findings:- Going to graveyard is also an occasion to meet other people. You can meet old friends or people you haven’t seen for a long time (a meeting stone?)- In the past, people used to stand in front of the tomb for a longer time and had the occasion to talk about the deceased, about his life. But it was only a starting point: the discourse could evolve towards different themes, not always related to the decesead.- Abandoned tombstones have a great power and appeal. Many people use to leave a flower on a tomb they don’t know, just to feel better. Some of them become affectionated and leaving a flower becomes part of their visit. It is like “adopting a grave”. Others prefer leaving flowers randomly. This practise has apparently no interest but the personal satisfaction.- Some people don’t like to go to the graveyard so often because they prefer to have “a memory of the person alive”.- It is common to bring a photo always with you, especially if the person was a relative. Moreover, some people have something that belonged to the loved one with them, like a cloth or a jewel.I think that the fourth directions can be mixed together because there are a lot of overlapping zones. In fact, we cannot reduced and narrow the problem to just one of them. Anyhow, the leading ones for my project will be the “Identity” and the “In-Site Interactions”. They are the two side of the same medal and cannot stand alone.
