In case you missed the Roboxotica conference at the Museumsquartier last week but are interested in hearing some of the talks that were presented you can now download mp3s of all the talks directly from monochrom now. In German are talks by Thomas Ballhausen, Kerstin Ohler and Alexander Edelhofer. I also presented in English along with Jens Ohlig, Cory Doctorow, David Fine and Bre Pettis. Enjoy!

If you weren’t at the opening of Roboxotica 2007 tonight then you missed the chaos that resulted from the above contraption. That thing is was filled with Orange Juice and Vodka. LOTS of Orange Juice and Vodka. A few more pics are after the jump.
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Hi Vienna! I’m Sean and I’m visiting from Los Angeles for a few months. Here’s a few of the other posts I’ve written if you want to check out the kind of thing I blog about but I’ll probably be doing a bunch of that here while I’m in town as well. I’m here thanks to monochrom and will be at the Roboxotica conference all weekend including the opening party tonight. If you can make it, please say Hi. I think we’ll be doing some cool stuff over the next few weeks as well, so stay tuned. More coming soon…

ROBOEXOTICA 2007 - Nov 22-25 - Museumsquartier Wien
Festival for Cocktail robotics since 1999!

ROBOEXOTICA addresses the role of Cocktail Robotics as an index of the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebenswelt. It attempts to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication as well as being an enjoyable platform for anyone interested in the related topics. The exhibit will show robotic installations that mix cocktails, serve drinks, hold cocktail conversations, light cigarettes and — last but not least — display “other achievements” in the sector of electronic cocktail culture. The ninth iteration of the Annual Cocktail Robot Awards (ACRA) will honor the best entries in the above categories, with extra emphasis on the
robot’s charms and personality. (Award Ceremony Sun Nov 25)

Program Schedule

Thursday 11/22, 2007
- Museumsquartier Wien, Freiraum
7 P.M.: Roboexotica 2007 and AiR Space opening.
Live - GameJew, Mr. Electric
On the turntables - DJ Borka, VJ Ozo

Friday 11/23, 2007
- Museumsquartier Wien, Freiraum
10 A.M. - 10 P.M.: Exhibition
5 P.M.: DJ Ossi & Kilian
- Museumsquartier Wien, Erste Bank Arena
1 P.M. - 5 P.M.: Symposium (in german language)
Thomas Ballhausen: Geister sehen.
Zur Veränderung der visuellen Kultur und ihrer (Seh)Räume um 1895.
Kerstin Ohler: Generating Ghosts 2.0
Der phantastische (Erzähl)Raum und seine Bewohner als VR-Mechanismus.
Alexander Edelhofer: “Radio, live transmission.”
Psychogeographische Industrielandschaften und Subkultur: Joy Divison,
Manchester.
- brut Konzerthaus, Lothringerstraße 20, 1030 Wien
8 P.M.: Recording of taugshow #15.

Saturday 11/24, 2007
- Museumsquartier Wien, Freiraum
10 A.M. - 10 P.M.: Exhibition
5 P.M.: DJ Funke powered by sonance, DJ phonuel
- Museumsquartier Wien, Erste Bank Arena
1 P.M. - 6 P.M.: Symposium
Sean Bonner: The inmates have taken over the asylum…
but that’s OK because as it turns out they are far more
entertaining than all those stuffy doctors.
Jens Ohlig: Monkeys, typewriters, and the Markov chain reaction.
Programming machines to write literature so humans don’t have to.
Cory Doctorow: A Singular Metaphor
Why consciousness uploading, post-human existence,
and life after the Singularity are popular today,
and why science fiction is always about the present.
David Fine: The Consciousness Conundrum.
Bre Pettis: Machines: If you can’t beat them, join them
The Apocalyptic Utopia.
- brut Künstlerhaus, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Wien
20 Uhr: Gold Extra
Black Box - Theater for eight remote controlled robots (in german language)
- brut Konzerthaus, Lothringerstraße 20, 1030 Wien
22 Uhr: Paul Granjon
Reflections and Constructions of a Button Pusher

Sunday 11/25, 2007
- Museumsquartier Wien, Freiraum
10 A.M. - 8 P.M.: Exhibition
2 P.M.: Grjasnaya Gallereya
The Inevitable Time Travel (Performance)
3 P.M.: Rainer Tramin
Wir sind wie Roboter? (Lecture in german language)
- Museumsquartier Wien, QDK Veranstaltungsraum
11 A.M.: Filmbrunch
- brut Künstlerhaus, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Wien
6 P.M.: Gold Extra
Black Box - Theater for eight remote controlled robots (in german language)
- brut Konzerthaus, Lothringerstraße 20, 1030 Wien
8 P.M.: Paul Granjon
Reflections and Constructions of a Button Pusher
- Volkstheater Wien, Rote Bar, Neustiftgasse 1, 1070 Wien
10 P.M.: ACRA V9.0
Gala of the Annual Cocktail Robotics Awards 2007

Link

The flat hierarchies of talk shows are about as subversive as NYC Democrats smoking dope. But count us out! We won’t produce a talk show. Nope. We produce a TAUGSHOW! Which means: we dig it. Our guests are geeks, heretics, and other coevals. 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 prime time TV show.

Location: dietheater/Konzerthaus, Lothrinerstrasse, Vienna.
Friday, December 8, 2006 / 8:00 PM

Guests:

/// V. VALE

In 1977, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti each gave V. Vale, a clerk at City Lights Bookstore, $100 to begin publishing “SEARCH & DESTROY,” now called by Jello Biafra “the best punk magazine ever, combining in-depth interviews, lists and reference material with artist’s photographs and layout.” After eleven issues in a tabloid format, V. Vale launched Adolescent Records and then was the first American hired to start Rough Trade Records U.S.A. He subsequently convinced Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis to back the first issues of “RE/Search” (a pun on Search & Destroy). After three “RE/Search” tabloids, Vale’s publishing took a turn towards a book format, beginning with a ground-breaking, still-classic issue featuring William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Throbbing Gristle. Other early books published by Vale include Mike Bloomfield’s, “Me and Big Joe,” Kathy Acker’s “Great Expectations,” and Terry Wilson & Brion Gysin’s “Here To Go.” At the same time, RE/Search began producing videos, music compilation CDs, and live events and concerts. The RE/Search series includes the “Industrial Culture Handbook” (just re-issued in a beautiful, limited edition hardback), four books involving J.G. Ballard (two recently: “J.G. Ballard Quotes,” and “J.G. Ballard Conversations”), two books involving PRANKS, “Incredibly Strange Films” and “Incredibly Strange Music,” the ground-breaking “Modern Primitives” (credited with “launching” the tattoo/body modification movement), and other volumes of noir historian author Daniel P. Mannix, noir writer Charles Willeford, Wanda von Sacher-Masoch of Graz, Austria, and others. RE/Search’s latest book is “PRANKS 2.” RE/Search is currently producing a series of one-hour interview videos and has finished 20 episodes for San Francisco television (one of which features monochrom founder Johannes Grenzfurthner from Vienna, Austria). RE/Search principals V. Vale and Marian Wallace will be documenting the RoboExotica Conference, December 2006 for their video series.

http://www.researchpubs.com/

———————————————-

/// VIOLET BLUE

Violet Blue is the best-selling, award-winning author and editor of over twenty books on sex and sexuality, two of which have been translated into French, Spanish, Russian and Turkish. Violet is a sex educator who lectures at UC’s and community teaching institutions, and writes about erotica, pornography, sexual pleasure and health. She is a professional blogger and femmebot; a correspondent at Geek Entertainment TV; the sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and blogs for Gawker’s Fleshbot.com and Metroblogging San Francisco. She was Wired’s “sexy geek of 2005″, she has survived being a Dorkbot SF presenter twice, and over ten years at Survival Research Laboratories — where she does robotics, machine maintenance, industrial mechanical fabrication, welding, machine operation and robot performace production. Her podcast Open Source Sex has made iTunes cry for its mommy at least once. To visit her site, remove one item of clothing and click tinynibbles.com.

———————————————-

/// OLIVER HANGL

Oliver Hangl was born 1968 in Grieskirchen, Austria. Hangl, who originally startet his career as actor and stage designer in 1993, is just as active in performative disciplines and medial spaces as he is in classical fine arts exhibition sites. His current works, which are not tied to one medium, are marked by breaks in reality, doublings, and in between realms. Hangl is involved in a broad range of activites, in which he frequently switches between the positions of artist, actor, producer and/or director.

http://www.olliwood.com

———————————————-

/// Visuals:

/// LA TRINCHERA

La Trinchera (the trench) is an Austrian-Mexican sound and projection collective based in Mexico City. La Trinchera found its beginnings in the First “Festival of Improvisation” staged in Mexico City, february 2004. Since then, La Trinchera has operated as generator of impulses, as a “free fire zone” and as a call to experimentation. Risking the clash of individual creative spirit in the immediacy of a visual situation, La Trinchera has successfully brought together more than 20 artists of many diverse world views. Four of them are guests at monochroms taugshow: Rafael Balboa (handmade 16mm film-loops), Manuel Trujillo (handmade 16mm film-loops), Aisel Wicab (handmade slides), Doris Steinbichler (overhead projector).

http://www.trinchera-ensamble.blogspot.com

Roboexotica is the first and inevitably leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics.

Until recently, no attempts had been made to publically discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebenswelt, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It is the first and, inevitably, the leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Alan Turing would doubtless test this out.

Scientists, researchers, computer geeks and artists from all over the world participate to build cocktail robots and discuss about technological innovation, futurology and science fiction.

Participants: V. Vale of RE/Search, Eddie Codel (Geek Entertainment TV), Jacob Appelbaum, Madame Violet Blue and robot masterminds as David Calkins and Kal Spelletich… and many others.

Opening: Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 7 PM, Freiraum/Museumsquartier.

Link / Roboexotica

Roböxotica, the annual festival for cocktailrobotics (to be held Dec. 5-9 at Museumsquartier Vienna) features the 8th Annual Cocktail Robot Awards (ACRA). Trophies will be awarded in five categories, among them mixing and serving cocktails as well as lighting cigarettes and cocktail conversation. Entries welcome! Among the winners of 2005 was David Calkins, president of the Robotics Society of America and founder of Robogames. There is also a related post on SHIFZ-Blog.

It took three days to make it official, but the kind yet a little slow people of Netznetz finally succeeded. Infrastructure will be built, cool new locations will see the light of day, whole communities will get a second living room, €50.000 will be spent.

In the beginning, one could observe heated discussions and nervous faces, but the more people joined our waiting, the more civilised everyone seemed to be. I’m sure the hired security guard knows how to deal with boredom though.

The weakest part of the event was also the most interesting one: the presentations. Most presenters are obviously not professional speakers, some didn’t even show up, others weren’t given the material they should’ve been used. I think everyone has learned from this and will try to do it better in 6 monts.

The crowd was seemingly getting bored/nervous during the last hour, but gladly most got woken up a bit by Esel, who started a wonderful attack on several projects. He questioned their relevance as backbone projects, who are in his opinion projects that should provide infrastructure for more than just the community one is already part of. I think that’s an important detail the Netznetz community should focus next time.

The voting seemed to work fine, except for the humiliating fact that the presenters sat there and begged for the little coloured papers that would decide how much money they will get. I think boxes would make that a little easier and less frustrating. Contrary to the presenting part here, the voting one was quite nice: you could exchange your ballots and give more projects you were fond of your vote.

But let’s get to the results.

€9.015,87 go to:

• Artist in Residence: For a tighter international social network, providing basic human and artistic needs for artists from god knows where.
• Gustav Böhms Gatschhaus: as Johannes Grenzfurthner put it, a permanent CCC hacker camp.
• Roböxotica: The one and only festival for cocktail robotics.
• Cuisine Digitale: A place where producers and interested people in media, art, architecture and music meet regularly. Events, Screenings, Talks, Workshops and Exhibitions take place [there].

€8.804,23 to:

• einreich.plan: A new hybrid club/café by some of the people that were involved at the architecture project add-on.
• Project Speis: Event/workshop/party/screening/gaming/surfing space. All free! Except for the beer.
• CMS-Server: a CMS server for anyone interested? Wasn’t so clear.
• Transforming Freedom: Community driven audio/video “indexing” of material relevant for digital cultures. A collection of statements/interviews/talks from known and lesser known netculture key figures.

They certainly will be happy about €7.449,74:

• Happy Lab: The Viennese version of MIT’s FabLab.

€8.253,97 will be given to:

• Malmoe/fiber/Context XXI: Covering the digital needs of the printmedia.
• X-purple: The basics for the sonance artistic network which forms a flexible structure for the integration of contemporary art, culture and science-”producers”.
• machfeld studio: … an interdisciplinary art- and medialab founded in april 2004 [...] working in the different fields of net-, streaming- video- and interactive-art. [They] explore the borderland between new and old media.

The highest score will get them €10.000,00:

• Metalab: The Metalab is an open centre for meta-disciplinary magicians and technically creative enthusiasts. The Viennese version of C-Base.

And finally, there are €6.476,19 for:

• q/spot reloaded: The wonderful and widly popular free hotspot at the MQW gets siblings in more green environments.
• d.construction.site: Based at the EKH, the d.construction.site sees itself as place, for communication and exchange of information, apart established media- and information-channels. The

One word: Exciting! They’ve done it. Congratulations to everyone. It was a really really cool experience and I wish everyone involved all the best.

Roboexotica is the first and inevitably leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics. Not only Mr. Turing would test this out. Scientists, researchers, computer geeks and artists from all over the world participate to build cocktail robots and discuss about technological innovation, futurology and science fiction.

Participants: Jake Appelbaum, Thomas Ballhausen, Francesca Birks, David Calkins, Cory Doctorow, Drehli Robnik, Karl Svozil, Jutta Weber and many others.

Opening: Wednesday, 16 November 2005, 7 PM, Freiraum/Museumsquartier.

Link / Roboexotica