When it comes to technology, it's the great unfulfilled needs that matter most. That's where the next fortunes will be made. But if you're in the tech biz, how do you know what users want if you're hanging out with techies all the time?

You turn to sex. Here are seven reasons why your tech company should send you to sex conferences like Sex 2.0, Arse Elektronica and Sex in Video Games rather than to mainstream events like this week's Web 2.0 Expo.

FringeWare is pleased to announce our in-store presentation of Austria's culture-jamming heroes from "monochrom" magazine, currently travelling throughout North America on their 1998 "monochrom bringt amerika den sozialismus tour". The illusive and infamous "der jg" and company of media subversives will appear for a special signing of their publication, and also spin as DJs for a show featuring "a really strange mixture of austrian and german music scores..." FringeWare will provide the beer.

A talk (with examples) by monochrom, presented by Johannes Grenzfurthner

@ Maker Faire Bay Area 2008; Saturday, May 3, 8:30 PM, main stage.

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.

The Innermost Unifier: Today it's the Corporate Anthem
A talk/audio performance by Johannes Grenzfurthner, monochrom (Vienna, Austria)

Using different historical and current examples (especially from the area of the hardware/software-industry), Johannes Grenzfurthner gives a theoretical and applied - and not unamusing - overview on the musical genre of corporate anthems.

Come and sing along. Powernapping is welcome, too.

I Can't Be Blamed For Transfiguring History But For Laziness, Though

A musical gala evening with monochrom featuring Damon Smith (acoustic bass), Phillip Greenlief (saxophone), Weasel Walter (drums), Aurora Josephson (vocals).

Monochrom. Powerpoint-Operetten 2.0
Wir schreiben die finsteren 90er: Während wir Indietypen in Deutschland noch an unseren - na, was schon? - Indie-Fanzines bastelten, wurde in Wien bereits auf anderem Level gearbeitet, nämlich sauambitioniert die große Revolution ästhetisch-theoretisch vorangetrieben: Monochrom (www.monochrom.at). Schon damals produzierten Johannes Grenzfurthner und seine Mitstreiter das dickste (gefühlte 300 Seiten), chaotisch layoutetste und thematisch offenste Fanzine der Welt: Roboterkybernetik und Horrorfilme; Internetvisionen und Science-Fiction-Abgründe; Kunst und Alltag.
Und heute? Eigentlich das gleiche Bild. Noch immer erfüllt diese Mischung aus Theorie, Ironie und Wahn die messyhaft zugestellten Räume.

An unobjectionable award for sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics.

This is an open call for machinery.

Please send us a PDF containing description and pictures of your working device or a detailed proposal by April 30, 2008.

We plan to present the winners of Prixxx Arse Elektronika in autumn 2008 @ Arse Elektronika.

The winners will be honored with the "Golden Kleene" (*)

Signed:
A team of specialists

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

(limerick, attributed to John von Neumann)

Wrapping up our week-long retrospective of the most crowd-pleezin' episodes in Boing Boing tv's first 6 months of existence, we revisit an episode in which...

Vienna-based art-pranksters monochrom teach us how to "hack the urban context" with campfires, sausages, beer, and an elderly Austrian gentleman who speaks LOL. In the second segment of today's episode, someone constructs a campfire, complete with beer bottles and half-cooked links, right in the middle of the Vienna airport. American kids, don't try this at home unless you want a one-way to Camp X-Ray.

vielleicht haben einige von euch ja schon mit bekommen, dass wir die letzten jahre über unserem best-of-album gesessen haben: viele alte und neue monochrom-hits in fast durchgehend neuer und verbesserter produktion, wobei die musikalische umsetzung meist outgesourct wurde an z.b. hans nieswandt, gamejew, matthias kertal, gerald votava und viele mehr...

die cd ist fertig und sollte im mai erhältlich sein.

wir überlegen darüber hinaus, ob es sich lohnt, noch zusätzlich eine limitierte kleine vinyl-edition davon zu machen (voraussichtlich eine dolp).

dazu möchten wir hiermit eine kleine bedarfserhebung vornehmen:
wer prinzipiell interesse am erwerb einer monochrom-best-of-doppel-lp hat, soll bis freitagmorgen eine kurze mail (betreff "doppel lp") an frank.apunkt.schneider at gmx.net schicken.
es geht dabei nicht um eine verbindliche zusage, sondern nur um die ermittlung, inwieweit sich unsere zielgruppe überhaupt noch für vinylplatten interessiert.

die mailadressen werden gesammelt und bei tatsächlicher abnahme bekommen diese absenderinnen bagasch-vorzugskonditionen bei ihrer bestellung eingeräumt. preis + veröffentlichungszeitpunkt der platte werden noch bekannt gegeben.

liebe grüße & vielen dank
alco

Office art (especially office drawing) is a regular technique used by people in white-collar working situations. There may not necessarily be a creative impulse to create office work, but the impulse of overcoming general work boredom or the necessity to help office workers keeping focus during telephone conversations and/or office meetings. This page is dedicated to collecting office art.

Counter culture? Art? Your average guy does not go to exhibitions, concerts nor does he get in touch with art and counter culture media. Counter culture and the art world are niche places. And even if people would go there they would consider what happens there to be 'just art'. Art is the place where things might be reflected. But that amounts to nothing because it is not linked to everyday life. Art is a special task and a special place for special people. Many post-bourgeois artists were trying to bring the art back to the people ­ not as a handy service (as it is to the bourgeois elite art consumer) but as a form of irritation. They created many forms of street theatre and pranks. But even art hackers are often helpless against official "art in public space"! Oh, the horror! Those endless atrocities! All of them labeled "sculpture in public space"! Ah! Monstrous "public art installations" on roundabouts, on main streets, in shopping malls!

It is time to reclaim the street art! It is time to create your own public art! Get your hammers! Get your welding equipment!
It is time for SCULPTURE MOBS!

monochrom offers free courses, in-depth training and invites people on a couple of guerrilla field trips.

Cocktails, art, and bars. It's like heaven, only without the harps. Started 10 years ago in Vienna, this is the first time the show comes to America. If you've got a bar-bot, this is your chance to show it off - it can deliver beer, mix drinks, or just hang out and hit on girls. We'd also like to see your art robots. Whether it hangs on a wall stands against one, this is really fun show and exhibit. The opening party is May 10th in SF, but your bots will get to stick around and be seen by gallery-goers.

Some photos...
http://roboexotica.com/gallery/Photos2006 http://flickr.com/search/?q=roboexotica&w=all

Register by emailing D. Calkins: dave AT robogames.net

Arse Elektronika, the awesome San Francisco sex tech conference that last year brought us talks like "Fucking Machines" and "Porn, Tech, and Creativity," has opened up its 2008 call for submissions. The event will take place from September 25th-28th, and the theme is "Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?: Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction" (so… good…). Interested sex dorks like yours truly can submit presentations in any one of the three "panel" topics: narration, technology, and politics.

Johannes storms the front doors of various multinational corporations to ask employees (and random folk on the street) if they're aware that these companies have "corporate anthems." Yes, theme songs, sometimes official, sometimes unofficial, always painfully cheesy. KPMG boasts a particularly heinous ditty, and while renditions sometimes pop up on YouTube, none can be quite so rich as the one we paid an Argentinian street musician $20 to sing. "KPMG, we're strong as can be -- a dream of power and energy!" Bet you $20 the song sticks in your brain longer than you'd like.

Art, sex and technology collide as monochrom discuss the intersection of science, porn and culture in the digital age