Digital Death Day...

Digital Death Day

9th October, 9am - 5pm

The Centre for Creative Collaboration

The University of London



Death is a part of life and life has (to an extent) become digital.

This un-conference will be primarily concerned with provoking discourse around the social, cultural and practical implications of Death in the Digital World. Thus stimulating a reconsideration of how death, mourning, memories and history are currently being augmented in our technologically mediated society.

The archiving, networking and post mortem engagement of ‘digital remains’ leads us to consider what place digital information has in our lives legally, sentimentally and historically.

For further details, see here...

Excellent news...

Image: the Coffin Works, Jewellery Quarter

Last year, I blogged about the Newman Brothers Coffin Works in Birmingham and the cuts in national public funding which led to regional development agency Advantage West Midlands, which owned the site, to pull out restoring the building as a museum. However, the building has now been purchased by the Birmingham Conservation Trust as a result of a £150,000 grant from Birmingham City Council. For more on this story and the future of the Coffin Works, see here...

Don't forget to floss...

An interesting photo set taken within an abandoned dentist's clinic - for more see here...

Zombie studies...

Image: DiabloRose

It is a class to die for - Zombie studies is now on the curriculum at the University of Baltimore. The new course, which promises to "get you ready for a zombie apocalypse", invites students to devour classic zombie films and comics. Instead of essays, they write horror scripts or draw storyboards for their ideal monster movie. The minor class, titled English 333, has already been dubbed "Zombie 101" by the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

It was introduced to meet a demand for "interesting, off-the-wall" courses for a new minor in pop culture, according to Jonathan Shorr, chairman of the university's school of communications design.

"It's a back door into a lot of subjects," he told the Baltimore Sun. "They think they're taking this wacko zombie course, and they are. But on the way, they learn how literature and mass media work, and how they come to reflect our times."

For more details, see here the BBC website here...

For the Love of...

Image: For the Love of Chocolates by Valerie N'Doye, Show Me

A cheeky take on Damien Hirst's infamous diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of Chocolate features in the exhibition Double Take at Worthing Museum and Art Gallery which runs until September 25, 2010.