Opening up New York’s secret cemetery in 3D

Hart Island has 1 million unmarked graves and no public access, so students created a virtual tour with new virtual monuments

One million people are buried on the mile-long Hart Island, one of 40 islands across which New York City lies. However, there is no public access. No press or cameras or phones are allowed, officially. Graves are umarked; names and location of the dead are recorded in a city database. Over 1,000 bodies still arrive each year and are buried by prisoners, with the island and the burials managed by the city’s Department of Corrections.

Campaigner and artist Melinda Hunt has photographed Hart Island since 1991. She has used volunteer lawyers to help obtain data from city authorities and built maps of the island, incorporating oral histories as a Traveling Cloud Museum, and along with the New York Civil Liberties Union has seen a lawsuit won against the government. Access recently improved with a new monthly ferry trip for relatives to visit.

Students at New York University have created a virtual reality environment in which visitors can explore stories from the island by stopping at imaginary memorials. Rebecca Lieberman and Nicholas Hubbard explain:

“Think of the burial database and its physical analog… We have chosen to prototype a virtual reality museum and memorial both to explore what physically exists on Hart Island and highlight the barriers faced when trying to encounter what’s there. We built our 3D reconstruction using photogrammetry from aerial maps, found footage, and our own photography. The experience is enhanced by a series of speculative and abstract memorials designed in 3D modelling software.”

As part of Rebecca’s Cabinets of Wonder class, teaching materials and student submissions are available to the public.

Facing ongoing intransigence, the long-term aspiration is for burial areas to open to the public, the transfer of management to the Parks Department, and a change in city government procedures around burial.

Lawyers, artists, students and families can use digital environments both to raise awareness and to access a mediated experience, remotely. Lowering costs and new software make tech like drones and 3D scanners more accessible to citizens. ‘DIY heritage’ — 3D modelling a building with £1,000 of kit — can be used powerfully to link heritage and identity in place. Hart Island is an extreme example, but it inspires powerful research and development into how tech tools and civic activism can give identity to the poorly remembered. As a result, families today can find greater meaning in a unique place in the city.

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