Yes, if… Productions

For a brief time I was involved in a tourism board project that would take a town’s founders’ cemetery and make it interactive. The plan was for visitors to scan QR codes located on plaques next to the headstones of important historical figures, at which point a video of an actor portraying the person buried beneath your feet would play on your phone. The person would tell his or her story and by extension the story of the town itself, all from beyond the grave. As creepy as it may sound, it was a clever way of adding a narrative to an otherwise static experience. Ever since I’ve had a soft spot for cemeteries (a soft, decomposing, worm-infested spot).

Recently I visited Asheville, North Carolina and couldn’t help but stop off at Riverside Cemetery. With winding paths and rolling hills, it is a massive final resting place, but strangely not nearly so massive as it seems. While this cemetery grew naturally, it has what so many designed environments and experiences strive for—discoverability.

The cemetery’s curving roadways wrap around a hilly landscape that naturally obstructs views, never letting you see from one end to the other. It probably wasn’t ‘designed’ to be this way, but the fact that you can’t see the whole thing all at once makes you eager to see what is around the next corner. There is no way to get a handle on the whole thing at a glance so a visitor to the cemetery must actively engage.

Any physical installation can take alot from this. Restaurants and clubs that don’t show every corner at first glance are seen as having alot of character and possibly more inviting and intimate. Tradeshow booths that tuck some of their elements inside obstructed (but of course easily accessible) areas invites attendees to explore the booth and, hopefully, the company as well. Even homes can use rooms as places to discover rather than just places that hold stuff, leaving a home feeling much more exciting and energetic as a whole.

While the dead do not call you on your phone in Asheville’s historic cemetery, they do call you around the next corner, encouraging you to discover their final earthly home…in spooky Scooby Doo voices. Oooooo!!!!!!!