With Thanatorama, dive deep into the mysteries of the funeral world. Between the intimate and universal, sacred and trivial, religious rites and market rules, Thanatorama plays with conventions and pushes boundaries. From within the device, the user witnesses his or her own death.
It’s up to you to pick your path, according to your beliefs… or curiosity.
At the beginning, a voice intones: “You died this morning. Are you interested in what happens next?”
That’s when the real journey begins. An rite of passage adventure halfway between documentary and fiction. An embalmer, a morgue employee, a hearse, pallbearers and a coffin, flowers, marble, a cemetery, a crematorium… Everything is possible. The user, faced with a standard burial contract, is going to have to put together a ceremony to his or her liking. Thanatorama gives them the rare privilege of attending their own funeral. One by one, the characters show up to carry out the wishes of the deceased.
Thanatorama is an interactive multimedia work. The user navigates at will, choosing between the different images and texts that appear within an environment that’s entirely in harmony with the context, mysterious without being disturbing. Thanatorama offers an alternative to mystical readings of death by featuring encounters with death care industry professionals. Though data was collected through a painstakingly detailed investigative report, the point of Thanatorama is not to inform, but to provide the means to gain first-hand experience in a largely secret realm of human existence that is usually kept behind closed doors.
The device also has a few tricks up its sleeve, surprises to reward curious and inquisitive minds: time travel, a visit to a coffin factory, an unexpected twist in the epilogue…
Thanatorama wishes to provide an experience that is at once intimate and collective.
