The project consists of a live, stationary webcam and an archived collection of stills from this view. The camera is aimed at an arbitrary patch of earth in San Jose, and may be visited in person or online. The archived stills coincide with recorded times-of-death from partnered hospitals and county death record offices in the area. Visitors to the website may access the archives by choosing a specific date, and scrolling through the names of the deceased for that date. Large versions of the stills may be downloaded for print. Visitors to the physical site are encouraged to print selected stills to hang on the walls of the space.

View a mock-up of the online interface HERE.

Memorials to lost family and friends, in the form of cemeteries or roadside shrines, occupy a significant part of our shared physical spaces. They offer opportunities for encounters with strangers, the doubly "othered" of the unknown dead. Cemeteries and roadside shrines also remind us of the reality of the dead, who died in the same spaces we live in, and who linger just feet below the surface of the earth. Currently, online memorials offer none of these important functions. They offer no analogous chance encounters with the dead, nor remind us of their existence in a space continuous with our own.

Live media typically invite the connection of disparate, disconnected spaces through the illusion of a shared moment.

This project instead invites the connection of disparate, disconnected moments through the illusion of a shared space.

Monuments typically commemorate death through erection of a stationary, unchanging object in public space.

This project instead embraces and indexes change, replacing the atemporal monolith with a persistent, displaced gaze.

Live media typically employs the erasure of distance toward the familiarization of an Other.

This project instead relies upon distance to let strangers remain estranged, yet acknowledged.

Monuments typically begin as vocal signs, and gradually go mute.

This project instead makes muteness a space for social connection.

Liveness unmoors distant spaces to re-orient them as dependent upon our own.

This project creates an unmoored space and leaves it that way, exploring the promise of a non-site.

This project seeks contact with audiences in virtual and real spaces, and seeks to make of the deaths of San Jose an opportunity for contemplation of mortality by the living everywhere. Those in San Jose whose deaths occur during the project's installation literally generate the project, and the project seeks to create opportunity for the living to mourn their lost in new ways, online and in real space.

The project thus has three audiences:
- those who did not know the dead, but who visit the site online or in person
- those who knew the dead, who live in the San Jose area and may visit the physical site
- those who knew the dead, but who live far away, and may not be able to visit the physical site

The technology required for this project is fairly simple, consisting primarily of a webcamera, server, and a database of images and data.