[ B l o g / / Archive]


Bre Pettis: monochrom Artist in Residence 
monochrom content info
It's official. Bre Pettis will be our monochrom artist in residence in November. We can't wait to welcome him to Vienna.
Bre Pettis produces the show "Weekend Projects," which is released weekly as a video podcast for Make: Magazine. For his show, Bre makes something every week, and then makes a video teaching viewers how to make it too. In his recent past, he's been a schoolteacher, a multi-artist, and a puppeteer. Bre is passionate about invention, innovation, and all things DIY.


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Nina Berman 
Nina Berman is a documentary photographer.
I've been a documentary photographer since 1987 working in a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Bosnia, India and Vietnam. But most of my time has been spent traveling the USA trying to understand the American Way of Life.
Please check out her portfolio.



Link (thanx, eSeL!)



Bandwidth new global currency? 
Bandwidth could become a form of "currency" with users paying for downloaded files by uploading more data themselves, researchers say. The goal is to ensure that future content, particularly video, is distributed as fairly and efficiently as possible.
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A roadmap by any other name 
By Paul French.
Since February 2007 there has been a roadmap between Washington and Pyongyang in place. It isn't called a roadmap, but it walks like one and quacks like one. A year ago, the idea of a bilateral agreement seemed almost inconceivable. But now we not only have an agreement but have moved a significant way along the road to a de-escalation of nuclear tensions since 2002 on the Korean peninsula and Pyongyang's admission that its nuclear programme was still in place.

Pyongyang's aim was always to break free of the six-party multilateral approach and negotiate directly with Washington. Finally Christopher Hill, America's point man on talks with the North, was given the freedom to find a deal. As with all roadmaps, it is full of stages and confidence-building measures (CBMs). Nobody said a roadmap with Pyongyang would be easy and it hasn't been - the initial sticking point of the North's US$25m stuck in a Macanese bank took time to resolve. However, it was; and IAEA inspectors gained access to the Yongbyon reactor and inspected it, and Pyongyang appears to be complying with the demand to shut it down.
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Wubi: Ubuntu Linux for Windows... without partitioning 
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.



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Paraflows 2007: Press conference 
monochrom content info
monochrom is co-organizing this year's international net cultures festival "Paraflows".

And we are glad being able to announce 2600.com hacker mastermind Emmanuel Goldstein from NYC, Superbunker tour-de-force performer Jason Brown from Los Angeles, Laser Graffiti 2.0, Berlin's guerilla nerd space c-base (presenting its wonderful Multitouch Console), circuit bending workshop with Jörg Piringer, dozens of international digital art installations @ Vienna's Anti-Air-Raid Tower "Flakturm", Boundary Layers Of The Sea (a net talk series hosted by Thomas Brandstetter and Karin Harrasser) and many many many more acts.

Press conference: August 30, 11 AM @ Museumsquartier's Barocke Suiten.




Organized Labor in the US - Its Rise and Decline 
Organized labor's rise began modestly and was fragile in the earliest days of the republic. It gained strength in good economic times, then lost it in downturns like the depression in 1873. By the 1880s, things were better as the nation underwent rapid industrialization. With it came rising prosperity and workers wanting a share of the benefits. They turned to unions for help with skilled artisans leading the way helping the unskilled as well in their efforts to organize.

New labor organizations arose, older ones expanded, and as they did, they grew more active and militant. It led to the "great uprising of labor" in 1886, including the landmark Chicago May 4 Haymarket Riot protesting police violence against strikers the previous day. Its impact was hugely negative at first. It forced organized labor to regroup and settle in for a long period of recovery.

This was at a time the incipient labor movement was over two million and rising beginning with its organizing efforts launching it in the 1870s. By the 1880s, it had enough strength to stage huge strikes for better pay and working conditions like the struggle for an eight hour day that had 80,000 strikers parading peacefully down Chicago's main Michigan Avenue on May 1, 1886 in what's now regarded as the first ever May Day Parade. [...]
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World's Oldest Bacteria Found Living In Permafrost 
A research team has for the first time ever discovered DNA from living bacteria that are more than half a million years old. Never before has traces of still living organisms that old been found.



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Lead Poisoning Killed Beethoven, Scientist Says 
"Ludwig van Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, after four months of misery on a dirty straw mattress in Vienna. What brought on that downward spiral? Lead poisoning accidentally caused by his own doctor, says a journal article..."
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The Dangers of Wind Power 
Wind turbines continue to multiply the world over. But as they grow bigger and bigger, the number of dangerous accidents is climbing. How safe is wind energy?
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Jupiter's protective pull questioned 
For more than a decade many astronomers have thought of Jupiter as a protective big brother for planet Earth. The gas giant's gravitational pull is believed to slingshot incoming Earth-threatening objects out of the Solar System. This has led many to suppose it shielded the young Earth from impacts, helping to support conditions for life. But now, a preliminary study indicates that Earth would have done just as well, if not better -- in at least one regard -- without Jupiter's help.
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The Void's Foaming Ebb @ Luksuz Film Festival 
monochrom content info
Luksuz Film Festival in Krško, Slovenija shows our short film "The Void's Foaming Ebb".



September 1, 2007.
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monochrom @ SXSW 2008? Vote! 
monochrom content info
If you want us to visit SXSW 2008, please vote for us. Thanks!
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Numbers! 



Link (thanx, citizen428)



monochrom / German Pirate Blog Charts 
monochrom content info
Astounding. We're part of the German Pirate Blogging Top-100.
Link



Psychologists in Denial About Torture 
Last weekend, the American Psychological Association rejected a moratorium that would have prevented its member psychologists from participating in interrogations at U.S. detention centers at places like Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA "black sites" around the world. Instead, the 148,000-member organization passed a resolution at its annual meeting in San Francisco banning psychologists from participating in interrogations that employ certain harsh techniques. Many psychologists within the APA feel the resolution did not go far enough.

The issue of torture and interrogations has become a sore spot for the APA, the world’s largest group of psychologists. The American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association both outright prohibit their members from participating in interrogations at locations where basic human rights are not guaranteed, like Guantanamo. These groups have been joined by others, like the American Translators Association and the Society for Ethnomusicology (since translation is essential in interrogations, and sustained, blaring music has been used as a form of torture).

Central to the debate is the question "Are psychologists participating in torture?" While the Bush administration repeatedly denies that it uses torture, a leaked report of the International Committee of the Red Cross says certain U.S. methods used are "tantamount to torture."
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Bounty mutineers' language preserved by UN 
A campaign to preserve a unique hybrid language spoken by the descendants of the Bounty mutineers on an isolated South Pacific island has been given a boost by the United Nations.
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FDA/USDA: Soylent Green Is People; Risk To Humans "Very Low" 
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continue their investigation of Soylent Green, which has been found to contain people and people-related compounds.
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Soviet Unterzoegersdorf: Sector 1 @ FILE Festival, Sao Paulo 
monochrom content info
Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (Sector 1) is currently being presented at FILE Festival in Sao Paulo, Bazil.



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Remoting Future: New entries 
monochrom content info
Great new entries for Remoting Future.



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24th Chaos Communication Congress: Call for Participation 
The Chaos Commnunication Camp is over, so it’s time to announce the Call for Participation of the 24th Chaos Communication Congress 2007 (24C3). The Chaos Communication Congress is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and taking place in Berlin, Germany. The 24C3s slogan is Volldampf voraus! — the German equivalent of “full steam ahead” – a particular request for talks and projects featuring forward looking hands-on topics. The Chaos Computer Club has always encouraged creative and unorthodox interaction with technology and society, in the good tradition of the real meaning of “hacking”. This year's congress introduces a new category for talks called “Making”. This category is all about making and breaking things and the wonderful stuff you can build in your basement or garage. Most welcome are submissions dealing with the latest in electronics, 3D-fabbing, climate-change survival technology, robots and drones, steam machines, alternative transportation tools and guerilla-style knitting. As always, the date of this event is December 27th to 30th.



Arse Elektronika 2007 on BB 

Scientists induce out of body experience 
By deliberately scrambling a person's visual and tactile senses, it is now possible to give them an "out-of-body" experience. Two procedures – which are the first to imitate an out-of-body experience artificially – use cameras to fool people into thinking they are standing or sitting somewhere else in a room. They provide the strongest proof yet that people only imagine floating out of their bodies during surgery or near-death experiences.
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Arse Elektronika 2007: pr0nnovation? // Tickets! Press Accreditation! 
monochrom content info
Our international conference about pornography and technological innovation (October 5-7 @ Kink.com's Porn Palace, San Francisco, USA).

Our online ticketing and press accreditation system is online now. Please consider there is only a limited number of seats.
From the depiction of a vulva in a cave painting to the newest internet porno, technology and sexuality have always been closely linked. No one can predict what the future will bring, but history indicates that sex will continue to play an essential role in technological development. The porno effect accompanies every new technological development. Is it going too far to assume that research in nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be influenced by our sexual needs? The surgical modification of sexual organs is no longer something very unusual. The question is not whether these technologies alter humanity, but how they do so.


Arse Elektronika will be a serious conference with a fun attitude. Speaker bios, talk abstracts and details about the performances can be found on the conference homepage.

Link



Sun King American Style 
On the 30th Anniversary of Elvis' Death. An essay by Arthur Kroker.

Elvis as a cynical commentary? Or the outbreak in Memphis, Tennessee, deep in the heart of the heart of the country, of a more primitive Jungian archetype -- the Sun King?

Or both? A cynical commodity to such a point of excess, hysteria and exhaustion that Elvis actually disappeared into his own promotional culture. The Elvis commodity, then, achieving such a global degree of cynical exchange-value that that heartbreak voice, the sneer, the DA hair, and the rock 'n rollin' legs on stage with that guitar, and the screaming fans actually vanished into a massive black hole. As it grew more heated and intensive, the Elvis myth burst into a final brilliant luminosity, exploded inwards with a fantastic density of energy, and then settled down through the '70s and the '80s as a steadily-flashing cultural pulsar. What emerged from that cultural pulsar (the final stage of a dying star) were the five faces of Elvis: sometimes movie star (Blue Hawaii), confirmed rock 'n roll heart-throb; good ol' southern boy playing with his buddies; unpredictable philanthropist to the poor; and a real '50s sex symbol. And just like Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Dean before him, Elvis can still attract such necrophiliac fascination because he was always a promotional simulacra which could be wrapped around any passing mood. Thus, in the '70s, it was Elvis' death as a tragedy, and in the '80s a nostalgia feast for our own time passing. In the end as in the beginning, he was the perfect fusion of voice, autobiography, commodity opportunity, and national mood.
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Plus ça change in Cuba 
Watching his smooth takeover of power in Cuba, is Raúl Castro the leader the country now needs to tackle its economic problems?
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Crash destroys rocket ahead of X Prize contest 
The front-runner for a $2 million competition to build mock lunar landers has lost one of its two main vehicles, adding drama to the upcoming contest.
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Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero 
Book by Lucy Riall.
Until recently, the publication of yet another life of Garibaldi might have been greeted with a shrug and a yawn. What new could possibly be said about a figure whose every word and every deed has been memorialized or picked apart in children's textbooks, scholarly histories, and a plethora of biographies both hagiographic and critical? Fatigue with the lore of the Italian unification and skepticism about its founding fathers were plain already in 1926, when Piero Gobetti published his famous essay "Risorgimento Senza Eroi," or "The Risorgimento Without Heroes." There was already an awareness that the creation of the Italian state had been a deeply flawed and inadequate process, championed by a small cultural elite, carried out more by diplomatic maneuvering and the power of foreign troops than by a great popular uprising; and also that unification had left Italy almost as divided as before, a country where old and deep allegiances to family, town, region, and church continued to compete with the new nation for the loyalties of most Italians. From the 1960s on, when historians became more interested in "history from below," the fascination with the "great men" of the Risorgimento seemed more like quaint nineteenth-century hero worship than serious history.

But then the intellectual climate changed again. In recent decades, new scholarship on the nature and history of nationalism has opened up a new space for a reconsideration of Italian unification and its heroes. In 1983, there appeared two groundbreaking books on nationalism, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities and Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism. Each in its own way argued that nationalism, rather than a hoary and innate form of identity (as all nationalisms insist they are), is in fact an exceedingly modern phenomenon that was made possible not least by the invention of printing, industrialization, and mass communication.


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Door Henge / Finalized 
monochrom content info
August 19, 2007.

More documentation of the assembly.



A victory dance. But please notice the police officer riding up on his horse in the background.



A great day.



More pictures and info soon here!



Door Henge: Doors Of Polytheistic Perception / Time lapse 
monochrom content info
August 19, 2007.



More pictures and info soon here!



Frodo through the Fence 
This excerpt from Kristin Thompson's book The Frodo Franchise offers a view behind the cameras and a story about the way old-line production company New Line reacted to the rise of the new media.



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Long-term memory gets wiped 
Scientists have erased a long-term memory in the brains of laboratory rats, offering insight into how such memories are stored.
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What exactly is life? 
As scientific, technological advances continue, definition becomes murkier.
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The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space 

monochrom: The Redro Loitzl Story / Embedded video 

monochrom: The Redro Loitzl Story 
monochrom content info
Our short film about hope and space.



Link (movie download)



Weapons of mass financial destruction 
Last month a major US hedge fund, Amaranth Advisors, lost more than half its assets in a week, speculating on natural gas prices. The company proved correct the chief worry of such major financial institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund: that financial reality is now out of control.
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Modern Cosmology: Science or Folktale? 
Current cosmological theory rests on a disturbingly small number of independent observations.
It appears that everybody is interested in cosmology. In one anthropological study, every one of the more than 60 separate cultures examined was found to have several common characteristics, including "faith healing, luck superstitions, propitiation of supernatural beings, … and a cosmology." Apparently, to be human is to care how the physical world came to be, whether it has boundaries and what is to become of it. Modern cosmology is a highly sophisticated subject funded by governments with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is unquestionably interesting, but is it, even in its modern guise, convincing?

The current Big Bang paradigm has it that the cosmos is expanding out of an initially dense state and that by looking outward into space, one can, thanks to the finite speed of light, look back to much earlier epochs. This understanding owes much to two accidents: astronomers' discovery of redshifts in the spectra of distant nebulae and the fortuitous detection of an omnipresent background of microwave noise, which is believed to be the remnant of radiation from a hot and distant past. Set in the theoretical framework of Einstein's general theory of relativity, such observations lead to a model that makes predictions and can thus be tested.
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Robot erotica 
It's the 2005 calender, but it still looks phresh.
"The calendar is an erotic and robotic calendar. No naked humans (as in playboy), just robots in insinuating positions and their special parts hanging out of their body. Now you can see the private areas of robots!"
Link (thanx, Atrox!)



Taugshow #11: Embedded video 

Taugshow #11: Video online 
monochrom content info
Our 11th episode of Taugshow was recorded at the C-Base in Berlin/Germany, May 12th.

The video is now online.



Our guests were Régine Debatty of "We Make Money Not Art" (what happens when artists manipulate life itself, hack the genes and grow semi-living entitites in their labs?) and Karin Harrasser (why is Science Fiction a restricted mode for science communication?). Evelyn Fürlinger presented "Wicked Wordz", our regular column about lingustics.
Music performances by the monochrom Allstar Band and Krach the Robot.

Link / Video



There's an alternative world... if only we can find it 
The US writer Noam Chomsky talks about the mechanisms behind modern communication, an essential instrument of government in democratic countries -- as important to our governments as propaganda is to a dictatorship.
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Record Low Arctic Sea Ice Predicted For 2007 
University of Colorado at Boulder researchers are now forecasting a 92 percent chance that the 2007 September minimum extent of sea ice across the Arctic region will set an all-time record low.
Link



CD Is 25 Years Old 
The first CD produced was The Visitors by Abba. Since then, "more than 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide since then and it remains the dominant format despite the growth in digital downloads."
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San Jose Semaphore riddle solved 
Last year at theZeroOne digital art festival artist Ben Rubin unveiled the "San Jose Semaphore" atop the Adobe tower in downtown San Jose, CA. For a year now, the four rotating LED wheels perplexed everyone who saw it.

The answer to riddle of the wheels has been revealed. The Adobe building is transmitting the entire text of Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49."

The Pynchon book, written in the mid-1960s, is set in a fictional California city filled with high-tech campuses. It follows a woman's discovery of latent symbols and codes embedded in the landscape and local culture, Rubin said.

Link (via boingboing.net)

monochrom recently brought semaphore to the Bay Area in a project called "Experience The Experience Of One Baud"



Door Henge: Doors Of Polytheistic Perception 
monochrom content info
Announcement!

Anonymous friends of the movement in San Francisco are erecting a polytheism monument on August 19, 2007 in an undisclosed public location. There is clearly a need for secrecy as a result of religious oppression from the monotheistic mainstream.



We'll keep you updated!
Link



Hax0rcise SCO: Embedded Video 

Hax0rcise SCO: The Video 
monochrom content info
Kewagi created a nice video wrap-up of our "Hax0rcise SCO!" performance at the Chaos Communication Camp. Great cooperation with quintessenz and Metalab.



Link



Welcome To My Home 
Is your face full of fashion?



Thanks, Wiley.

Link



Cheat Offset Credits 
When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.
Link



Simpler place 

Laughing Squid on Arse Elektronika 
monochrom content info
Laughing Squid blogs Arse Elektronika.
By the way, our ticket reservation system for Arse Elektronika will be online soon.
Link



Gaming And De-Gaming #1: A Brave New Pong 
monochrom content info
To commemorate the start of our monochrom blog series "Gaming And De-Gaming", we've released our own game called A Brave New Pong. Keep reading over the next couple weeks for more in the series!



"A Brave New Pong"

The age of competition

Through the dark and not so dark millennia of human history, we have organized ourselves into adversarial cliques, communities, and nations. World events were like deadly pong balls hurdling towards us, and these groups were the paddles who's goal it was to knock the ball into someone else's court. Add military might as the means of wealth distribution to an inefficient system which eats surplus wealth to sustain itself, and competition became the fabric of everyday life. The technology necessary for global cooperation did not exist.

Competition was thus established as the default way of interacting with the world. In its genteel form competition meant games where nobody got killed. Gladiators turned to soccer turned to table tennis. By 1972 computers became advanced enough to simulate competitive games, and Pong was born.

Pong is a vestigial trace of our competitive nature. If we don't want the pong ball to go off the table, we can program the computer to control the paddles better than any human can. Our desire to play competitive pong versus other humans through obsolete hand operation is nothing but a vain show of relative one-upmanship. There is no point to competitive gaming in the computer age.

The technology pill

Technology could save us if we'd let it. There is enough material wealth for everyone on the planet to have a sturdy home and a steady food supply, if we stop competing and use our global communication and computation capabilities to level the playing field.

In the brave new version of Pong, there is no need to try to hit the ball into someone else's court. Relax. Move the ball wherever you want and the computer will make sure it doesn't fall off the table.

What is good about competition?

Competitive systems such as evolution and capitalism are terrific at creating unpredictable change very quickly. It's the trial-by-error system. If you're looking for a wide variety of output, competitive systems are the best. Not only will the product of such systems tend to improve over time, they'll fill just about any niche available to them.

Competition can be a great inspiration to develop skills related to the goal, which is great if inspiration is needed and the skills are useful ones. In a system like pong however, you just wind up getting better at playing pong.

A competitive system also is great for ensuring that people who are ahead in the game get exactly what they want when they want it, like the hawk who uses highly evolved vision to catch it's prey, or like first-worlders who use their superior buying power to get iPods.

Why is competition an outdated ideal?

Although competitive systems produce such good things as human beings and diet cola, we also wind up with such things as wooly mammoths and guided missiles.
It's a horribly inefficient way of producing things people truly need. Most energy in a competitive system is spent not in producing a product, but in staying competitive.

In evolution this manifests in a less than desirable cycle of predator-prey adaptation escalation, where more energies are spent surviving than enjoying life.
In capitalism it results the same sort of relationship, except between those with capital value and those without. People who don't have capital value are trapped working for those who do, and their energies are directed towards keeping their team competitive.

A waste of resources.

In our competitive system, most of our energies are redundant and wasteful. Redundancy is the result of the wasted overhead when multiple people are working on the same problem in different "teams". Team Coke and Team Pepsi are both working on the cola problem, but each spends huge amounts of resources battling the other.

Even within a supposedly cooperative society, most businesses exist in order to support other businesses. How much would the production of our essential goods decrease if we laid off our accountants, and all the people who supply computers to them, and all the people who print brochures for the computer salesman, and the people who produce the ink for those brochures, and the people who make packaged food for the truckers who drive those materials around.

Think of the construction workers who build our office towers, and the companies that supply raw materials, and the miners who dig them out of the earth, and the manufactures of processed food, since everyone involved is too busy to feed themselves. This is all within the same nation-system, where we supposedly share a common goal!

In pong, the fact that your opponent keeps hitting the ball at you means you must spend your resources defending your goal instead of using your time for more noble endeavors.

So while we're at it, let's get rid of the patent office and all advertising everywhere. How much effort goes into staying ahead of the game! Most of our jobs are not directly responsible for producing the things we need as a society, so imagine how much manpower could be freed to work on other things.

A Brave New Pong

Evolution and capitalism have brought us to the point where it's possible to propel ourselves out our current state of affairs. We're intelligent enough now that we don't need the randomness of a competitive system. We can program randomness.
Things that used to be competitive games should now be cooperative games, or even non-games.

The world is no longer made up of unpredictable systems separated by incommunicable distances. By using computer models to produce what we want and distribute it fairly, the age old game of producing for production's sake can come to an end. Humans have tried organizing themselves in more equitable arrangements in the past, but these systems were ultimately run by other humans. In the new world we will be able to relax and let technology do the job. The pong ball will never fall off the table again!

Link



Hax0rcise SCO! 
monochrom content info
And I saw, and I heard a voice of many fallen angels followed by drones and the living creatures and the elder hackers; and the number of enslaved users was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a great voice, "Unworthy is the disk that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and might and honor!" And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things are in them, heard I saying, "Blast it from the throne!" And the four living sys admins said, Amen.



The Day of Judgement has arrived. Oh energy redistributed carbohydrates, end the proprietary reign of evil! Thou shalt pull the trigger speaketh the 0ne!

Weareth your hoodie jackets! Joineth! High speed cameras welcome! Even bloggers!

Date: Saturday, Aug 11. Time: 17:00. Meeting point: Statue of Lenin @ CCC Camp.

Signed: Metalab / monochrom / quintessenz. And the faithful peoples of LeiwandVille.

Needed: drum, drummer, high speed camera, maybe bloggers.

Link



Toyps, Update 
monochrom content info
New typos arrived.



Link



Chaos Communication Camp / Pictures 
monochrom content info
Our monochrom ambassador Jake Appelbaum has a great photo set about Chaos Communication Camp.

And this is what electrosmog is doing to my body.



Link



Remoting Future @ boingboing 
monochrom content info
Remoting Future is featured on boingboing. Great!
Link



Taugshow #12 @ Chaos Communication Camp 2007 
monochrom content info
Just a reminder...
monochrom presents:

++TAUGSHOW #12++
Friday, August 10, 2007 / 9:30 PM @ FOO, Chaos Communication Camp, Finowurt

The flat hierarchies of talk shows are about as subversive as NYC Democrats smoking dope. But count us out! We won't produce a talk show. Nope. We produce a TAUGSHOW! Which means: we dig it. Our guests are geeks, heretics, and other coevals. A joyful bucket full of good clean fanaticism, crisis, language, culture, self-content, identity, utopia, mania and despair, condensed into the well known cultural technique of a prime time TV show.

[taugen; Viennese slang: to dig/love/adore something]

Host: Johannes Grenzfurthner
Content Manager: Michael Zeltner (replacing Roland Gratzer)

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Thanks to the wonderful folks of the CCC and the Metalab for helping us...

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/// RICH GIBSON ON MAPS AND REALITIES

Maps tell stories, and the stories they tell both reflect and create reality. We live in a phenomenal Universe. What we see, smell, hear, taste and touch is mediated by our senses. What we see are the records of photons hitting our eyes, and what we smell is the effect of molecules of that material binding with receptors in our nasal passages (think on that as you visit the porta potty). Because we live in a phenomenal universe in which our experience of reality is mediated by our senses the maps that we create to represent reality also create reality. Rich Gibson is interested in the geospatial component of what people do. Everything we do, think or experience we do, think or experience somewhere. But who cares where you were when you added 'milk' to your grocery list? Consider that our primary source on the lives of many people, including in recent historical time, is their middens and outhouses. That is, their garbage dumps and shit. The locative part of our history is at least as important as our shit! And if handled well we can learn from where we have been.

Rich Gibson appears to be a mechanism for turning sugar and alcohol into energy and ideas. He lives in Sebastopol California where he writes code and words, and tries to understand and perhaps change the ways he and the world interact. He is the co-author of "Mapping Hacks" and "Google Maps Hacks". He works with Meadan.org. We care about what is close to us, and Meadan is working to bring the world close to all of us.

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/// B9PUNK ON PIRATES AND RADIOS

Pirate Radio is not only possible in the US, but easy, affordable, low-risk, and a useful important medium. KBFR (K-Boulder Free Radio) was a enormously successful and long-lived (5 years on the air) station in Colorado, which was made more successful and long-lived with the involvement of hackers. In the end, we had 40 Djs, a rented space, benefit concerts and a cd of local music we recorded at our studio, thousands of listeners, and an unforgettable impact on the community. Together we confronted, and have lots of funny stories to tell about, the many interesting questions involved in running a free station, like pleasing the community, advertisers, free speech at large, "real" radio competition, and of course those evil bastards the FCC.

B9punk is basically a "hacker enabler," meaning that she has had a hand in setting up projects like making a new 2600 meeting, starting a pseudo-hackerspace in New York (the Hacker Halfway House), designing and coordinating the HOPE conference, and most recently Hackers on a Plane. Her most interesting and favorite adventure in this line of work so far, was being involved with a pirate radio station in the US. She currently lives in New York City, but has been spending a lot of time in Europe lately in an effort to pick up some class and avoid being a stereotype.

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/// PHILLIP STEARNS: "I <3 COMPUTER MUSIC TOO!"

Phillip Stearns is a Los Angeles based sound and visual artist, composer and recent graduate of the California Institute of the Arts music composition department. His most recent work is centered around the notion of the circuit as a site for expression through subversion. His projects are personal inquiries into electronic technologies and their role in shaping our notions of community, space, isolation and interconnectedness. The tools of his practice include hacked and custom designed electronic hardware, misused audio hardware, compromised and abused commercial software, and recently antiquated technologies.

"I <3 Computer Music Too!" goes right to the core of electronic media: The Hardware. Rather than engage with the tradition of software programming to generate sound and image, custom designed analog/digital circuitry is used to hack, augment and transform the electronic signals flying around the motherboard of a PC computer into an abstract audio/visual mind-warp. The performance is improvised and deals with negotiations between the performer and equipment in the creation of a real-time media based performance work. Instead of creating a system which converts from one media to another, sound to audio or visa versa, the hardware in "I <3 Computer Music Too!" treats all signals equally. All electronic signals are analog and are without meaning until they are "formatted" to suit a particular display or output device. Within the piece, this formatting is done as directly is possible with the goal of minimal translation.

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/// monochrom regulars:

JAKE APPELBAUM

Jake Appelbaum will talk about Flickr, Yahoo!, unintended consequences of censorship, and publishing on the net as an artist.

Jacob Appelbaum is the monochrom Ambassador. He's currently living in San Francisco.

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/// Showband:

MONOCHROM ALLSTAR BAND featuring Michael Zeltner

An eternity of whetstones per kilo-newton!

Enjoy!
Link



Remoting Future 
monochrom content info
In a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the timeline that has yet to occur. We want to provide practical countdowns for special moments in space-time that still have not occurred... even if some of those moments already happened. Please consider that JavaScript has to be activated to display the countdowns. And don't hesitate to submit new dates (and sources)!



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Lions: Africa's Magnificent Predators 
A Photo Essay By Nathan Myhrvold.



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Off the record 
In recent years, the economics of pop music have been upended. The market for CDs has collapsed, and not even the rise of legal downloading can offset the damage to record companies. Meanwhile, demand for live performances has rocketed.
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Elton John: "Why we must close the net" 
So Elton John thinks that the Internet is killing art. And he says that it should be shut down.
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monochrom Office cams 
monochrom content info
Franky just installed two cameras in our office @ Museumsquartier, Vienna.

They are not really good, but still. If you urge for hi-res peeping, don't hesitate to donate some of your bucks.

Cam 1:



Cam 2:



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Slim chance of tuning in to alien TV 
It has been suggested that the next generation of radio telescopes, such as LOFAR, now being built in the Netherlands, could be used to detect radio noise from alien radio and TV. So Marko Horvat, a computer scientist at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, calculated the odds of detecting alien civilisations of different lifespans from their radio signals. If, for example, 10 civilisations, each with a lifespan of 250,000 years, live within radio reach of Earth, the probability that one of them will be detected is about 9 per cent. That sounds good, but it assumes we have near-perfect telescopes scanning the entire sky constantly - an ideal far from being realised. "We need much better telescopes," Horvat says.
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Generation regulation 
As rock's generational codes become increasingly muddled, it's high time we changed our habits and started self-regulating, says John Harris.
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FreeTube 
DaddyD writes:
Joost might be a nice idea, but for those of us fortunate enough to not live in the states, is sort of lame. Especially when you realize just how many ITV stations are really out there.
One collection of online videos is particularly scrumptious. It's called FreeTube, and it has a long list of stations featuring news, lifestyle sports, and, best of all, cartoons. Loads of cartoons.
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Sabotage: Democracy's last resort? 
The acquittal of two men who broke into the Fairford airbase to try to disable B52 bombers at the start of the Iraq war is a victory for democracy, writes Stuart Weir.
Just Just over four years ago, Toby Olditch and Philip Pritchard, two carpenters from Oxford, broke into RAF Fairford with the intention of disabling American B52 bombers. It was just before the 'shock and awe' offensive against Iraq began. Their aim was to try to save the lives of at least some ordinary Iraqi citizens. They believed that even if, as was likely, the bombers could be made airworthy after their assault, even a few days’ delay in flights would have given some people the opportunity to flee to safety.
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New facial recognition system: Scary? 
I have an uncanny feeling...
U.S. scientists have created new facial recognition software that might eliminate the need to remember dozens of passwords or credit card numbers.

Researchers led by University of Houston Professor Ioannis Kakadiaris have developed URxD, a face recognition program that uses a three-dimensional snapshot of a person's face to create a biometric. Kakadiaris said URxD can be used for everything from gaining access to secure facilities to authorizing credit card purchases.

"Accuracy is the name of the game in 3-D face recognition," Kakadiaris said. "What makes our system so accurate is the strength of the variables that we use to describe a person's face.

"Imagine a day when you simply sit in front of your computer and it recognizes who you are," he said. "Everything will be both easier and more secure, from online purchases to parental control of what Web sites your children can visit."

More information about the new technology is available at www.cbl.uh.edu/URxD.



Never Speak to Strangers: A memoir of journalism, the Cold War, and the KGB 
In 1976, David Satter met two Estonian dissidents...
"The Soviet Union is a land of miracles, and from time to time the KGB likes to create reality."
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Fractal Sex 
Video feedback at its best.
This is what happens when TV camera's masturbate! In this case, the camera (Canon ZR70) is shooting through a mask I made in Photoshop and imported into the camera. The center of the mask is black allowing the video signal through to recirculate when pointed at the TV set displaying the live camera image. The camera in addition to having a Mask Mode engaged, is also set to MIRROR. What you see is produced by rotating the video camera "just so" to produce the video feedback.


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Arse Elektronika 2007: pr0nnovation? 
monochrom content info
Our international conference about pornography and technological innovation (October 5-7 @ Kink.com's Porn Palace, San Francisco, USA).

From the depiction of a vulva in a cave painting to the newest internet porno, technology and sexuality have always been closely linked. No one can predict what the future will bring, but history indicates that sex will continue to play an essential role in technological development. The porno effect accompanies every new technological development. Is it going too far to assume that research in nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be influenced by our sexual needs? The surgical modification of sexual organs is no longer something very unusual. The question is not whether these technologies alter humanity, but how they do so.



Arse Elektronika will be a serious conference with a fun attitude. Speaker bios, talk abstracts and details about the performances can be found on the conference homepage.

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monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993.
[more]

Booking monochrom:
[Europe]
[USA]

External monochrom links:
[monochrom Wikipedia]
[monochrom Flickr]
[monochrom blip.tv]
[monochrom GV]
[monochrom Youtube]
[monochrom Facebook]
[monochrom iTunes]
[monochrom Twitter]
 


Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 2 / The Adventure Game

Climate Training Camp

Krach der Roboter: Hello World!

Slacking is killing the DIY industry (T-Shirt)

Carefully Selected Moments / CD, LP

Freedom is a whore of a word (T-Shirt)

#fullboycott

International Year of Polytheism 2007

Santa Claus Vs. Christkindl: A Mobster Battle

Could It Be (Video clip)

Pot Tin God

Hacking the Spaces

Kiki and Bubu and The Shift / Short film

Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege / Short film

Kiki and Bubu and The Self / Short film

Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan / Short film

Kiki and Bubu and The Feelings / Short film / Short film

Sculpture Mobs

Nazi Petting Zoo / Short film

The Great Firewall of China

KPMG / Short film

The BRAICIN / Short film

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 1 / The Adventure Game

I was a copyright infringement in a previous life (T-Shirt)

Brave New Pong

Leben ist LARPen e.V.

One Minute / Short film

Firing Squad Euro2008 Intervention

RFID Song

A tribute to Honzo

Lessig ist lässig

I can count every star in the heavens above -- The image of computers in popular music

All Tomorrow's Condensations / Puppet show

Bye Bye / Short film

Revaluation

PC/DC patch

Proto-Melodic Comment Squad

myfacespace.com

The Redro Loitzl Story / Short film

Hax0rcise SCO

Law and Second Order (T-Shirt)

They really kicked you out of the Situationist International?

Death Special: Falco

Applicant Fisch / Short film

When I was asked to write about new economy

Taugshow #6

Taugshow #7

Taugshow #9

Taugshow #10

Taugshow #11

Taugshow #14

Taugshow #15

Campfire at Will

Arse Elektronika 2007, 2008, 2009 etc.

The Void's Foaming Ebb / Short film

Remoting Future

When you / Short film

Elf

Free Bariumnitrate

Toyps / Typing Errors

ARAD-II Miami Beach Crisis

The Charcoal Burner / Short film

Digital Culture In Brazil

Hegemonchhichi

Nation of Zombia

Lonely Planet Guide action

CSI Oven Cloth

Dept. of Applied Office Arts

Farewell to Overhead

Google Buttplug

Fieldrecording in Sankt Wechselberg / Short film

Dark Dune Spots

Campaign For The Abolition Of Personal Pronouns

Zeigerpointer

Space Tourism

In the Head of the Gardener

Entertainment (Unterhaltung) / Short film

Cthulhu Goatse

Nicholas Negroponte Memorial Cable

Coke Light Art Edition 06

Experience the Experience! (West Coast USA/Canada Tour 2005)

April 23

Overhead Cumshot

Irark / Short film

Wart

Instant Blitz Copy Fight

A Patriotic Fireman

A Micro Graphic Novel Project

Noise and Talk

The Exhilarator

H&M

SUZOeG Training / Short film

The Flower Currency

Gastro-Art/Gastrokunst

A Holiday in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf

How does the Internet work?

Paraflows 2006 and up

Special Forces

Coca Cola

About Work

Turing Train Terminal

Me / Short Film

Massive Multiplayer Thumb-Wrestling Network

Doormat

Some Code To Die For

The Year Wrap-up

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Metroblogging

Project Mendel

Display, Retry, Fail

Manifesto of Ignorantism

Actionfilm

Towers of Hanoi

Heisenberg

Opto-Hedonism

Every Five Seconds an Inkjet Printer Dies Somewhere

Milk

Mobutobe

Brandmarker

We know apocalypses

452 x 157 cm² global durability

A Good Haul

Blattoptera / Art for Cockroaches

Minus 24x

Gladiator / Short Film

Eden

An attempt to emulate an attempt

Paschal Duct-Taping

Laptop Crochetication

Russka

Somewhere in the 1930s

Soul Sale

The Department for Criticism against Globalisation

Dot Smoke

Georg Paul Thomann

Nurgel Staring

War On

Let's network it out

Nude

Mackerel Fiddlers

Whales

Disney vs. Chrusov / Short film

Bulk Mail

Easter Celebrations

Mouse Over Matter

Condolence for a Crab

Force Sting

Turning Threshold Countries Into Plows

System

A Noise

A. C. A.

Hopping Overland

Achy Breaky Heart Campaign

Hermeneutic Imperative III

Holy Water / Franchise

Roböxotica // Festival for Cocktail-Robotics

Spears

Engine Hood Cookies

Ikea

The Watch

Creative Industry 2003

This World

Cracked Foundation For The Fine Arts

Sometimes I feel

Fit with INRI

Growing Money

Catapulting Wireless Devices

Buried Alive

Illegal Space Race

Magnetism Party

Brick of Coke

1 Baud

Scrota Contra Vota

Direct Intervention Engine

Oh my God, they use a history which repeats itself! (T-Shirt)

Administrating:

Dorkbot Vienna





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