Spring is here. Tourist season (well, main tourist season) is upon us. With the warm weather, one peculiar Viennese species has woken from hibernation: The “wandering Mozart”

It is a shy species and hard to catch on pixels, so all I have are these fuzzy pictures:

The wandering Mozart is generally harmless. It’s mating cry of “concert tickets” may be mistaken for communication by tourists unfamiliar with the species, but other than the unwitting purchase of tickets to mediocre concerts nothing ill can happen.

As the Mozarts multiply pretty rapidly I expect the introduction of predatory Beethovens into the habitat soon. Opportunities for dramatic nature movies will abound…

Together with a few people we started a project called “The Flower Currency” last year… and now — as it gets friendlier outside — we continue the project in Vienna and Lower Austria.

Here’s a short interview with financial cryptographer Ian Grigg.

Hi! I’m the new guy here. You know, I had this thoughtful polished prose post in mind for my metblogs inauguration. Something whimsy and nice. Well suited to make a great first impression.

But.

Well.

Anyway, there’s more important stuff going on: The USians are celebrating National Day of Slayer on 6.6.6. Will anybody in Vienna participate? Annoying innocent bystanders with loud obnoxious metal music sounds like a perfect plan for a lazy tuesday afternoon.

So, anybody feel like it? Let me know in the comments.

(Click to enlarge)

Just a couple of miles outside Vienna lies the small village of Berndorf. Berndorf currently hosts the spooky “Triestingtaler Leistungsschau” (Triesting Valley Economy Presentation Festival)… and good friends of ours started a really interesting Nomad Art Convention next to the Economy Festival…
…and we decided to prepare a garden!

This is our short video about our botanical, telematical and political installation “In the Head of the Gardener” (monochrom and branigan). The setting is based on a flower-gardening book that was recently released by the Austrian Convervative Party.

Jogi (Subotron) about French artist Space Invader:

Collection of great hi-res pictures for press use.

Befreites Wien
(about Soviet forces in Vienna, 1945-1955)

Off limits
(about the US forces in postwar Vienna)

Link

I love my River Wien! 34 kilometers of sheer delight! Especially the 15 kilometers of concrete wonderland within the city.

It’s a dangerous place, because the river is subject to huge variations in flow. During heavy rain the soil in the Vienna forests quickly saturates, resulting in substantial runoff. Thus the flow of the Wien can quickly increase from a creek-like 200 liters per second to 450,000 liters per second!

That’s what I call bruteforce.

(River Wien near Purkersdorf)

(River Wien within the city)

Maybe that’s off-topic, but Vienna is a town in Clark County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 78 at the 2000 census.

One of the few pictures I could find on Google:

I think it’s the only place on earth with the name of Vienna that has less than 100 inhabitants. At least if I believe the sources on the Vienna disambiguation page on Wikipedia.

S. Grigat talks about Austrian and German post-naziism.
Sorry, German language only.

MOV file