Speakers: Johannes Grenzfurthner (founder of monochrom and Arse Elektronika), Heather Kelley (media artist and video game designer), Karen Marcelo (founder of dorkbot-sf).

Date: April 1, 2010 (Thu) Time: 6pm-7pm Venue: Osage Soho; Address: G/F, 45 Caine Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Co-curated by Johannes Grenzfurthner (Austria) and Isaac Leung (HK)

From the simple electronic vibrator to the complex assemblages of cybersex, sex and technology have always intersected. The dynamic relations between sexuality and technology are constantly changing along with the ways in which human beings achieve psychological and bodily pleasure through these devices. By inviting artists who're dealing with various issues of technosexual bodies, we aim not only to examine the unexplored technicalities, functionalities and interfaces of the new technologies and sexualities, but also to formulate a broader understanding of the meanings of the "technosexual".

Participating Artists: Timothy Archibald (USA), Shu Lea Cheang (USA/France), Paul Granjon (UK), Katrien Jacobs (Belgium), Heather Kelley (USA/CAN), Kyle Machulis (USA), monochrom (Austria), Ellen Pau (HK), Stephane Perrin (Japan), Rainer Prohaska (Austria), Allen Stein (USA), Morgan Wong (HK)

Opening Reception: April 2, 2010 (Fri), 6pm
Exhibition Period: April 7-27, 2010
Opening Hour: 12pm-7pm (Tue-Sun except public holidays)
Venue: Videotage (Unit 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong)

"A simple rule of robotic personality seems to be: don’t make things the most efficient way," said Magnus Wurzer, who has been running the Vienna-based Roboexotica, a festival where scientists have gone to build, showcase and discuss "cocktail robots" since 1999.

One entry, Beerbot, detects approaching people and asks for beer money. When it acquires enough, it "buys" itself a beer. Bystanders can watch it flow into a transparent bladder. As for other humanizing behaviors, "like a robot that doesn’t stop short at lighting a cigarette but actually goes ahead and smokes it?" Mr. Wurzer says, "We had that.

Roboexotica has inspired a stateside version as well, which just had its third annual celebration in San Francisco.

And in at least one case in Europe, a robot actually got behind a bar. From 1999 to 2002, a scarlet-eyed metal robot named Cynthia poured drinks at Cynthia's Bridge Bar and Lounge in London. But according to Mr. Wurzer, "she was too costly to maintain once the bar was sold by the robot's maker."

In a world where robots and humans struggle together in the fight against boredom...
Only one event ends up with the robots dancing "The Human" while the meat puppets (you) end up singing the praises of RoboBartenders.
This February, come hang out with some alternate life-forms at BarBot 2010.

Wed/Thur Feb 17-18, 2010 - 9pm-2am
21+ with photo ID $10 advance / $15 at door
DNA Lounge - 375 Eleventh St., San Francisco

Screws and astronauts. Roundworms and Columbia. Cannibalism at sea. Conlanging 101. The basic mechanisms of New Economy and Neoliberalism. The sketchy world of Elffriede. The status of martial law. RFID. Henry the Halibut. Rieseberg and the emergence of work. Dracula (a poem). Historicity, temporality, and politics in the cinema aesthetics of Deleuze, Rancière and Kracauer. Or-Om's call to the children. The problem with social robots. An (anti)history of Rave. The life of a Swiss banker and fascist anti-imperialist. Considerations by Martin Auer. The Stepford wives and stereotypes of putative perfection. Noise and talk. A little potpourri about amok runners, mass homicide and 80s pop songs. Scratching means life. Mae Saslaw's 10005. Kiki and Bubu and Orwell's 1984. Cybernetics and whatever happened to it. The integrating of the Fringe. Witchcraft and lesbianism. The weirdness (and PR) of the wonders of Oz. Rachel Lovinger's personal journey towards datameaningfulness. Revolution, ads and revolt. A pilot study on the philosophy of life of schizophrenics. Pro Asylum. Bird Ball. Medicine in the Dark Ages (humor, leeches, charms and prayers). Reflections about Ivan Grubanov and Paul Chan. Communism, anti-German criticism and Israel. Surprise findings. Hot, hard cocks and tight, tight unlubricated assholes. Dubbing (Casablanca and forged movies). The treatment of media in H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror. The relationship of books and films explained via Capricorn One. Stories about our friends (e.g. whales). The history of Pinball machines. Italy and the incubation of fascism. Consider Phlebas and The Waste Land. The implicit ideology of media activism and its current opportunities. Urban Pilgrims touring Vienna. Ronald McDonald slapping a guy in the face. Text adventures. The Shining (Jack of all Trades, Master of None). Reappropriating architecture and playing with the built city. Recoding LOLcats. Sitcom as Endgame, Tatort out of the Volksempfänger (an attempt to understand the culture industry). Gender, race and film comedy. Neon Bible and its hidden agenda. The SNAFU principle and how hierarchies inhibit communication. The power of disposition over (global) space as a new dimension of class structuration. Lustgas. Stammlager 217 and Israel's popular culture of the 1960s. Supertheory(TM). Adopt a highway. X-Wing penetration, dominatrix fathers and phallic light sabers. Europanto. The Unicorn and the Maiden. Leben macht Spass. How to build a magnificent Boom-Boom. Lots of reviews of deities, personalities, questions, states of mind, culture (as opposed to nature), nature (which cannot be divided from culture), words, social practise, future(s), technological artefacts, experiences, things on a keyboard, and matter. The short story of Pocahontas and Avatar. Walled World. Hacking the Spaces. Sally Grizzell Larson's No. 29. The tyranny of structurelessness. Jack Kirby's top 20 creations. The need of Change (keep your coins). Fehler and Fairchild Semiconductor. Richka's Answering Space and the question about Home. Worm. Future 42.0. Doctorow's row-boat. Bare life innovation. A mnemonic of longing. Etiology of Romero-Fulci Disease (and the case for prions). Campaign for the abolition of personal pronouns. Yahooking. A social-centric, canine-inspired perspective on the placebo effect. Helpless machines and true loving caregivers. Information doesn't work (that's why we need information workers). The myth of Xanadu (reconsidered). John Wilcock and the Manhattan Memories. The Cult of Done. Looking at Gene Wilder. Sweet Home Alabama (and why diamonds are a girls worst nightmare). Pretesting the idea of apparative hermeneutics. Ignorantism. Artistic fears in the age of religious fundamentalism. Smoking against America. The Things of Eternity. After warfare in Yugoslavia (or: moral order of recognition). Existential game-show experiments. The epic of Gilgamesh. Mozart as public relations hype. Las Vegas and its casino traditions. Sikhs. Pornographic coding. Invader and public tiles. Splasher, street art and the Situationist International. MakerBot. Long live the porn flesh. The three rules of sidewalk junk giveaways. Melcus and his maps. Mister plomlompom's embracing of post-privacy. Catty (the baseball player). John Duncan (in: Blind Date). Michayluk's crush of worship of the copy. The Telecommunications History Group. monochrom's initiative for the accomplishment of Total Population. The medieval agricultural year. Office Art. A cartoon that makes neoliberals laugh. A rough guide to number stations. The digital age and ubermorgen.com. Mobile phones and "for whom the SAR tolls". A call for more science... and giant dinosaurs who bite each others head off.

Aus queer-feministischer Perspektive gehen wir auf die Spurensuche nach ökonomischen Prozessen der Transformation, die wir in bestehenden Praxen erkennen können. Es existieren Projekte, bei denen Menschen Ressourcen wie Geld, Zeit und Produktionsmittel kollektiv nutzen, um gemeinsam oder individuell an Sachen zu arbeiten, die ihnen Spaß machen und mit denen sie ein gesellschaftliches Ziel verbinden. Ein Beispiel dafür sind Hackerspaces. In diesen Räumen treffen sich Menschen, die sich für Technologie, Computer, Programmieren, Basteln, Kunst und Wissenschaft interessieren, um zusammen abzuhängen und zu arbeiten. Es gibt dort nicht nur Rechner, sondern auch Labore, Maschinen, Werkzeug, Bastelmaterial und vor allem Wissen, das geteilt werden kann. Ihrem Selbstverständnis nach sind Hackerspaces nicht dazu da, Startups zu gründen, um die gemeinsamen Arbeitsergebnisse als Waren kapitalistisch zu verwerten. Vielmehr geht es darum, Produkte (weiter) zu entwickeln und zugänglich zu machen. Dass es dabei auch zu kritischen Auseinandersetzungen um Machtpositionen kommt, zeigt der Text Hacking The Spaces. Johannes Grenzfurthner und Frank Apunkt Schneider problematisieren darin, dass Hackerspaces überwiegend von weißen, männlichen Nerds gestaltet werden und fordern, sich mit der Frage auseinanderzusetzen, wie sich dies auf die Praxis der Hackerspaces auswirkt. Hackerspaces stehen in einer linken, gegenkulturellen Tradition, sich Freiräume zu schaffen. Und sie überschreiten Grenzen: Nicht nur zwischen Wohnzimmer und Arbeitsplatz wird die vermeintliche Trennung aufgehoben, sondern auch die Gegenüberstellung von Arbeit mit Kunstmachen und Spaßhaben wird durchquert. Sie können Räume sein, die Arbeitsweisen und Technologien entwickeln, die zur Veränderung der Gesellschaft beitragen und Systeme im besten Sinne von benutzeruntypischem Verhalten hacken.

If you ask mainstream pornographers what their vision of the future is, it involves cracking down on piracy making more money re-selling the same generic products in new formats. What about independent pornographers with an eye on longtail markets who are focused on creating "weird" products that most people don't want to buy? Or consumers who are seeking porn to cater to their special interests not covered in mainstream heteronormative porn? Or people who prefer porn and Real Dolls to sexual involvement with other humans? And, what of the future of computer-generated porn? While the major adult companies are still trying to figure out why people aren't buying as many $45 DVDs as they used to, more and more niche pornographers, artists, merchants, and performers are popping up to create offbeat erotic entertainment with a small, but enthusiastic fanbase. Join these nerdy perverts for a discussion on the many directions in which the future of porn is really headed.

Was planning to get to announce this last week, but got caught up in some last minute finagling with MIT. But we've finally got it hammered out.

In any case, happy to announce today that we've officially decided that ROFLCon II will be on April 30th and May 1st, 2010.

Got it? Awesome. Planning to open up registration sometime in January, and we'll announce on the blog when it goes up. If you've already hit up tim AT roflcon DOT org, we've already got you covered (even if I haven't responded), and, if you haven't, definitely do drop a line if you want to be notified by e-mail when it opens up.

Johannes, an insane Austrian man we met this weekend, will be conducting a rant at Hackerspace.SG this Thursday evening.

For those who are unfamiliar with the rant: it is a tradition of performance art which was developed in Europe in the 19th century and successfully ported to the Internet in the early-to-mid 1990s. It is now being introduced to Asia by aesthetic pioneers like Johannes Grenzfurthner.

In recognition of Singapore's leading position as the financial and cultural capital of Asia, and of Hackerspace.SG as the leading hackerspace in Singapore, he has chosen Hackerspace.SG as the venue for his first Singapore performance of this artwork.

We invite all members of hackerspace.sg and the related community to attend this rant.

There is no fee, though we wish to thank in advance all the wonderful people who consume beer, wine, or soft drinks, for their cash donations into the little glass that says "your donations are welcome."

For the purposes of licensing under Chapter 257 Section 319, this is an exempt entertainment as defined by the Public Entertainments and Meetings (Specified Arts Entertainment) (Exemption) Order 2005.

monochrom and the East: Some stories about Context Hacking and Asia
A tour-de-farce by Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom

monochrom is a worldwide operating collective dealing with technology, art and philosophy and was founded in 1993. So to sum up, monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, political activism and technological disaster.

Johannes wants to tell us stories about monochrom's "context hacking" projects that specifically deal with our focus on contemporary Asian topics.

The term context hacking—like its mimetic sibling "communication guerrilla"—refers to unconventional forms of communication and/or intervention in more conventional processes of communication. Context hacking is a specific style of political action that observes and makes visible the paradoxes and absurdities of power. Context hacking uses absurdities as the starting point for interventions by playing with representations and identities, with alienation and over-identification.

With all the talk about failing, one interesting speaker that managed to get all our attention was Johannes Grenfurthner who runs Monochrom – an art-technology-philosophy group in Vienna. With his stage presence and use of different yet interesting metaphors conveyed why it's important to fail and had interesting points on why sometimes competition isn't the right way to create something that people need.

Santa: "HO HO HO! Wien is MY turf now, Christkindl. I've been making a list, checking it twice, and I know who's been naughty or nice... and who's going to get their skinny white angel butt kicked if they don't get out of my way. It's time to work for me or leave for China, baby boy."

Christkindl: "Santa, du Oaschsau! Gemma auf die Bluatwiesn!"

Hackers love knowledge. They try to find out how stuff works. And that's great. Experimentation is a major part of hacking. It is in the most philosophical sense a deconstruction of things.

A specific use is never inherent to an object, even though technical demagogues like to claim that it is. Just compare the term "self-explanatory" and the term "archeological find". It's a pretty hard task to find out what technology is and what it should do if you don't have a clue about the context. Usually the use is connected with the object through definition ("instructions for use"). Turning an object against the use inscribed in it means probing its possibilities.

Science and Technology Studies (especially Langdon Winner and Bruno Latour) have convincingly demonstrated that the widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are "left over." However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural, and last but not least political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products (developmental derailments, sobering intermediary results, useless prototypes) are not discussed.

Well. What can we do?
We can fail. Beautifully.