[ B l o g / / Archive]


Arse Elektronika: T-Shirt! 
monochrom content info
R-r-r-r-r-r-ight on time! Arse Elektronika t-shirt is available!



Check out genderish versions and (uber)sizes! Color? Only shiny red!

Orders from Europe, Asia here
Orders from the US here



LA Times on Arse Elektronika: "Sex and technology meet the future -- this weekend" 
monochrom content info
Sex has always led technology. Early photography evolved on the back of dirty photos. Home video recording and VHS tapes gained traction first in the world of porn. And the Internet would never have grown into the insatiable beast we know today without the profitable, technology-driving porn industry.

But what of genetic engineering? Sex toys? Future robot sex?

They're all the territory of Arse Elektronika, an alternative sex-meets-technology conference held in San Francisco (of course). Now in its third year, it kicks off Thursday night at the Roxie Theater, with film screenings, an opening celebration and the Prixxx Arse Elektronika Awards Gala.
Discussions, a hands-on session and presentations will include "Atomic Porn: What is the smallest particle of erotica?", "Sexual Etiquette and Law in the Age of the Panopticon" (hello, Foucault!), "Of Hypercrotch and Nanobot" and "Steampunk Vibrator: DIY?"

Explore that last one at your own risk.
Link



Fleshbot on Arse Elektronika 2009 
monochrom content info
Is it the end of September already? Why, that means that it's almost time for Arse Elektronika -- San Francisco's annual festival devoted to sex, tech, futurism, and, of course, robots and the people who love to fuck them.
Link



Examiner: "Sex machines, orgasmatrons, teledildonics, Oh My!" 
monochrom content info
Events this week include the Arse Elektronika Film Festival at the Roxie Theater, a series of lectures at the Center for Sex and Culture, talks and panels at PariSoMa and Noisebridge, and performances and installations at Femina Potens Gallery. The Prixxx Arse Elektronika Awards will be presented on October 1 at the Roxie Theater, honoring "sex machines, orgasmatrons, and teledildonics." It truly is quite a world we live in, isn't it?
Link



"De Staandard" features Allen Stein and Arse Elektronika 
monochrom content info
Belgian newspaper "De Staandard" features Allen Stein and Arse Elektronika.
Op het jaarlijkse congres van de sector, genaamd Arse Elektronika (we verzinnen niets), is hij altijd een keynotespreker. 'Cyberseksspeeltjes zijn de geknipte oplossing voor afstandsliefde', zei hij daar vorig jaar. 'Mensen kunnen via hun computer een hogere graad van intimiteit bereiken dan via lichamelijk contact, dat altijd complicaties met zich meebrengt - ritssluitingen, bh-sluitingen, contraceptie, soa's, noem maar op. Er is ook niets onnatuurlijks aan afstandsseks, veel dieren doen het ook. Krekels maken in de zomer een hels kabaal om duidelijk te maken hoe opgewonden ze zijn, honden ruiken elkaars feromonen van kilometers ver.'
Link



XBIZ about Arse Elektronika: "Teledildonic Pro to Speak at Sexual Technology Conference" 
monochrom content info
Allen Stein, developer of the Thrillhammer sex machine, is set to host an opening night workshop Oct. 1 at the Arse Elektronika event, where he will discuss the technology behind haptic devices.

Stein said he plans to take the audience on a "trip" through the past 10 years' evolution of commercial teledildonics in the adult industry, as well as shed light on society's first interactions with machine-powered sex.

He also will be on hand to demonstrate some of the latest in sexual technologies, including his own. His lecture is entitled, "Welcome to The First Church of Appliantology-Browser Based Telemetry of Genital Haptic Devices."
Link



io9 on Arse Elektronika: "Everything You Wanted to Know About the Future of Sex" 
monochrom content info
Annalee Newitz recommends Arse Elektronika 2009:
This week marks the third annual Arse Elektronika conference, an extravaganza devoted to sex, technology, futurism, and orgasmic robots. If you're in the San Francisco area October 1-4, don't miss the naughty, geeky weirdness. [...] I love a conference about sexual futurism that begins with a long discussion of Iain M. Banks. And so will you!
Link



Arse Elektronika 2009 highlights on Laughing Squid 
monochrom content info
Check it out!
We're absolutely sure that with the aid of super-futuristic technology that we know is being invented right now, sex in the future will be more amazing than our Cylon-Cylon (plus Replicant, plus Cameron/T9) fantasies could imagine. I mean, I just get stuck thinking of two Summer Glau's kissing. But until then, and barring Chinese manufacturing of a cheap entry-level priced Peep Show Holodeck (patent pending), we have the annual international sex and technology festival Arse Elektronika.

This year's theme "Of Intercourse and Intracourse" promises to be a buffet of futuristic and fantastic sexual innovations, artistic explorations, and virtual hallucinations of the sci-fi-meets-pr0n kind. The thing is, it's in just two weeks and with poeple flying in from all over the world to participate, there are a lot of talks and happenings to choose from. Starting October 1 to the 4th, events will be at various San Francisco locations including Roxie Theater, Center for Sex and Culture, Noisebridge, Femina Potens Gallery, and PariSoMa.


Link (thank you, Violet!)



Intervention 125: Video 
monochrom content info
Video documentation of Intervention 125, an urban intervention by art collective OHM & Philipp Friedrich in Vienna, September 2009. Supported by GRL and monochrom.

This artistic session was criticizing the Austrian laws against "damage for property", paragraph §125 and §126, which have theirs roots in 1930 and basically threaten violators with up to 6 months in jail for damage that "exceeds EUR 5000" and up to 6 years for damage "over EUR 50,000".



Link



New monochrom shirt: "Freedom is a whore of a word" 
monochrom content info
Our new shirt is available! Right on time! Cause everybody likes to talk about freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom of religion, freedom freedom freedom. There is too much freedom or too less. But we say, please don't forget: Freedom is a whore of a word.



Check out genderish versions, colors and (uber)sizes!

Orders from Europe, Asia here
Orders from the US here



"Examiner" recommends Arse Elektronika 
monochrom content info
The sexiest event of the year - technologically speaking - is monochrom's Arse Elektronika. [...] Far beyond penis jokes and traditional dirty movies, Arse Elektronika is an orgy of big-time brains, deep thinkers, futurists, PhDs, hackers, artists, performers, scientists, experimental engineers and whimsical disruptors determined to give the entire notion of human sexuality a high tech cupcake reach around. Yes - there will be robot sex.
Link



US: More prisons, but dropping crime rate? Huh? 
One in 35 Americans are caught up in the corrections system and incarceration is on the rise. Why is this when the US crime rate has dropped so remarkably?
Link



Radar Map Of Buried Mars Layers Matches Climate Cycles 
New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years.



Link



Rally: Stop Ahmadinejad! Stop supporting the Iranian regime 
Holocaust denier and President of the Iranian terror regime, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced his appearance at the UN General Assembly in New York set for 23 September, at a forum that has willingly offered a stage for anti-Semitic dictators in the past. On this occasion, we want to protest here in Vienna, one of the four UN seats, against the policy of appeasement vis-à-vis the Iranian regime and against economic support of the dictatorship of Mullahs and Revolutionary Guards. With our rally in Vienna, and simultaneous protests in New York, London and Paris, we want to send a clear message against courting the Iranian regime, which has become an open military dictatorship of religious apocalyptics.
Link



Arse Elektronika 2009 on Boing Boing 
monochrom content info
Cory features Arse Elektronika 2009 on Boing Boing.

Link



Curtis Ebbesmeyer, you are my hero 
Curtis Charles Ebbesmeyer is an American oceanographer who, in retirement, has studied the movement of flotsam. He came to public attention through his interest in The First Years' rubber ducks (actually Friendly Floatees) a consignment of bath toys washed into the Pacific Ocean in 1992.



Link



Arse Elektronika 2009 / Online ticket sales 

Arse Elektronika 2009 / Flyer, poster 
monochrom content info
Arse Elektronika 2009.



Flyer front (hi-res): pdf, png
Flyer back (hi-res): pdf, png
Poster front (hi-res): pdf, png



Sympathy for the Devil: Dorothy Sayers and the American Faust Film 
How a British Detective Novelist Can Help Us Understand an American Film Obsession.

The first and most theologically sophisticated tradition is the fallen angel motif that stretches back into pre-Christian Jewish antecedents. Sayers isolates the "dark angelic melancholy" as the primary quality in this tradition which gives Mephistopheles in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost their nearly tragic splendor that arises from their recognizing the loss of proximity to the Creator.

The second tradition is rooted in a kind of Manichean vision of a dark force pervading the cosmos, a vision of evil in which the Devil appears more as a spirit of negative energy set counterpoised with the positive energy of God. The cosmos is dualistic in this vision, with God and the Devil balanced. Instead of being a fallen angel who simultaneously longs for the splendor of what was and who also hates the splendor of God and heaven, seeking to destroy it by corrupting human beings (the Marlovian and orthodox image), devils—or the Devil—are but instantiations of this negative energy. Devils or demons are thus interchangeable, merely variable images of one pervasive and apparently necessary part of reality, thereby rendering distinctions between Lucifer and his minions, like Mephistopheles, unnecessary. Though one can detect elements of this dualism in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim demonologies, this second tradition is more Gnostic, a bit uncomfortable with the intense monotheism of these three Western religions in their orthodox forms. Sayers claims that the more Manichean Mephistopheles of Goethe's Faust is the literary version that has most influence in the subsequent tradition in contrast to Marlowe’s more traditional depiction of evil.

The third manifestation of the Devil, according to Sayers, is the one that grew from pre-Christian folklore, that pervades much of Medieval literature, and that continually pops up in the literature of post-Christian culture. This devil is the prankster, a trickster figure who engages in nefarious horseplay and whom the audience of Medieval theater expected to see at some point for comedic effects. Sayers argues that by the end of Part II of Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles has transformed into this kind of buffoonish figure. The puppet plays that grew out of Marlowe's Faustus perpetuated this comedic aspect of the Devil through the Reformation, and it tenaciously hangs on in film today.

In American film, the Faust tradition mostly gravitates toward the third category, the Devil as buffoon, with number two—Devil as necessary cosmic force—appearing nearly as often, sometimes combining with the third category. American cinema has done poorly with the first category, in which the Faust figure is tragic and damned, and also in which the Devil is portrayed as a created being subordinate to God and whose motivation is destruction of humans simply because they belong to God.
Link



Obama, Labor And FDR 
By Dick Meister.
It's clear that Barack Obama is well on the way to becoming the most pro-labor president since Franklin D. Roosevelt - clear that he's firmly committed to strengthening the vital union rights that FDR secured for U.S. workers seven decades ago.
Consider Obama's address to the AFL-CIO's national convention in Pittsburgh on Sept. 15. Yes, the president was speaking to a friendly audience, saying what the convention delegates wanted him to say and promising them what they wanted him to promise. But his were not empty words.
There's no doubt Obama meant it when he declared that "when organized labor succeeds, that's when our middle class succeeds. And when our middle class succeeds, that's when the United States of America succeeds... We'll grow our middle class by building a strong labor movement."
You need look no further for proof of Obama's firm commitment to labor than his appointing, as secretary of labor, former Congresswoman Hilda Solis, an exceptionally strong advocate of working people and their unions.
Link



Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer? 
Chronic radiation is defined as the radiation received slowly or in a low-dose-rate from various sources. It is completely different in nature to the acute gamma or neutron radiation generated from the atomic bomb explosions that occurred in Japan at the end of World War II. Tantalizing insights from people living in higher-than-normal background radiation areas in the world and from nuclear energy workers receiving excess radiation over long years have suggested that chronic radiation might paradoxically be beneficial to humans. However, in the absence of an epidemiological study, it has been impossible to conclude whether chronic radiation is harmless or indeed beneficial to human beings. Fortuitously, an incredible Co-60 contamination incident occurred in Taiwan 21 years ago, which provided the data necessary to demonstrate that chronic radiation is beneficial to human beings.
Link



Arse Elektronika 2009: Schedule online 
monochrom content info
Finally, the schedule is online!



Arse Elektronika 2009: "Of Intercourse and Intracourse"; October 1-4, 2009. San Francisco, USA (@ Roxie Theater, Center for Sex and Culture, Femina Potens Gallery, Noisebridge).

Link



Harun Yahya: Muslim creationist, cult leader, Dawkins' nemesis, messiah 
Inspired by the high profile of its Christian American counterpart, Muslim creationism is becoming increasingly visible and confident. On scores of websites and in dozens of books with titles like The Evolution Deceit and The Dark Face of Darwinism, a new and well-funded version of evolution-denialism, carefully calibrated to exploit the current fashion for religiously inspired attacks on scientific orthodoxy and "militant" atheism, seems to have found its voice. In a recent interview with The Times Richard Dawkins himself recognises the impact of this new phenomenon: "There has been a sharp upturn in hostility to teaching evolution in the classroom and it's mostly coming from Islamic students."

The patron saint of this new movement, the ubiquitous "expert" cited and referenced by those eager to demonstrate the superiority of "Koranic science" over "the evolution lie", is the larger-than-life figure of Harun Yahya.
Link



Government Urges Changes to Google Books Deal 
In the latest challenge to Google's plan to establish the world’s largest digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department said late Friday that a proposed legal settlement between Google and book authors and publishers should not be approved by the court without modifications. The Justice Department said that while the agreement would provide many benefits to the public, it also raised significant issues regarding class-action, copyright and antitrust law.
Link



The Great Pacific Garbage Patch 
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N and estimated to be twice the size of Texas. The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography because it consists of very, very small pieces, almost invisible to the naked eye and most of its contents are suspended at or beneath the surface of the ocean.

[...]

The size of the affected region is unknown, as large items readily visible from the deck of a boat are few and far between. Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images. Estimates on size range from 700,000 km² to more than 15 million km², (0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean), or "twice the size as continental United States". The area may contain over 100 million tons of debris. It has also been suggested that the patch may represent two areas of debris that are linked.
Link



monochrom presents: Krach der Roboter / "Hello World!" / Release Party Vienna 
monochrom content info
Beloved Krach der Roboter will release his first Solo-CD (released by monochrom).



CD Release Party / Vienna: "Fluc", September 17, 2009, 10 PM.

CD info (order etc.)



monochrom's Taugshow #19 
monochrom content info
monochrom presents:
++TAUGSHOW #19++
Paraflows Special

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 / 8:00 PM @ Metalab, Vienna (presented by Johannes Grenzfurthner and Roland Gratzer; twitter slave: Lorenz Seidler)

But who are our guests?
# Bonni Rambatan (the Posthuman Marxist from Indonesia)
# Charlie Todd (of Improv Everywhere fame)
# Mitch Heinrich (Smell Graffiti)
# Magistra Evelyn Fuerlinger



Paraflows 2009: MP3 Experiment / Video 
monochrom content info
And here it is. A full length video of the MP3 Experiment that took place September 12, 2009 @ Museumsquartier Vienna / Paraflows.



Improv Everywhere Mp3 Experiment, Vienna 09/12/09 from exiledsurfer on Vimeo.



Paraflows 2009 / Conference "Urban Hacking" / Live Stream 
monochrom content info
paraflows 09 – Festival for Digital Art and Cultures
Conference: September 11-13, 2009 (2 PM - 9 PM, Central European Time).
Symposium URBAN HACKING
Cultural Jamming Strategies in the Risky Spaces of Modernity.

The three-day program of the symposium corresponds to the thematic priorities Urban, Hacking, and Risk. The panel Urban discusses the city as cultural venue, whereas the second the panel, Hacking, investigates the origin, structures, and evolutionary elements of the multi-faceted notion "hacking." The third and final day will be dedicated to questions of risk, for instance when one – for artistic or philosophical reasons – transgresses boundaries, as well as question pertaining to gender in the given context. The symposium also will serve as a copula between the exhibition and the workshops and will be accompanied by movie screenings and theatre plays.
Link to Live Stream (September 11-13, 2009; 2 PM - 9 PM, Central European Time)



Paraflows 2009: Urban Hacking / Opening tonight 
monochrom content info
paraflows 09 – Festival for Digital Art and Cultures
September 10-20, 2009.
Festival Opening / Sept 10, 2009, 7 pm
Container Installation, Karlsplatz/Resselpark

The city of Vienna has a long tradition of interventions and actions in the public space. With this year's topic URBAN HACKING, the fourth paraflows festival continues this artistic investigation of the public and urban space of living. What is more, paraflows 09 will shed light on the role played by digital media when it comes to exploring, questioning, and shaping the urban infrastructure.

Exhibition URBAN HACKING

A container village designed especially for paraflows at Karlsplatz will provide the space for the exhibition URBAN HACKING, which will connect the Künstlerhaus, the Karlskirche, and the project space, and thereby unite the historic with the contemporary. More than 30 national and international positions of digital art and cultures as well as the artistic strategies connected therewith shed light on current and older tendencies of interacting with the public space.What will be put on display are projects on use and intervention, on hacking and setting up the urban public. A focus will thereby be laid on the possibilities "urban hacking" offers for the redesign of public space.

The net, as public infrastructure with its individual elements, possibilities, and mechanisms, has become integral to social communication and extended the public space via hyperspace. How these two parallel layers of reality are organized and impact the individual's freedom of movement is one of the questions to be answered by paraflows 09 URBAN HACKING.

Symposium URBAN HACKING
Cultural Jamming Strategies in the Risky Spaces of Modernity.

The three-day program of the symposium corresponds to the thematic priorities Urban, Hacking, and Risk. The panel Urban discusses the city as cultural venue, whereas the second the panel, Hacking, investigates the origin, structures, and evolutionary elements of the multi-faceted notion "hacking." The third and final day will be dedicated to questions of risk, for instance when one – for artistic or philosophical reasons – transgresses boundaries, as well as question pertaining to gender in the given context. The symposium also will serve as a copula between the exhibition and the workshops and will be accompanied by movie screenings and theatre plays.
Link



Parasitic worms as therapy 
It appears that certain autoimmune diseases such as asthma, arthritis, MS, and Chron's are more prevalent in modern industrialized nations. According to the hygiene hypothesis , our bodies are ecosystems that have been damaged by a rapid reduction in number and variety of microorganisms that populate our bodies and immediate environment and that a consequence is the rise of autoimmune diseases and immunological disorders.

Jasper Lawrence travelled the world to infect himself with various parasitic worms which research had suggested might help his asthma. He now sells parasites online, a practice being called helminth therapy.

Now that most people accept that Acidophilus bacteria are good for digestion, this theory sounds a little bit less bizarre.

Link (to Radiolab episode)



The Science and Ethics of Cooperation: Neuro-economics? 
The cooperative system is fundamental to the organization and structure of a Prout (the Progressive Utilization Theory) economy. It is an expression of economic democracy in action - cooperative enterprises give workers the right of capital ownership, collective management and all the associated benefits, such as profit sharing. Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the propounder of Prout, goes further and argues that an egalitarian society is actually not possible without a commitment to the cooperative system. The commitment is not just to an economic order but also to a cooperative ethic and culture. This essay explores some of the scientific evidence that humans have a predisposition to cooperation and in particular to economic cooperation. The evidence comes from a new and exciting field of research known as neuro-economics. We then turn to those insights provided by sociological studies.
Link



The YouTube war is over – but at what cost? 
After long, drawn-out negotiations, PRS for Music and YouTube have finally come to an agreement over rates. It's good news for British music fans, since YouTube's blocking of premium music videos on their site will now be lifted. What it means for songwriters financially is still a mystery however, since the agreement is covered by a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

According to sources close to the negotiations, Google/YouTube took the NDA to another level by insisting that the people at the negotiating table would not even be allowed to tell the PRS board what the agreement is (although the PRS say they would never pass anything without it being seen and signed off by their board). It's rumoured that YouTube only wanted two people to know – one YouTube rep and one PRS rep. It makes you wonder what information can be so sensitive as to push requests for secrecy that far. For a company that is all about sharing information, it's somewhat ironic that Google are so unwilling to share any of their own.
Link



35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood 
Popular fairy tales and folk stories are more ancient than was previously thought, according research by biologists.
Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world.
Link



Downloader Links To '$675K Mixtape' 
The songs Joel Tenenbaum was fined $675,000 for illegally downloading are now available on Pirate Bay as "The $675,000 Mixtape." "Although there is no evidence that Tenenbaum was responsible for putting the playlist" there, "the record companies have accused him of defiantly encouraging further illegal downloading by linking to the service directly, from a website created for his defense." They want a court order to make him.
Link



Human Brain Could Be Replicated In 10 Years 
The apparent complexity of the human mind is not a barrier to building a 'replica' brain claims Professor Markram. "The brain is of course extremely complex because it has trillions of synapses, billions of neurons, millions of proteins, and thousands of genes. But they are still finite in number. Today's technology is already highly sophisticated and it allows us to reverse engineer the brain rapidly." An example of the capability already in place is that today's robots can do screenings and mappings tens of thousands of times faster than human scientists and technicians.
Link



A Different Perspective on the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal 
The U.S.-India nuclear deal was initiated through a framework agreement signed by India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President Bush in July 2005. India, at the instigation of Washington, agreed to separate its civilian and military nuclear production facilities, and place all civilian production facilities under the inspection regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in return for U.S. economic, technological, and military cooperation. The nuclear deal, which took three years to complete, is officially aimed at promoting India's access to uranium and to civilian nuclear technology, through enlarged importation of both. Whereas nuclear energy contributed a reported 2.5 percent of India's energy requirements in 2007, the deal is expected to boost the contribution of the nuclear sector to India's electricity supply, without reducing India's primary dependence on coal. From its very start, the U.S.-India nuclear deal has generated huge controversies, both in India and internationally. The intent here is to lay bare the implications of the deal for the creation of waste, while putting aside, for the moment, other important controversies associated with the nuclear agreement.
Link



US healthcare sham 
A Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton abolished a welfare programme in 1996 under the (largely fallacious) pretext that it bred fraud, waste and abuse. Thirteen years on, the reforms that Barack Obama is proposing will not fundamentally change the United States' abysmal healthcare system because those who profit from it have been able to buy protection from the lawmakers. The welfare programme ditched in 1996 absorbed about 1% of the US budget; today's well-ensconced private insurance companies swallow most of the 17% of the budget set aside for healthcare.

Paradoxically, the US president is one of the most spirited prosecutors of the system he has chosen to retain. Day after day he recounts how "we are held hostage by health insurance companies that deny coverage, or drop coverage, or charge fees that people can't afford for care they desperately need… We have a healthcare system that too often works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people".
Link



Yip yips meet the telephone 

"Flying something in space whose purpose is to make music until it dies" 
'Project Calliope' is a satellite being launched by a group of space & music enthusiasts on the "TubeSat" platform. It'll be an ionospheric detector transmitting sonifiable data back to Earth for web streaming and remixing.
Conceptually, it's a musical instrument in space, played by space rather than just after-the-fact sonified. We like the idea of flying something in space whose purpose is to make music until it dies -- music from science.
Link (via Joerg Piringer, bagasch)



monochrom presents: Krach der Roboter / Hello World! 
monochrom content info
Beloved Krach der Roboter will release his first Solo-CD (released by monochrom).



CD Release Party / Berlin: "Madame Claude", September 12, 2009, 8 PM.
CD Release Party / Vienna: "Fluc", September 17, 2009, 10 PM.

CD info (order etc.)



Mitch Heinrich: new paraflows/monochrom artist in residence 
monochrom content info
Our new artist in residence arrived! Yeah!

Mitch Heinrich is a hacker, builder and designer based out of San Francisco. Previous exploits involve a giant mobius strip made of one-way street signs and a fairy juicing absinthe robot. He got his start working for Squid Labs where he helped design and prototype robotic sculptures, human powered generators and renewable energy harvesting kite farms. His professional product design work received the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough award last year and has been shown at the MoMA and Cooper-Hewitt in NY.




Internet's 40th birthday party 
At the time, it would have been hard to predict which of these events 40 years ago would prove to be most momentous:

- Humans step out of a spaceship and walk on the moon.
- The Woodstock concert becomes a seminal cultural moment for the baby-boomer generation.
- A New York City police raid leads to the Stonewall riots and modern gay-rights movement.
- A handful of engineers at UCLA send some data from one computer to another.

You may disagree, but in my opinion, it's the last of the list: four decades ago today, the Internet was born.
Link (via Franky, bagasch)



Wow... High-Speed Robot Hand 

Tarantino's Top 20 Movies Since 1992 

The rise of European Bobo politics 
Cohn-Bendit's Europe Ecologie victory in France emboldens the Green right across Europe but does it also mean the death of traditional green principles?
The success of Europe Ecologie in France and moderate advances elsewhere in the June European elections have emboldened the green right but disaster in Ireland, where the party was wiped out - and to a lesser extent in the Czech Republic - shows what happens when they abandon their principles for a shot at the big league.

Since the France's Europe Ecologie triumph in the European elections, the European media have been talking of a Green wave across the continent, with leading member Daniel Cohn-Bendit's gurning visage nigh on inescapable.

But the effervescent Cohn-Bendit has every right to be in an especially jolly mood - the result was indeed truly spectacular. It saw them soaring from the 7.45 per cent of the French vote in the 2004 EU elections and their embarrassing 1.57 per cent in the 2007 presidential elections.

Cohn-Bendit christened the night 'the D-Day of ecological politics', leftwing daily Liberation called the result an 'earthquake' and saluted the victory of Cohn-Bendit's green dream team alliance - bringing together the former soixante-huitard with, among others, alter-globalisation's most famous farmer, José Bové. As well as crusading anti-corruption judge Eva Joly and the ex-chief of Greenpeace France, Yannick Jadot. Meanwhile, the Socialists abjectly conceded that the Greens had tapped into something profound among French voters that their own party had entirely missed.
Link



AI is the science of illusion 
Interview with Robotics expert Noel Sharkey.
You describe AI as the science of illusion.

It is my contention that AI, and particularly robotics, exploits natural human zoomorphism. We want robots to appear like humans or animals, and this is assisted by cultural myths about AI and a willing suspension of disbelief. The old automata makers, going back as far as Hero of Alexandria, who made the first programmable robot in AD 60, saw their work as part of natural magic - the use of trick and illusion to make us believe their machines were alive. Modern robotics preserves this tradition with machines that can recognise emotion and manipulate silicone faces to show empathy. There are AI language programs that search databases to find conversationally appropriate sentences. If AI workers would accept the trickster role and be honest about it, we might progress a lot quicker.
Link



The Memory That Will Not Die: Exhuming the Spanish Civil War 
Last September Spain's homegrown "super-judge" Baltasar Garzón—best-known for his dramatic 1998 effort to arrest the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London— announced that he was investigating not only the whereabouts of the remains of the "disappeared" of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), but also the huge numbers of defeated Republicans executed by General Francisco Franco in the grim postwar years. His goal was to try to amass enough evidence to charge Franco's regime posthumously with crimes against humanity. Could it be that, after so long, "help" and "pardon" were finally coming to the descendants of those who died defending the Spanish Republic?

According to the great Hispanist Hugh Thomas, the three-year Civil War claimed the lives of 365,000 Spaniards, a toll that includes both those loyal to the fascist rebel Franco and those who opposed him. Some historians put the figure higher. Both sides carried out brutal executions, the bodies of victims often ending up in unmarked mass graves.

When the Civil War ended in 1939, the victorious Franco regime executed an additional one hundred thousand-plus Republican prisoners, many of whose corpses were flung into yet more mass-burial pits. These unmarked mounds, visited stealthily by the families of the "defeated" during the dictatorship, are scattered the length and breadth of Spain.
Link



Stray dogs master the subway 
Scientists in Moscow say stray dogs have learnt to use the subway to travel to the city centre in search of food.

Biology professor Andrew Poyarkov said he had seen several dogs unaccompanied on the city's underground rail system, reports rupor.org.

He claims the dogs travel into the city centre, where they can more easily find food, each morning and travel back to where they live each evening.
Link



Laughing Squid announces Arse Elektronika 2009 
monochrom content info
monochrom has just announced Arse Elektronika 2009: "Of Intercourse & Intracourse", their annual conference on sex, technology and the future, which takes place October 1-4 in San Francisco, kicking off with the Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2009 Awards Ceremony on October 1st at the Roxie Theater.


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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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