[ B l o g / / Archive]


Gadget: you Snooze, you Loose 
This internet connected alarm clock punishes you for sleeping in. It connects to your bank account and transfers money to an organization you HATE. (The photograph shows $11 going to the GOP).



Of course, you could set it to donate to an organization you LIKE, if you feel that would be enough motivation for you.

Link



A Sports-Oriented Social Experiment 
For all of you outside the US at the moment who might not be familiar with the yearly orgy of consumer excess and arteriosclerosis that is the National Football League's Super Bowl, let us give you a bit of background.

Every year, between January and February, certain post-bloodsport gladiators take to the field of glory under the sparkling, watchful eyes of roughly three quarters of the population of the United States.


The hallmarks for the day are carcinogen-enhanced slabs of meat, corn-derived snack objects optimized for mouthfeel, and a more than generous supply of what Europeans laughingly call beer. Extremely expensive advertising also festoons commercial breaks, scrolling lower thirds, stadiums, fans, commemorative beer hats, the internet, the playing field, dog sweaters, countertops, convenience store displays, and every single other available surface during the game and for the weeks preceding.

This year the annual contest takes place in beautiful downtown Phoenix, Arizona, between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots.

The passions that arise for this event are high, even among those people that do not ordinarily give a fig about football. Let's hear it for the mob mentality and fair-weather fandom.

Emotions during the game are so elevated, in fact, due to the heady lubrication of alcohol and hot wings, that certain thinkers in the vicinity wonder what would happen if the following were to occur:

Say one was to come by this handy little device. If one were to set oneself up in a public house which was featuring the coming Sunday's festivities, and deploy the device during opportune intervals (say, for example, while the QB's Hail Mary was in the air, 3rd and 10, six seconds to go at the half, score 18-16, losers have possession).

Experimenters might gauge to what magnitude the crown manifests their reaction as a study of a variety of factors, for example, the aforementioned mob mentality, the varying influences of alcohol, and the place violence has in our seemingly complacent middle-class American society.

Male experimenters might want to wear an athletic supporter in the event of their exposition. Female experimenters should endeavor to show cleavage and maintain wide-eyed innocence (these precautions come as a result of the study of other sociological phenomena regarding the different reactions to the sexes in times of emotional duress and confusion).

If one were to undertake this experiment, one might report back to this author, in the interests of furthering the worldwide body of knowledge as a whole.



monochrom's Taugshow #14: The Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Special // Video! 
monochrom content info
People of the world, you, who sit in your superficially secure third countries! The video is online!

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf's Armed Forces present their home country, the last existing appanage republic of the USSR. The enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the Republic of Austria – which surrounds it – or with the European Union.

Comrades Chrusov and Moloshnikov interview Emmanuel Goldstein (2600, NYC), Jason Brown (Machine Project, Los Angeles) and Evelyn Fuerlinger. They also present a strange electromagnetic table provided by C-Base in Berlin.



Recorded at Metalab, Vienna (September 2007).

Link to hi-res videos



Theories of cancer 
How paradigms shift and culprits change in the fight against the disease, and what concerned citizens can do about it.
Link



Screen-printed Solar Cells In Many Colors And Designs, Even Used In Windows 
Newly designed solar cells can be screen-printed in a wide array of colors and patterns to allow them to be attractively incorporated into building design. The solar cells also can be used on windows, providing shading from glare while generating electricity.



Link



Simone Davalos joins monochrom blogging team 
monochrom content info
Wow! One more new monochrom blogger!

Simone Davalos is a professional ne'er do well who writes stuff and plays with robots. She is co-organizer of RoboGames, the world's largest robot competition (at least the Guinness Book says so) and messes around with power tools with The Flaming Lotus Girls, builders of fine large-scale fire art. She tends to blather most at Suicidebots.com, but also occasionally puts out for The Long Now Foundation and Gawker Media, if they take her out to dinner, ask nicely and wear latex. Her attitude has gotten her into trouble in the past. She enjoys being a patsy for Survival Research Labs, has been a member of the San Francisco Cacophony Society since birth, and her most useful collegiate experience was as the assistant pyrotechnician for the Yale University Precision Marching Band.



Hurrayyyy!



BB reports about New Falco Stairs 

San Francisco honors Falco with competing stairs 
monochrom content info
The original Falco staircase (or Falcostiege) in Vienna was dedicated after the Musician's death in 1998. The staircase is quite small and unimpressive. Apparently the city was unable to find a street or bridge named after a dead fascist which could be rededicated.



As of this week, San Francsico honors Falco with a plaque on the stairs leading to Coit Tower. At last, a fitting tribute!



Follow the links to previous monochrom videos about Falcostiege.
Link 1 and Link 2
(Info on our "Falco: Death Special" page)

Please report any new occurrences of Falco staircases!



The Dangers of Double-Dipping 
Food scientist and New York Times columnist Harold McGee writes about a research study on microbial transfer to dip bowls when folks who are snacking "double-dip" -- that is, if they use a chip to have a bite of tasty guacamole, then dip the remains of their chip back into the communal bowl. In short: Microbes do get transfered back into the dip bowl, but no one knows whether this puts anyone at increased risk of disease. Here's a good basic guacamole recipe. If you make it, though, add a bit more garlic.



'Dune' in many languages 
"Unique among Science Fiction novels.. I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings."
— Arthur C Clarke

The wonderful Dune Index site, among other things, lists book covers for different language editions of Frank Herbert's Dune series. Click to marvel at the wonders of cross-culture sci-fi cover art or simply giggle endlessly and immaturely at the name of the Dune series in Danish.

Link



The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power 
Lisa Kemmerer reviews "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power" by Joel Bakan (Free Press in the US, Robinson Publishing in the UK, 2005).
"We have, over the last three hundred years constructed a remarkably efficient wealth-creating machine, but it is now out of control." (p159) The out-of-control machine to which Bakan refers in his highly readable and informative book is the corporation. Few entities are as damaging to the environment as are corporations. Bakan's book outlines the history of the problems that stem from too much corporate power, describes some of the worst consequences of this trend, and proposes ways of bringing this out-of-control wealth-creating machine back in line with common decency.


Link



SpaceX tests multiple rocket engines for first time 
The commercial rocket company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is one step closer to creating a reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle after its Falcon 9 rocket passed a multi-engine test earlier this month.
Link



Interview with Nitesh Dhanjani and Billy Rios, Spies in the Phishing Underground 
Both Nitesh and Billy are well-known security researchers that have recently managed to infiltrate the phishing underground. What started as a simple examination of phishing sites, turned into an extraordinary view of the ecosystem that supports the phishing effort that plagues modern day financial institutions and their customers.

They saw an extraordinary amount of sensitive customer account information, obtained the latest phishing kits, located and examined the tools used by phishers, trolled sites buying and selling identities, and even social engineered a few scammers.

In this interview, they expose the tactics and tools that phishers use, illustrate what happens when your confidential information gets stolen, discuss how phishers communicate and even how they phish each other.

Link (via DaddyD)



Lia Kronberger, born January 25 and already 100% monochrom 
monochrom content info
Hooray!
Lia Kronberger, born January 25, 2008; 1:49 PM!



Congratulations and best wishes to the lucky parents, our beloved monochrom comrades Anika Kronberger and Daniel Fabry!



A Language Dies - So How Do You Relearn It? 
How would you go about learning a language that nobody speaks? It depends. A well-documented language would have a dictionary, grammar book, a body of literature (such as folk tales or religious texts), and, in some cases, videos and recordings that a dedicated student could learn from...
Link



What Makes a Miracle: Some myths about the rise of China and India 
After more than a century of relative stagnation, the economies of India and China have been growing at remarkably high rates over the past 25 years. In 1820 the two countries contributed nearly half of the world's income; by 1950, with the industrialized West having pulled away, their share had fallen to less than one-tenth. Today it is just less than one-fifth, and projections suggest that by 2025 it will rise to one-third. (In 2008 the World Bank is expected to issue revised numbers about cost of living in China and India, which may somewhat reduce these estimated income shares, both current and future).
The consequences of this expansion are extraordinary.
Link



U2 manager says "Hippy Values" of Silicon Valley are killing the music business 
Paul McGuinness said he believed the Silicon Valley culture and its ecosystem had to undergo a cultural shift, noting the original "hippy values" of the west coast technology pioneers in the late 1970s and their internet equivalents in the late 1990s. "Embedded deep down in the brilliance of those entrepreneurial, hippy values seems to be a disregard for the true value of music," he said.
Link



monochrom @ Etech 2008: "Context Hacking: Some Examples of How to Mess with Art, the Media System, Law and the Market" 
monochrom content info
Johannes Grenzfurthner will talk @ Etech 2008: "Context Hacking: Some Examples of How to Mess with Art, the Media System, Law and the Market".
March 5, 2008; San Diego
Link



monochrom @ SXSWi: GUERRILLA.COM 
monochrom content info
Johannes Grenzfurthner (monochrom) will talk about guerrilla communication @ SXSW Interactive.
The term guerrilla communication refers to unconventional forms of communication and/or intervention in more conventional processes of communication. Communication guerilla is a specific style of political action drawing from a watchful view of the paradoxes and absurdities of power, turning these into the starting point for political interventions by playing with representations and identities, with alienation and over-identification. The talk's starting point will be a rather trivial insight: information and political education are completely useless if nobody wants to listen. Guerrilla communication doesn't focus on arguments and facts like most leaflets, brochures, slogans or banners. In its own way, it inhabits a militant political position, it is direct action in the space of social communication. But it doesn't aim to destroy the codes of power and signs of control. Communication guerrillas do not intend to occupy, interrupt or destroy the dominant channels of communication, they focus on detourning and subverting the messages transported. But what's new about all this? Nothing. But standing on the shoulders of earlier avantgardes, communication guerilla doesn't claim the invention of a new politics or the foundation of a new movement. It is merely continuing an incessant exploration of the jungle of communication processes, of the intertwined and muddled paths of senders, codes and recipients.
March 11, 2008. Austin/Texas.
Link



monochrom @ Plutopia! SXSWi 
monochrom content info
monochrom will be part of "Plutopia! the 8th Annual SXSW Interactive Tech Gathering of the Tribes", a SXSWi multifaceted extravaganza at Scholz Garten Emphasizing Convergence, Sustainability, Futurism and Art.
[...] you won't want to miss the world premier of the first ever surrealistic vaudevillian variety talk show…with tentacles - as we present The Lance Van de Kamp Show Starring Maggie Duval. As part of this gala display of "high-low brow comedy", music and interviews, Vienna's own art-technology-philosophy master pranksters of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism, monochrom, will present the official ambassador of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf - "the last appanage republic of the USSR"
March 10, 2008; Austin/Texas.
Link



Anthropocene: Geologists claim old epoch has ended 

Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams at the University of Leicester, along with their colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, have presented research suggesting that humans have changed the Earth to such an extent that we have brought about an end to the Holocene epoch of Earth's history and are now entering a new epoch, the Anthropocene.

Geological Society of America journal article
University of Leicester press release
Full-size NASA satellite image of Bolivian rainforest



Rose White: New monochrom blogger! 
monochrom content info
Rose White is our new monochrom blogger! A warm welcome!

Rose is a sociology PhD student at Graduate Center-CUNY, in Manhattan, but lives in Brooklyn because that's where all the action is. Her doctoral work is on how bright people break rules (in other words, deviance and technology!)—tell her what you want studied and maybe she'll get on that. She presented at Arse Elektronika 2007 in San Francisco on unintended consequences of Web 2.0, and she used to own a yarn store in Brooklyn, named Yarnivore. In 1997 she had a story anthologized in Best American Erotica, which means it's about time for her to write some new porn. And she's learning German, but you might not want to test that for awhile.




All Tomorrow's Condensations @ Retrostacja 
monochrom content info
Our steampunk puppet show "All Tomorrow's Condensations" is featured on the great Polish Steampunk site "Retrostacja".
Link



Prolonged Deadline: monochrom #26-34 Call For Everything 
monochrom content info
We are looking for articles, essays, graphics, cartoons, cut-up stuff for the next multi-issue of our non-commercial yearbook series "monochrom". We'll publish the entire book in English, a fact that might be highly interesting for many monolingual Angloamerican folks.



There is no maximum or minimum length for articles or essays. There is no general topic whatsoever. You write about things you find interesting. Or boring. Your text could be about radical constructivism. Or fish and chips. Or hacking your toilet. Or blowing up Mercury. Or HTML. Or Mormon theology and Battlestar Galactica. You'll find your topic!

A big section of the publication will be dedicated to reviews. And we review everything. Want to review a certain medieval war? Or arctic sea protozoans? Laws of nature? Climate zones? Ways to die? Lava streams? Spam headers? Demonstrations? Sumerian gods? Neon feelings? A crisis? The different types of snow in Stephen King novels? Book shelves in porn movies? Kosher hot dogs? Axiology? Sperm? Johann Sebastian Bach? German officers in American movies who shout "Schweinerei"? Russian oil pumps? Calvinistic prayers? Trash cans in Kansas and/or Lithuania? Anal sex? The Northwest as an ontological entity? Perfect! Go on!

So, please send your suggestions or finished works to mono AT monochrom.at

Deadline is (prolonged!) March 15, 2008.
Preferred format for text files: RTF files. Preferred format for graphics: Greyscale JPEGs, maximum quality, 300 dpi.
Please don't forget to mention your name and snailmail address.

We hope we'll be able to publish monochrom #26-34 in winter 2008.



"All Tomorrow's Condensation" on Boing Boing 
monochrom content info
Our steampunk puppet show is featured on Boing Boing.
Link



The Sistine Chapel was created 500 years ago by Michelangelo... or was it? 
It is one of the wonders of the world. It covers 550 sq m, took three years of back-breaking work to create, and has been marvelled at by millions. Now, a controversial study is throwing new light on the 'inspiration' behind Michelangelo's greatest masterpiece.
Link



Facing the future: Skull-lift or fat-harvested bust augmentation? 
Think Botox is a beauty step too far? How about a skull-lift? Or a fat-harvested bust augmentation? Liz Hancock forecasts what the future holds for women and the beauty industry.
Link



Shakespeare, Buddha, and King Lear 
I'm not a Buddhist, but from time to time I like to check out the "Journal of Buddhist Ethics".
Given Shakespeare's status as "the secular Bible," it is surprising that his work has not been examined more closely to consider its spiritual teachings. As Buddhist studies increase in popularity in the West, more and more Buddhist scholars are being drawn to evaluate Shakespeare's work in light of Buddhist traditions. Of special interest today is the perception of Shakespeare's works as points-of-resistance to the dominant global-consumerist ideology. According to Stanley Wells, Lear's "non-naturalistic interpretation of action" lends itself to the interpretation of its "moral and philosophical concepts." This article considers the developing relationship between Shakespeare and Buddhism, and through a close read of King Lear establishes some of the methods and questions which may prove Shakespeare fertile ground for Buddhist scholars.
Link



World's Best Microscope Can Produce Images Less Than Diameter Of Single Hydrogen Atom 
TEAM 0.5, the world's most powerful transmission electron microscope — capable of producing images with half-angstrom resolution (half a ten-billionth of a meter), less than the diameter of a single hydrogen atom — has been installed at the Department of Energy's National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.



Link



European airtraffic simulation 



(Thanx, Hans Christian Voigt!)
Link



Progress Quest: A Zero Player Game 
Progress Quest is a Windows computer game created as a parody of EverQuest and other massively multiplayer computer role-playing games. It is loosely considered a zero-player game, in the sense that once the player has set up his artificial character, there is no user interaction at all; the game "plays" itself, with the human player as spectator.
Link (thanx, Ronald Ortner)



"[...] first use of nuclear weapons must remain [...] ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction." 
Quote/five Western military leaders:
"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."
Wow.
Source



Lily / open source, browser-based, visual programming environment 
Lily is a browser-based, visual programming environment that lets people create programs graphically, without writing code, by drawing connections between data, images, sounds, text and graphics. Lily's cross-platform, free, open source and is written in JavaScript. Did we mention it's fun?
Link



Ten years ago in pop culture 
What happened ten years ago in pop culture? Well, here you can find a PDF... and I can't believe crappy Beverly Hills Ninja is that old and still stuck in my head.
Be sure to check out more stuff on Mister Pop History.



Yes! Computer learns to out-munch humans at Pac-Man! 
Smart software that plays Ms Pac-Man better than the average human player also highlights weaknesses in artificial intelligence.



Link



America runs on... blood and high fructose corn syrup 
One of Dunkin Donuts recent US commercials. Full of hardcore North American superliberalism.
Link



Olive Garden and Virtual Restaurant Reality 
A small commentary about simulacra.
Link



Happy MLK 
Today the United States celebrates Martin Luther King day. Since MLK is unlikely to appear on the dollar bill, let's commemorate him with a LOLCAT



To the American public King is a figure as misunderstood as Jesus, or Abe Lincoln, or any historical figure. American schools focus on his dream of racial integration, but he was also a Labor activist and anti-war activist across racial lines.

Forty years after his assassination, race issues in America are somewhat better. Yet unions are in decline, the wealth gap is widening, and they're still in a preemptive war with a small nation of brown people. WWMLKD?

Link



Make Magazine: "I can count every star in the heavens above but I have no heart I can't fall in love..." 
monochrom content info
Make Magazine's Phil Torrone features "I can count every star..."
Link



Reminder: monochrom performance in Orlando 
monochrom content info
For the first time there will be a monochrom talk/performance in Orange County, Florida!
What will happen? Well... it will be tour-de-farce. 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 gala show. Powernapping highly welcome.



January 22, 8 PM @ The Redlight Redlight in Winter Park.



Video online: "I can count every star in the heavens above but I have no heart I can't fall in love..." -- The image of computers in popular music 
monochrom content info
A talk (with examples) by monochrom, presented by Johannes Grenzfurthner.

First presented at 24C3, Berlin, December 2007.

Bourgeois culture was paralyzed and finally overrun by modern technologies which broke through the traditional class barriers. It went into a panic and produced these very stupid technophobic manifestos and images e.g. of "the computer". Pop music discovered and explored the computer not only as a musical instrument but also as something to sing and reflect about in a less aversive way. In doing so it influenced the conception people had of computers. The public image of computers was shaped by groups such as Kraftwerk as well as through obscure Schlager songs such as France Gall's "Computer No. 3". Not only was that image influenced by high culture computer panic but also by naïve technomania, and so it delivered the very dialectics of the computer as a means of cultural technology in capitalist society.



Link (videos)



monochrom's "All Tomorrow's Condensations": Video online 
monochrom content info
A steampunk theatre play extravaganza. With puppets!
monochrom try to reinterpret the steampunk genre in form of a steamy puppet extravaganza. A journey into the backwaters of imagination! Now on video!



With Roland Gratzer, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fuerlinger, David Dempsey, Sean Bonner, Dan Kaminsky, Bre Pettis, Clemens Kindermann, Franz Ablinger and Guenther Friesinger.

Link (Videos)



England's 'Jurassic Coast' Yields Subversive Dinosaur Fossils 
Reminders of the prehistoric past keep surfacing in a rich dinosaur graveyard in southern England. What a girl named Mary Anning found there in the 1800s began to dismantle the Bible's account of creation -- and anticipated the theory of evolution.
Link



A Global Pension Plan? 
On current projections, a fifth of the world's population will be over 60 by 2050. With old-age poverty set to increase across the planet, Robin Blackburn presents a plan for funding a universal pension of a dollar a day.
Link



The Moral Instinct 
Evolution has endowed us with ethical impulses. Do we know what to do with them?
Link



Vienna: Chimps are not people - court 
A chimpanzee cannot be declared a person, Austria's Supreme Court has ruled, activists said on Tuesday.
Link



What Are The Health Effects Of Wireless Communication Devices? 
The rapid increase in the use of wireless communication devices in recent years has been accompanied by a significant amount of research into potential health effects from high exposure to radiofrequency (RF) energy emitted by these devices. A new National Research Council report, requested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, identifies research that could further extend understanding of long-term low exposure to these devices.
Link



'Mind-reading' car keeps drivers focused 
Monitoring drivers' brain signals and reducing the dashboard information shown in stressful driving periods could improve road safety.
Link



Africa says no – and means it 
By Ignacio Ramonet.
The unimaginable has happened, to the displeasure of arrogant Europe. Africa, thought to be so poor that it would agree to anything, has said no in rebellious pride. No to the straitjacket of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), no to the complete liberalisation of trade, no to the latest manifestations of the colonial pact.
It happened in December at the second EU-Africa summit in Lisbon...
Link



Digital tax could save the music industry from itself 
The Songwriters Association of Canada is proposing a $5-a-month licensing fee on every wireless and Internet account in the country, in exchange for unlimited access to all recorded music.
Link



Freedom of Jazz Information 
In the last 15 years, Tom Lord has established himself as the pre-eminent jazz discographer, especially in the technological sense. He began offering his massive jazz discography as a series of expensive (and, cumulatively, weighty) printed paperback books in the early '90s before offering the entire 34-volume series on CD-ROM about five years ago. Now, he's made an even more important breakthrough by making the whole works available online.
Link



Campfire at Will @ pranks.com 

monochrom performance in Orlando 
monochrom content info
Oranges! Mice! monochrom!
Yes, for the first time there will be a monochrom talk/performance in Orange County, Florida!
What will happen? Well... find out!



January 22, 8 PM @ The Redlight Redlight in Winter Park.



Boing Boing tv: monochrom's "Campfire at Will" 
monochrom content info
Yeah! Preparation, documentation and how-to of "Campfire at Will" is online. Full length on our server, a slightly shortened version on Boing Boing TV.



Link (Boing Boing TV)
Link (monochrom uncut)



Biggest black hole in the cosmos discovered 
The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever before.



Link



Taking a Beating: Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions 
Going from a high-water mark of 35 per cent (in the 1950s) to the measly 12 per cent it is today, national union membership has clearly taken a beating. Lots of reasons, not least of which is passage of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), which, with its comprehensive restrictions on union activities, has proven to be a genuine impediment to the labor movement.

Taft-Hartley aside, here are three larger, overarching factors that have contributed to the decline of unions. [...]
Link



Scheherazade in the White House 
How George Bush's wartime administration used a magician, Hollywood designers and Karl Rove telling 1,001 stories to sell the invasion of Iraq.
Link



Super-hairy plants could battle global warming 
Planting extra-reflective hairy crops that bounce sunshine back into space is the latest proposal to help cool our warming world.
The notion of modifying Earth's climate with sunshades or a blanket of reflective aerosols to counteract global warming - known as geoengineering - has been around for years. But climate models suggest that this would significantly reduce rainfall.

Now Christopher Doughty at the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues think they can get around that problem. Models show that geoengineering near the equator hits rainfall hardest, but focusing on latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees would produce a much smaller drop in rainfall. Planting crops bred or genetically modified to be more reflective could cool these regions by an average of 1 °C. Doughty presented the research last month at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

The key, Doughty says, is to deploy leaves that sport a thick layer of hairs, which reflect near-infrared wavelengths back out into space. Super-hairy strains of soya have already been bred, and these reflect 3 to 5 per cent more sunlight. Doughty calculates that this would be enough - if planted in huge amounts - to generate the cooling effect.
Link



Baghdad's Librarian 
The man is spending his life trying desperately to rebuild Iraq's National Library and Archive in a city that is still very much a war zone. And the hell of it is, he didn't have to be there at all. Saad Eskander lived happily abroad for decades, yet agreed to come back to his home country in November 2003 to try and rescue a critical piece of Iraqi history.
Link



The AK Party, the failure of Islamism and traditional Turkish politics 
How did the Western commentariat get the recent Turkish election so wrong?
Link



Boing Boing tv: monochrom and Falco 
monochrom content info
You were thinking about monochrom's last Boing Boing tv episode? Scott Blake? Falco? Memorial? What the heck! Well... now the puzzle unsolves! A tribute to Falco and stairs, featuring Sean Bonner!



Link



Big Think 



Ever wanted to hear Harvard professors talk about global issues? Want to start a conversation with John McCain (Senator), Dan Quayle (fmr. Vice President now at Cerberus), Mary Robinson (fmr president of Ireland), Jimmy Wales (founder Wikipedia) or Richard Branson (Virgin)? Ever wanted to hear Ted Kennedy say "The answer is love"?
Big Think collects some of the big thinkers and asks them questions which they answer in video blogs. Could be described as some sort of experts web 2.0 without all the bullshit and funny stuff.
Link



Laser Tag with GRL Vienna and Bre Pettis 




Former monochrom resident Bre Pettis interviews GRL Vienna about how to build your own laser tagging rig. With a PDF.

Link
(As seen on Boing Boing, Make Blog, Wired, et all)



Business interests trump charity: Intel and OLPC split 
Intel's involvement with the "one laptop per child" project comes to a bitter end. The company's initial support was undercut by their production of a more expensive Classmate PC running Microsoft Office on an Intel processor.

"It's a little bit like McDonald’s competing with the World Food Program."

Link



Boing Boing tv: monochrom presents Scott Blake 
monochrom content info
We are the new European correspondents for Boing Boing tv. And first we'd like to introduce you to Scott Blake, renowned bar code artist. We observe Scott wandering the streets of Vienna collecting bar codes to properly memorialize the late Austrian pop star, Falco. He's a very big deal here in Vienna.



Link



monochrom on Chaos Radio Express 
monochrom content info
Johannes Grenzfurthner/monochrom interviewed by Tim Pritlove of Chaos Radio Express. Sorry. German only.



Link



The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space 

"All Tomorrow's Condensations": Reactions and pictures 
monochrom content info
Some pictures and links about our puppet extravaganza "All Tomorrow's Condensations" (@ 24C3 in Berlin).







Kap4001

PMTorrone

Mitternachtshacking

Sean Bonner

dotgiz

plomlompom



Computers and pop music: "Surfen Multimedia" 
monochrom content info
Our talk about the image of computers in pop music @ 24C3 in Berlin was a huge success. And it seems we started a fuckin' cult. One of our music examples was "Surfen Multimedia", a 1996 techno-schlager song by German group "Eurocats"... and all the people really freaked out about it. Well, folks... here it is. Enjoy.
Link / MP3




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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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