Here goes a huge thanx to Mike from tupalo, whom I just met yesterday and who - being the impersonation of the vegan’s breaking news - briefed me on the latest hot vegan shit in Vienna; which again reminded me on a post I started weeks ago and simply forgot to upload here…

So here we go with a couple of spots that may fulfill your needs for vegan yumminess:

The Go Veg Diner, a place selling all vegan, healthy (they say) fast food - which totally reminds me of Yellow Sunshine in Berlin -, just opened its gates in 10th district, Favoritenstr. 156 (11am - 09pm, closed on Sundays).
Unfortunately, I haven’t made it there yet, but I believe it’s somewhat in the middle between Formosa, Rupps and Schillinger - and worth a visit for sure!

Now that we can finally have some summer feelings (can we? pleease? for more than three days in a row?), there IS a tremendous need for ice cream.
The Eissalon am Schwedenplatz, just a few steps ahead from U Schwedenplatz, has started a cooperation with VGT and now serves three different cups of vegan ice cream varieties, changing weekly.
Still, I’m possibly the biggest fan ever of Zanoni & Zanoni, Lugeck 7, who offer three kinds of delicious vegan ice cream (which they call lactose- and sugarfree, but in fact have been proven to be vegan by Charly Schillinger): jogurt - raspberry, vanilla jogurt - blueberry, and chocolate, if I recall right.

Also, WerkzeugH in 5th district, Schoenbrunnerstr. 61, is my new favorite place to hang out in the sun and have a delicious dirty soy chai latte - both way cheaper and way more luscious than Starbucks or the Coffeeshop Company, since they offer David Rio’s Chai selection there (unfortunately, the mouth-watering “Elephant Vanilla Chai” is not 100% vegan, but the still amazing “Tiger Spice Chai” is) -, and we therefore even moved our Sunday’s Team Dirty Chai over there! =)
Every Sunday, WerkzeugH offers a large breakfast buffet on a pay-as-you-wish basis, too (sort of like at Der Wiener Deewan - if you haven’t been there yet, go make sure to check out that place as well!); unfortunately, this is mostly non-vegan, but Manfred assured me they’re working on it.

And, last but not least: Mike showed me the most unbelievable and awesome thing ever: a pack of American Oreos he had just bought at the Coffeeshop Company at Thalia, Mariahilferstr. 99! I know they’ve been selling the european (as in: non-vegan…) Oreo cookies ever since, so seeing CC switching over to the vegan originals seems like heaven to me! Woohooo!

If Metblogs is a city, hub.metblogs is the playground. We kept hearing from people that one of their favorite parts of Metblogs was meeting and interacting with readers and writers from other parts of the world, as well as getting requests for more ways that readers could be involved besides just posting comments. We thought about this for a while and decided that with a network like this, a giant community area where folks from all over the world could hang out, post photos and videos, talk with each other, form groups, play games, send messages, and do about a million other things was probably a pretty fun idea. The Hub is that.

If you have any tech ideas or suggestions join this group and speak up. See you on hub.metblogs!

I, myself, haven’t been near the Ring today, but I just remembered that its closure (rather, the closure of parts of it) was planned for today, so I thought it might be a good idea to post a reminder.

Vienna’s Fan Zone extends from Babenbergerstraße to Schottengasse; all traffic and public transport usually going along this part of the Ring will be diverted until 4 July.

While the website of the Wiener Linien mostly concentrates on providing information on how to get to the Fan Zone (I’d still very much like to know how all affected NightLines will be diverted..), ORF.at posted a very useful map of alternate routes today (source).

I know this post comes super, super late, but:

Right this minute at Kunsthalle Project Space, the ‘Games. Their Present-Day Role in Art & Politics’ exhibition is being opened - which looks awesome to me!

Here’s what the Kunsthalle site says about it:

The series of events and the exhibition scheduled to accompany the European Soccer Championship 2008 in the Kunsthalle project space centers on the politics and present-day role of games. Societies present themselves through their games, whose syntax, semantics, and performative practice both distort the prevailing circumstances and articulate the desires and ideals inherent in them.

Games have always been part of popular culture. Today, interactive PC games, online games, and Internet role-playing games form the hottest-selling branch of the globalized entertainment and culture industry. Its turnover exceeds that of the motion picture industry: the US producer of the role-playing game World of Warcraft, for example, registered 300,000 new players only last year, and tens of thousands of players move through the virtual worlds of Linden Labs’ Second Life every day.

Because of their enormous social and economic significance, games are the – hitherto underestimated – aesthetic and sociopolitical fighting zone of the future: in the forms of their motifs and their architecture, in their narrative structures and their use.

The series of events and the exhibition will explore the concept of games in its manifold relationships with today’s culture, technology, and politics and focus on interactive games as a medium of contemporary art.

Curators: Mathias Fuchs, Ernst Strouhal

So go have a quick look - and stop by at Karlsplatz nao.

Btw, the exhibit will be on display until July 06th, 2008, so there’s absolutely no excuse to miss it ;)

Of course the world is abuzz with the latest Austrian kidnapping and imprisonment tragedy. I’ve received many email inquiries — and Austria seems to be debating — the “how” of the whole affair. How can a man who was well-regarded and thought of as totally upright by his village and peers turned out be be, in essence, a horrible monster named Josef F., who imprisoned and raped his own daughter in his own house, fathered seven of her children, and basically lived such a Jeckyl and Hide existence that not one soul suspected a thing despite the fact that he lived with a large family and rented to tenants in the same house.

Just as background, the thumbnail story is that the man imprisoned his young daughter, kept her there for two decades, fathered seven children, one of which died and some of which he brought out of the cellar, placed on his own doorstep and claimed they were the children of the imprisoned daughter, who he claimed had run away to join a religious cult.

It’s unbelievable, really. But I think I have one small piece of the puzzle. I’m not claiming to be an authority on the Austrian psyche, nor criminal psychology, nor anything else. However, I can remember a story that happened to me in Vienna back in 1991 that would probably explain a little bit about how nobody would suspect or, more accurately, allow themselves to believe this man could commit such crimes.

You’ll notice that in most of the news coverage, his neighbors, friend and associates all comment on what a good dresser Josef F. was, and how he was always responsible and authoritarian, and how he was a good business partner, a good consumer of their goods. Many called him “successful.” (In the US, it’s always “quiet” that neighbors say characterizes serial killers or other social miscreants, and in the US, that’s good: if you leave other people alone, you’re not perceived as a problem — but I digress).

When I was a student, I rented a room from an 83 year-old Austrian widow. I and two other students shared her 3 bedroom flat on the top floor of a slightly grimy part of Vienna’s Ninth District very near WUK. The owner of the apartment building was a lawyer with offices on the most-prestigious Stephansplatz in the First District.

The owner’s son, Peter, lived at the end of the hallway in a tiny one room flat. He had a hallway toilet and his bathtub stood in his kitchen. He wasn’t the cleanest fellow, because he was using his bathtub to grow pot. Our landlady warned us off of him, but, eventually, we became somewhat friendly — friendly enough for him to ask us for loans from time-to-time.
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Our monochrom member Frank Apunkt Schneider, who is a huge German/Austrian new wave connaisseur, emailed a concert recommendation.

Legendary new wave band “Die Radierer” („Angriff aufs Schlaraffenland“, „Drogentod“, „Gott lebt, es geht ihm gut“, „Ich eß Lego“) do a gig on Saturday (April 19, 9 PM) at Vanity Vague, Vienna.

Frank Apunkt sends a review of their latest CD.

Die Radierer: Der andalusische Bär.
CD/ Zick Zack
Die aktuelle Verkunstgeschichtung des (Post-)Punk verschweigt meist ein bisschen zu beredt eine seiner zentralen Subversionsstrategien: die Verweigerungshaltung gegenüber dem vernünftigen Diskurs über die Welt, in dem sich die VorläuferInnengeneration Mitte der 1970er in die kontrollgesellschaftliche Praxis einzuüben begann. Während die Ex-Hippies gewissenhaft an der ganz persönlichen Meinung als Eintrittskarte ins falsche Bewusstsein arbeiteten, versteiften sich viele der besseren (Post-)Punk-Gruppen auf das Abfackeln völlig absurder Behauptungen und eben mal so dahingesagter Abfuhren an die verantwortungsvolle Rede. Und in den besten Fällen besaßen diese Post-Punk-Behauptungen nicht mal einen Subjektivitätskern, waren also kein Ausdruck eins ernsthaft vermeinten persönlichen Anliegens, sondern Serach’n’Destroy-mäßiges Danebenbenehmen in einer Welt aus Zeichen. In der linksliberalen Leitkultur der damaligen BRD war das um Längen radikaler als alle für die Straßenkampfversion von bürgerlicher Subjektivität gedachten Mollie-Bauanleitungen bei Slime. Die Radierer waren eine der konsequentesten VertreterInnen dieser Strategie und außerdem einer von vier wirklich essentiellen NDW-Beiträgen der mittelhessischen Kleinstadt Limburg an der Lahn. In eigenartig laschen Reimzwangtexten entwarfen sie unausgewogene, überdrehte und halbschwachsinnige Porträts jener Thematisierungen, über denen die bürgerliche Vernunftavantgarde mit Sorgenfalten-zerknautscher Günther-Grass-Miene grübelte. Porträts, die eher Kinderzeichnungen oder den noch knapp für schädlich geltenden Comics ähnelten. – Leider wurden Comics ja um 1981 vom Computer als bildungsbürgerliches Kinderkontrollverlust-Panik-Item verdrängt. – Die Radierer entwarfen pop-artige Sprechblasen, in der die großen Weltprobleme knallbunte und beliebig abrufbare Spielmarken spätkapitalistischer Wirklichkeit waren. Damit stellten sie eher intuitiv als absichtsvoll die Kausalordnung wieder her, die der linksliberale Meinungsidealismus leugnen zu können glaubte, indem er behauptete, dass sich die Welt ver- bzw. „ausbessern“ ließe, ohne deren politische Ökonomie grundlegend anzutasten. Die alte Pop-Leidenschaft für die Oberfläche der Dinge wurde dabei noch mal gebrochen durch eine Mimikry von Gedankentiefe, die ebenso oberflächlich blieb wie bei Grass und Co., die aber ihre Banalität und Naivität genoss und stolz vorzeigte. Das war nicht nur kein programmatischer Ernst, sondern ebenso wenig programmatischer Unernst (also Verarschung als eine zweite Form von Ernst wie in Satire oder Parodie). Als Gegenteil von Ernst/Unernst wurde Trash, Camp bzw. die „Popform“ eingeführt, die eben damals noch längst nicht wirklich als neue Form von Ernst und Staatsraison erahnbar war. Und all das funktioniert erstaunlicherweise und mit nur unwesentlichen Abstrichen auch noch in der jetzigen Popernst-Epoche, in der soeben ihre fünfte Platte erscheint, nach mehr als 20-jähriger Bandpause übrigens. Darauf zu hören sind 15 Trash-Statements über alles Mögliche inkl. Sextourismus, die weder unmittelbar in der Affirmationshölle landen, die Trash doch längst geworden ist, noch in der Affirmationshölle „Kritik“ abkacken.
Frank Apunkt Schneider

When I was in Tokyo earlier this year a few friends and I organized a photowalk around a few parts of the city with the goal of creating a pool of creative commons licensed images of the city. We had almost 20 people on the walk, some locals and some visitors and the photos taken that day (including the one above that I snapped in Harajuku) are amazingly cool. Better yet, they are all available for other people to use thanks to CC. I was thinking it might be cool to do something like that here while I’m in Vienna as well. I know there are some existing photowalk groups already in town and maybe this is something they’d be interested in helping out with? It’s a fairly simple idea, map out a rough route, grab cameras and go. Afterwards post them all to Flicker using a similar tag and license (we used attribution/non-commercial/share-alike). It was a fun thing todo during the day, but also is helping build a resource of images that other people can use when they need something representing the city. Would anyone be interested in doing something like that?

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

Modern techno-mythologies assume that more information and more connections will literally make more sense, extending all the way to the post-human desire to transcend the meat entirely and evolve into pure code. But even before porn and spam turned obfuscation into a profitable business model, the noise and bugs of the meat were already embedded in the code. From the supernatural mass murder which inspired the Arts of Memory to the atomic alien conspiracies that spawned the Web, information technology has always been paranoid.
This talk covers several thousand years of information technology, focusing on strange threads of symptom and haunting woven into the history of mnemotechnics. How does ancient gnostic cosmology influence the way we use computers? How did magicians, junkies and sexual deviants give us computers, programming and rocket science? How did a cave in Kentucky became the blueprint of cyberspace? How did a moth presage y2k and terrorist paranoia? How is the crashed flying saucer at Roswell tied to the origins of hypertext?
These weird errors and coincidences cannot be cleansed from the history of our memory machines, because memory itself is buggy. It operates by associative logic, making unexpected squirms and jumps, revealing poetic truths about the world without concern for linear reason. We cannot escape into the clean world of information and code because the messy conspiratorial logic of sex-dirt is in fact the paranoid logic of code.
All of this will be examined through the gnostic allegory of the 1983 Disney movie, Tron.

Jason Brown (from Los Angeles) is an ambient noisemaker, constellation manipulator, and paranoid historiographer.

Wednesday, September 19. 8 PM @ Metalab, Vienna.

What does it take to call yourself a punk: be it a punk, cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk?

In the late 70ties, Drahdiwaberl’s bandleader and Kapellmeister Stefan Weber, a retired teacher, declared that some day he just put on a red bathing cap and that was it. However you do it, Vienna’s definitely most notorious punk-bigband will perform tonight at the Volksstimmefest (People’s Voice Festival).

Drahdiwaberl („roundabout”) are infamous for their elaborate stage shows which often include bizarre and, as some „boring old farts” claim, disgusting elements, for example faked police raids, the mockery of US-President George W. Bush or the slaughtering of the Pope and even a nun (Stefan Weber’s daughter, Monika „Shockira” Weber). The liberating climax of every live show is their famous performance of the so-called Mulatschag („orgy”), including sexual actions onstage.

Now please do excuse me: as you can see, I’ve to dress up.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drahdiwaberl
http://members.chello.at/drahdiwaberl/index.htm
http://www.myspace.com/drahdiwaberl