PROJECT PROPOSAL 0405

Dorchester North Burying Ground (1633) is one of America’s oldest cemeteries — a rare treasure in Uphams Corner’s central commercial district.  As Adelina from Upham’s Corner Health Center describes, “that beautiful cemetery does need so much attention… I drive by it and think often how fragile and yet so beautiful right in the middle of Uphams Corner.”  Although publically owned and maintained by Boston’s Parks and Recreation Department, DNBG is not open for the community to wander in on a sunny afternoon and explore the many stories of the past, whispered through each intricate headstone carving.  OPEN UPHAMS believes that these stories deserve to be shared with the community in an easily accessible, graphically beautiful way. 

On Saturday, August 17th, OPEN UPHAMS has been invited by Nancy Conrad of Uphams Corner News Online to conduct tours of DNBG during the Uphams Corner Street Festival.  OPEN UPHAMS’ tours will consist of:

OPEN UPHAMS / Past - An online program guide, easily accessible on a mobile smart phone for use prior, during, and after the tours.  This will include a graphically engaging map of the burial ground with points of interest, personal stories, and associated historic imagery that will be accessed, in part, via headstone image recognition technology (i.e. kooaba). 

OPEN UPHAMS / Present – An online memorial guide that enables DNBG to also serve as a destination for remembrance and celebration of contemporary community figures from Upham’s Corner that have recently passed.  These memorials will be accessed via image recognition technology of small chairs, scattered around DNBG during the tours.  One small chair/bench will be made in honor of each individual representing a sort of contemporary headstone. 

A library of Past and Present memorial stories, maps, and associated imagery will reside on openuphams.org and made available before, during, and after the Uphams Corner Street Festival.  For those without a mobile smart phone, broadsheet newsprint program guides will be available for the tour.

OPEN UPHAMS hopes to use DNBG as a community platform that unites Upham’s Corners myriad cultures – Cape Verdean, Haitian, African American, Dominican, and Vietnamese – as well as diverse generational and socioeconomic groups by revealing unknown commonalities and celebrating cherished uniqueness through stories of the neighborhood’s past and present.  

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ABOUT

Documentation of OPEN UPHAMS by Beth Lundell Garver (MAUD) initiated for course Mixed-Reality City, Spring 2013, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.​