Between Memory and Absence
- The project explored how farewells could be redesigned by rethinking funerals as personal and bittersweet experiences.
- Directed storytelling revealed a gap between how people wish to be remembered and the sadness they experience in grief.
- Reflection questioned how absence, memory, and emerging technologies might shape more participatory funeral rituals.
Understanding
There are many different types of goodbye. To explore how this experience could be redesigned, we brainstormed various interpretations of farewell, including its etymology, cultural meanings, gestures, events, music, objects, and relationships.
After brainstorming, we discussed several concept directions. Ideas included bittersweet goodbye, goodbye to space, contactless goodbye, my own funeral, and goodbye for forgiveness. Among them, we decided to design a new funeral that combines the ideas of bittersweetness and personal farewell.
Gathering Experiences
We conducted directed storytelling to understand what a funeral means from individual experiences. A total of five interview responses were collected. Participants were informed that the interview could be stopped at any time, as the topic might be emotionally sensitive.
We asked about their memories and emotions related to attending funerals, including whose funeral it was and how they felt during the experience. We then asked whether they had ever imagined their own funeral. Through this process, we gathered diverse and personal narratives surrounding farewells and loss.
Based on the directed storytelling results, we grouped similar responses to identify overarching themes. The data could be categorised into three stages: before, during, and after the funeral, and it also included reflections on imagining one’s own farewell.
Analysis & Ideation
Most participants mentioned that they did not want sadness to dominate their own funerals, yet they still described funerals they had attended as deeply sorrowful. The closer a person is to the deceased, the harder it becomes to say goodbye. This suggests an emotional paradox between how people wish to be remembered and how grief is actually experienced.
Interim Reflection
The central issue in designing a novel funeral lies in the absence of the key person, the deceased. Funerals function as spaces where the living share memories and emotions, mediated by rituals and symbols. However, with the rise of digital media and AI, it remains uncertain whether technology can transform these moments into something more utopian or participatory.
What kinds of prototypes or rituals could emerge from this evolving relationship between presence, memory, and technology?
Reference
- Galbus, L.T.B.C. 11: G.F. by J.A. (2013) ‘Case 11: Goodbye Friend’, in Inside Relationships. Routledge.
- Meijer, E. (2019) When Animals Speak: Toward an Interspecies Democracy. NYU Press.
- Ramilyevna Bikmullina, E. et al. (2023) ‘The Concept of English Linguistics in the Manners of Saying Hello and Goodbye’, Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics, 14(3), pp. 142–146. Available at: https://doi.org/10.22055/rals.2023.19471.
- Wojtkowiak, J. (2022) ‘Ritual (Re)design. Towards a Framework for Professional Ritual Making in Postsecular Contexts’, Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies, 38, pp. 108–123. Available at: https://doi.org/10.21827/YRLS.38.108-123.
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