E-membrance by Alex Greenhut from usa

The content of the cemetery is opposed to the context of the cemetery. That is to say the permanence of the cemetery is opposed to the ephemerality of the burial. The site stays permanent while the body decays. The tombstone stays permanent while the memory fades.

This spatial experience is antiquated. Cemeteries have become places for relaxation, not places of remembrance and repose.

This proposal seeks to expand the spatiality of mourning. Bring a new relevance to the spaces we use to remember the dead.

The tombstone, the gathering place, becomes dynamic, shared, and always relevant. It is a floating buoy, glowing bright when people visit, remember, and pay their respects through a mobile application that, using GPS, leads the mourner to the glowing orb.

But as people stop showing up; as the hurt of one’s loss becomes less. as the mourners become the mourned, the orb begins to fade. This opens a new opportunity in the cemetery space: people unrelated, while visiting their own loved one, may lead themselves to the orb, reflect on someone’s life that they did not know; and the orb glows brighter. They may find the deceased had a much greater connection to themselves, they may read how others made it through in their darkest hour and things will get better.

Though there are websites devoted to tracking death and social media, they are too impersonal. They lack the number one thing associated with a memorial. A spatial emersion. The physicality of the orb creates something humanistic, something that can be interacted with and mourned over. You can feel the subtle warmth of the orb and be personally, tactilely tied with your loved one. The procession as one finds their loved ones orb brings it into their personal raft, spends time with the living, telling stories about the deceased, is one of healing.

Thus the space for mourning has expanded itself into the digital realm; no longer confined to the outskirts of the urban fabric, no longer unvisited by the mourners, it becomes a dynamic, crowd sourced place of mourning everyone supporting and moving forward together.