Arse Elektronika 2012
San Francisco, USA

4PLAY: Gamifuckation and Its Discontents

Call for papers, talks, workshops, performances, and GAMES.
[In addition to traditional talks, workshops, and papers, this year we are also accepting submissions of games. This can include digital games, street games, LARPs, social rulesets, procedural game-art, or other forms, for demonstration, presentation, or debut during the conference.]

What is the history of sexual games, particularly in the pre-digital era? What were the fairground and peepshow precursors in titillation? What was the design history of the “love tester” machine?

Why are game metaphors so prevalent in narratives of sexual conquest, and how did popular games in history influence the thinking of contemporary lovers? What can we learn about Roman gaming culture from Ovid's Ars Amatoria? What determines the many definitions of "cheating" in each of those contexts? How do the procedural rhetorics of modern game design encourage objectification of women?

How might contemplative gaming teach us to free ourselves from the tyranny of the climax?
How does the concept of the 'magic circle' in games coincide with safe spaces for sexual exploration? How do players act out transgressions of sex and gender expectations within the relatively safer spaces of games? What can we learn about social scripts and expectations from looking at society through a ludological lens?

What is the relationship of sex and games to the recent 'non-human turn' in arts, science, and philosophy? How might games engender empathy and understanding towards the non-human? What is the technological equivalent of Alan Moore's plant-sex issue of Swamp Thing? Could a game help you contemplate how a mantis fucks, or what it feels like for a fern to spore?

Beyond the simple human-to-human interfaces of the now-almost-quaint developments of sex machines and teledildonic, how might game design interact with biometrics and haptic feedback to create entirely new techno-sexual situations?  Game-based learning and medical rehabilitation has been used in the past for stroke victims and the disabled to re-learn their bodies; how might those same techniques allow further bodily exploration towards positive pleasure? How much might BDSM simulators borrow from virtual pet trainers? How is predicament bondage like game design, and what can the two learn from one another?

If we are headed towards the 'gamepocalypse' envisioned by Jesse Schell, how might that affect our sex lives and our sexualities?

Is sex in danger of gamification?

If so, how can we stop it?

Deadline: July 1, 2012

Please send submissions to office AT monochrom.at

I thought you might enjoy my recent socialist-capitalist fusion blog "comparing and contrasting" Arse Elektronika and Singularity Summit. Can us wild futurists ever work together? Will the rich invest in erototech?

The presentations were extremely wide-ranging, and showed the creativity possible as a new age of sexual freedom emerges. Each one incrementally stretched the group or "hive" mind in real time.

Among the dozen+ offerings, we heard from Kitty Stryker in her frank talk, "Sex Work, Disability, and Stigma"  and Maymay presented "A Class Analysis of Social Status in the BDSM Scene” (also available on YouTube). David Fine, who vaguely describes himself as "a Sex Robot from the 25th century" spending his time in our era guiding technology in useful, or at least interesting, directions, brought us his reimagining of the Mindflex kids' toy (available on Amazon) which he modified to activate a vibrator, simple and perhaps the first attempt we’ve seen to apply an EEG headset  to a sex toy; The future possibilities are endless.

Here is the link.

And there have been many other write-ups and comments, we can't link all of them here, but feel free to google.

It was a great pleasure to meet all of you at Arse Elektronika 2011.

And all our inspiring discussions should not stop. So please subscribe to our open mailing list and keep the thoughts flowing!

Cheers!

As much as I consider myself a geek, I am pretty isolated generally from the geeky 'verse. A lot of my friends are certainly dorky/nerdy/geeky, in a multitude of ways, but we're usually meeting at altsex or Burner spaces, not hacker ones! I guess I'm a little intimidated by the techspeak, which I'm not a native speaker of.

Well, this last weekend was spent surrounded by smart sexy geeks at Arse Elektronika, a sex, tech, class and culture conference thrown by monochrom that goes on every year in San Francisco. I had two talks to give, one called "TLC: Sex Work, Disability, and Stigma", and one with Maggie Mayhem called "Pervertables: A Hands-on Workshop in Being a DIY Deviant". I didn't get to see all the rest of the talks as my spoons were kind of few and far between this weekend, but I wanted to at least give a bit of a writeup of what I did!

The event raises tough issues like whether having the lifestyle that allows one to enjoy kink is a luxury, class struggle among perverts, and the fossil footprint of a technologically-assisted orgasm. There will be talks and workshops, inventions and performance – go to question the meanings of desire.

On the heels of Folsom Street Fair, Arse Elektronika, an annual conference on sex, technology and culture arrives in San Francisco from September 29-October 2.
Curious to know how sex and technology intersect? Arse Elektronika is certain to titillate. This year's theme, "screw the system" looks to explore questions such as:

"What are the labor conditions of non-Western workers who make most of the world's sex toys? What's the environmental footprint of a technologically assisted orgasm? How does the criminalization or stigma of sex tech production harm the communities in which it is produced? What's the product life-cycle and planning horizon of sex tech? What are the barriers to entry for sex tech production? How important is intellectual property to sex tech, and how is it enforced?"

The event kicks off its opening night with the Prixxx Arse award for the best in sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics on Thursday, September 29th at Chez Poulet. The event is organized by the Austrian art collective, monochrom.

Talks at the event include such topics as "Making a Mind Controlled Dildo" and hands on workshops for the DIY crowd.

While Arse Elektronika isn't going to please all, I can't imagine a city better suited for such an event. For the curious, you can check out the full schedule on Arse Elektronika's website.

Our grand opening gala (Thursday, September 29, 2011 @ Chez Poulet) has a special costume theme!

Show up as a Socialist Sex Superhero or Superheroine... and maybe win our "Golden Kleene" award!

Onward!

Brainy pervs!

Please check out the new workshop topics and times.

(Workshops will be held October 2, 2011 @ Noisebridge)

An unobjectionable award for sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics
A gala hosted by monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner
Featuring many guests stars, like Aaron Muszalski, Jonathan Mann and the PSIgasm team!

(*)
There was a young man named Kleene
Who invented a fucking machine.
Concave or convex,
It fit either sex,
And was remarkably easy to clean!

(limerick, attributed to John von Neumann)

Our gala will be a dignified occasion -- and so we invite you to dress up properly. Surprise us with Socialist Sex Superheroes and Superheroines... and maybe win a "Golden Kleene" yourself!

We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and toolusing species. And that's why monochrom's conferene Arse Elektronika deals with sex, technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this anthology sees us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer.
Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough. "Bizarre enough for what?" – you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century.
Don't you think, replicants?

Edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry. Published by RE/Search Publications (San Francisco) in cooperation with monochrom.

Featuring essays and projects by Eleanor Saitta, R.U. Sirius, Jack Sargeant, Annalee Newitz, Katrien Jacobs, Christian Heller, Bonni Rambatan, Kyle Machulis, Saul Albert, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Violet Blue, Carol Queen, Douglas Spink, Rose White, Rainer Prohaska, Thomas Ballhausen, Uncle Abdul, Elle Mehrmand (Echolalia Azalee), Micha Cárdenas (Azdel Slade), Ani Niow, Monika Kribusz, Noah Weinstein, Randy Sarafan, Allen Stein, Kim De Vries, Pepper Mint, Robert Glashuettnencr, Jonathon Keats.

Presentation at Arse Elektronika 2011 opening ceremony on September 29, 2011 @ Chez Poulet in San Francisco.

Talks, machines, workshops and performances
September 29-October 2 in San Francisco!

Thursday 9/29 -- Opening Party -- 7pm-12am at Chez Poulet (3359 Cesar Chavez @ Mission)

Friday 9/30 -- Performances/Lectures -- 7pm-12am at Center for Sex and Culture (1349 Mission btw 9th and 10th)

Saturday 10/1 -- Conference -- 12pm-8pm at Center for Sex and Culture (1359 Mission btw 9th and 10th)

Saturday 10/1 -- Performances/Lectures -- 8pm-12am at Center for Sex and Culture (1359 Mission btw 9th and 10th)

Sunday 10/2 -- Workshops -- 1pm-8pm at Noisebridge (2169 Mission)

The PSIgasm Project, a Bay Area sex-positive research project, wants to jump back into the fun stuff and track down just what exactly the the big "o" does to the human body.
It may look like a super powerful dildo, but the PSIgasm is actually a fancy scienticfic device that records changes in body temperature, heat capacity, heart rate, blood volume, moisture, and movement; all signs pointing to orgasm. The smart instrument of pleasure was concieved in 2010 by Ned Mayhem, a PhD candidate in experimental physics at UC Berkeley and his lover Maggie Mayhem, an HIV prevention specialist, both of whom are sex positive activists, queer porn performers. The aim of their project is simple: to get people off and simaltaeously monitor the physiological responses correlated with arousal and orgasm. You can almost hear this city full of tech geeks pleading, "more, more!"
[...]
For the time being, he's working the projects presentation for Arse Elektronika, which may or may not include a live demonstration. Now that sounds like exciting science!

Nerdverts! Pervgeeks!

TICKET! SALE! ENGAGE!

Link (Eventbrite)