Digitized Memorial Reflects Impermanence of Life

“Family Tree” conceptual image
(Credit: designboom.com)

Lithuanian designers Loucas Papantoniou and Asta Sadauskaite have developed the “Family Tree” — a sleek, modern, beehive-style wall mounted structure designed to keep family cremains in a single unified place within the home, complete with backlit LED memorial message screens programmable from your smartphone.

Credit: designboom.com

The designers propose that “Family Tree” is a good way for family members scattered across the globe to stay together by sharing the cremains of their loved ones, so each household can keep them in their respective hexagonal Tree modules designated to memorialize a specific person, labeled with their name along with a digitally programmed and easily changeable sentiment softly illuminated from within. Akin to an ancestral altar, this sleek design helps families remain present not only with the physical remains, but the memories and teachings of their relations.

Credit: designboom.com

While the concept of unifying families through their ancestors and honored dead is a noble goal in our increasingly globalized, homogenous, and future-oriented world, “Family Tree” bears features that run contrary to its principles. One aspect in particular that should give a potential buyer pause is the technology-dependent nature of this product. While memories are alive, dynamic and shifting throughout time as the living apply those memories to present situations, this principle might not serve so well manifested in the changeable nature of the LED screens which identify each cremains module.

Memories are maintained upon consistency of form and matter to support the more abstract nature of the mind, which is why stone and other equally changeable materials which cross-culturally symbolize permanence or consistency throughout time remain favored mediums for gravesite markers and memorials. The overt changeability of the digitally-programmed screens means that there is potential for confusion and emotional trauma should there be a power outage or other technological failure that would cripple the functioning of the screens. Do you remember the last time your laptop crashed while you had several important browser tabs open and were in the midst of expressing a train of brilliant thought in a text document that is now lost forever to the ethers? Imagine how it would feel, then, if the focal point of a family’s identity and cohesion could just as easily go up in a flash of scentless smoke.

While the “Family Tree” concept reintroduces the family altar back into modern households, it holds a false promise of continuity. Beware of praying or meditating with anything that could cause more harm in its disappearance than it promoted healing and wholeness by its presence.