In Memorial and Serenity: Introducing VR Grave Mourning in the Chapel of St. Michael in Macao

Population Aging and High Density

In the early history of Macao, cemeteries were built mainly for the different religions, namely, Islam, Protestantism, and Zoroastrianism¹ (梁 & 蕭, 2011)². The Catholic church had its cemetery next to chapels and villages in Ká Hó, and Taipa also had small cemeteries for their residents. Only until 1835 did the government start banning burials in churches. More official cemeteries also started to be built. Nowadays, there are 17 cemeteries and one columbarium building in Macao. (梁 & 蕭, 2011)

Although most of our land was reclaimed through the past few decades, Macao is still at the top list of the densest population in the world. Considering the birth rate has been dropping by 0.9%, while the death rate, slightly rising by 0.2%, compared to 2 years ago, the demand for land from the living and the dead remains high. It is usual to see cemeteries in the middle of the city and, sometimes, next to residential areas. Common graves must be reopened after seven years of burial and moved to urns unless the land is private property. Hence, columbarium buildings in Macao are often packed with urns, and the rent stays high.

COVID-19 Pandemic

The pandemic situation of COVID-19 has brought humankind a severe impact on life. Countries have gradually closed the border from early to mid-2020, and many are waiting to reopen. Statistics of entry and exit, comparing October from 2019 and 2021, has a drop from around 81 million to about 42 million (2019年10月出入境人數, 2021)(2021年10月出入境人數, 2021)³:

With more than 3 million new cases globally every day and several variants of COVID found (up to omicron presently), international travel is unlikely to be back to normal shortly, and residents are advised to stay ‘home’ for festival celebrations. This situation restricts us, the livings, to gather and prevents people from visiting their beloved ancestors. Many families are spread worldwide, and it is prevalent in an international city with a brief Portuguese Historical background like Macao. Should borders be kept closed in the near future, can we not visit graves? With the support of technology nowadays, are humankind restricted to physical dimensions? What can be a possible solution here?

In this paper, literature on virtual environments and virtual reality is providing a fundamental background for the research, while state-of-the-art projects and research are setting the ground for the proposed 3D environment interface on the design aspect. The virtual environment is then created and streamed on a 3D tour platform, Kuula.co as the preliminary showcase of the design interface. This interface can be powered by various electronic devices, namely, smartphones with Cardboard VR, tablets, or VR headsets. Experiments and questionnaires are expected to conduct in the next stage. The analysed result leads to improvements and ideas for a more optimised interactive interface for grave mourning.