3pointD.com

Here’s the weirdest thing to hit my in-box in a while: A design-your-own-coffin contest in the virtual world of Second Life. Held by Dutch funeral company Uitvaart and coffin-makerer Bogra, the contest starts February 6, when free modifiable virtual coffins will be available at the Bogra office in SL’s »Tathlina« region. Residents then have until March 1 to trick out their personalized coffin and return them to SL resident Gwendolyn Kronsage. “The finished coffin needs to be accompanied by a notecard describing the design, as we would like to know why residents decorated the coffin the way they did and what materials they used,” according to a press release. Rather hilariously, the rules of the contest stipulate that “only biodegradable materials can be used in the design process” — though this is apparently “to guarantee the feasability of the Real Life production of the winning coffin.”

Entries will be photographed and displayed at the Bogra office during March, after which a jury of experts will select the winner, which will be “taken into Real Life production by Bogra Netherlands. This coffin will also be displayed at (international) funeral fairs as the first coffin that has been designed in an online community.”

Wow.

There is, of course, a long tradition of wild and crazy coffins in different parts of Africa, and you can even order them from abroad. The Nokia coffin above is available on eShopAfrica, for instance, and there’s a good explanation of the tradition on this Flickr page, which also displays a few good cow, beer and pineapple coffins.

I love the idea of this coming into Second Life. Not that avatars have much use for coffins. But heck, if they’re having babies, who knows?

For more information, contact gwendolyn.kronsage [AT] gmail.com