About Me

I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    The party never stops with the CataCombo sound system-equipped coffin…

    Embrace your passion for music in this life or the next with the CataCoffin – a unique coffin equipped with a high-quality sound system that will keep you rocking six feet under. An afterlife of partying awaits.

    Do you want to keep in touch with the latest trends in music, even after death? It seems impossible, I know, but Swedish company Pause has just turned your weird dream into a reality. Introducing the CataCombo sound system, an original solution that will help you take your passion for music to the grave, literally. The unique sound installation comes incorporated in a high quality coffin with “godlike comfort and angelic interior”, and features a pair of two-way speakers, tweeters, a custom-built 2.1 amplifier and “a divine 8-inch subwoofer fine tuned to the coffin’s unique interior acoustics”. And it gets better – the CataCoffin comes with matching CataTomb tombstone that has a built-in upgradable music server. Powered by a 2.5 GHz Intel processor, this unique piece of technology allows your friends and family to update your playlist through the Spotify music service, with the help of 4G connectivity. The tombstone also has a a 7-inch LCD that displays what song is currently playing inside the coffin. It’s safe to say CataCombo can take anything the afterlife throws at it.

    Totally bizarre!

    artandsciencejournal:

    Luciano Podcaminsky

    In this work, Sundead, Luciana Podcaminsky reveals the results of our behaviour. In this visual pun, the artist demonstrates what happens when one uses sun beds—cancer and even possible death. What makes this work powerful is how it shows what we conceptually know in a way that makes it real. Just as a smoker can look at the warning symbols and “know” that it will kill them, it takes a real visual confrontation or knowing someone else who has died, in order to fully understand and feel the impacts. So much of our knowledge is not true understanding. For example, I can say I conceptually know what a billion dollars is, but for me to truly understand how much money that is, I would need to see it stacked up in a room. Humans aren’t dumb, but written words can only do so much. Sometimes true knowledge is a feeling or a presence, and Podcaminsky has done it just right. For more of his works, click here. 

    - Lee Jones 

    (via thespianoge)

    • Posted 8 months ago
    • September 13th, 2012

    495 Likes & Reblogs

    Introducing the 'iGrave': the GPS device that lets you track your relative's coffin

    American funeral directors have unveiled the first ‘iGrave.’

    It uses GPS satellite tracking to allow relatives to find their loved ones in a natural burial site.

    Everyone buried at The Preserve, a 1.5-acre natural burial site in Lafayette, Indiana, receives a GPS transmitter disk in the center of their casket, or in the grave if there is no casket.

    The battery powered devices last for several years, and are roughly the size of a hockey puck.

    They are based on systems usually used to locate buried water pipes or gas mains.

    The high tech burials are designed to allow staff and family members to find their loved ones exact location in a burial ground where graves are not marked.

    Staff and family will be given special readers to direct them to the correct area.

    “It’s like reading a bar code,” said Joe Canaday of Hippensteel Funeral Service and Crematory.

    Modern work takes place on ancient coffin

    archaeologicalnews:

    FOR nine months, experts have been using a hyperdermic needle and catheter tubing to slowly restore a single 2,750-year-old coffin.

    A small team of conservators at the Ashmolean Museum are finishing their painstaking work to restore and preserve dozens of Ancient Egyptian artefacts in time…