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 Big Brother Awards recognize the government and private sector organizations which have done the most to threaten personal privacy”. It is awarded by a couple of digital rights activists group such as Quintessenz.

Tonight (Oct 25) there will be the big 2006 gala at Rabenhof Theater in the 3rd district. Starts at 8 pm.

Hosts: Doris Knecht, Anneliese Rohrer, Charles E. Ritterband, Florian Scheuba, Klaus Stimeder.

Acts: maschek, monochrom, Christian & Michael, TOCC.

Visuals: mingo.

Link

Paraflows 06 - Annual Convention for Digital Arts and Cultures:
9 through 16 September 06. Vienna, Austria.

You were disappointed by Ars Electronica in Linz? Well, it’s Vienna’s turn!

Paraflows starts Saturday (e.g. “5 Volt Core” @ Kunsthalle; visuals generated by destroying graphic cards and mainboards inside a running computer), but the whole week is full of interesting performances (e.g. Pirate Party on Wednesday), lectures (e.g. Rena Tangens on Sunday), exhibits (e.g. RepRap @ metalab) or parties (e.g. “Night Of The Living Dead Media” — the one-time return of Space Jungle — next Saturday)…

High abstraction goals for local communities

In the year 2006, neither Amnesty International nor Greenspeace have been put out of work, yet new horizons of necessary political engagement have emerged that call on the abilities of computer scientists, lawyers and artists alike - and lots of them.

These alternative task forces have recently formed, like the state-of-the-art movement of Pirate Parties that originated in Sweden and strives to get techaware citizens elected into parliaments on a worldwide scale, the Big Brother Awards that report back and collect local cases of corporate technologialy abuse in more than 15 countries, or the Free Software Foundation that designs operation systems and licenses that can spread freedom from digital abuse in an already abusive environment. They all advise their politicians, lawyers and journalists in their free time to stop steering our societies into a direction where Europeans have little understanding of where it will lead: intimidated citizens, security-obsessed decision makers, atmospheres of faschism, powered by the IT-sector itself and its shareholders.

At this moment in time, participants in the Viennese netznetz-experiment succeeded by being entrusted 500.000 Euro every year, to distribute among themselves and their projects, obliging themselves to the task of stabilizing and re-designing their procedures collectively, step by step, and in a democratic fashion that nevertheless produces results. This complex task seems to be just like “rebuilding the plane as you are flying” (A. Limi). Yet by co-constructing the local workflows they are already changing the flows of cash and hardware, material and knowledge, information and inspiration in the city of Vienna. Seen from a personal point of view, a lot of them already look back on a hybrid education between the computer sciences, the social sciences and the arts, testifying with their own experience in the netznetz - process that the perception of scientific facts and artistic artifacts, tools for collaboration and devices for self-alienation, promising instability and outmoded routines may sometimes blend into each other rather paradoxically, as if both states were to be true at once, or on parallel dimensions.

But how are these two scales of endeavour related, both the organisation of a local production- and safety-net via the web and the care for interrelated issues like copyrights and patent approaches via international, distributed technologies and communities? The most immediate concern that invokes scrutiny are people. Because just looking back into the ideologies and technologies of the year 1968 or 1996 will not suffice to properly adress these new power constellations that have emerged between the social, the political, the legal, the technological and the personal aspects of our daily life. And be it in Vienna or elsewhere, in order not to paralyse our momentum, these complexities must be adressed in a innovative way, by researching and testing possible re-constellations and current models of collective collaboration for the long term. And by reminding oneself that, within all complexity, “the most important source of energy is the human being and what he or she believes.” (J.A. Wheeler). Paraflows 06 will present different viable approaches to personal self-organization with a global bandwidth reach.

You can find details about conference, social events and exhibition on the Paraflows 06 homepage.

netznetz is a platform for individuals and groups associated with net art and net culture here in Vienna, Austria.

MANA is a system for the distribution of municipal grants developed and run by netznetz in which the participants distribute their own funding according to certain democratically agreed-upon rules and aided by custom software. It is run largely independent of the city government which provides the funds.

The system strives for guaranteed and dispersed distribution of funding in the sector while the parameters of the distribution are meant to remain flexible, providing a dynamic scope. Therefore, everybody who is involved in the sector is subject to the principle of permanent reconfiguration of the system and the network.

In December 2005 the community agreed to use the so-called ‘Community Game’ — a system by Christoph Theiler — as the first distributing method for MANA.

Shortly before the launch of the “MANA Community Game” a couple of software flaws were identified, so the community agreed to allocate the first network grants in an offline paper-trail version.

Last week the paper-trail version of the “MANA Community Game” was conducted.

Counting the votes.

And here’s a picture of the ballots of the first game day.

The first time 125.000 euros have been distributed.

++
- Joe Noname: 15000,00
- Andreas Findeisen: 14925,28
- Magnus Wurzer: 12526,34
- Paul Böhm: 11461,55
- eSeL Lorenz Seidler: 11004,79
- Eva Grumeth: 10352,91
- Tina Lorenz: 10232,81
- Michael Mastrototaro: 9393,17
- lizvlx: 9187,28
- Christian Jeitler: 8723,74
- Claudia Glechner: 6915,18
- Judith Fegerl: 5276,96
++

There is a lot of stuff that can be improved… but it was a first step.

I did an interview with mutednoise.com about ‘Soviet Unterzoegersdorf/Sector 1′… Austrian history, games, copyright etc.

Link

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / The Adventure Game / Sector 1 is finally available for Mac OSX (G4+ recommended). Maximum respect to Philipp!

Link

Who knows what this is?
Barbara (who was already sweet enough to send me a picture for a blog entry before) thinks it might be because of our “Gedenkjahr”. My suggestion is not smart enough to be presented online without risking that some nice men with nice white jackets show up to bring me to la la land.

Location: Mariahilferstrasse

The riddle is no riddle anymore. Thank you, TH!
explanation of the art project can be found here: clickety click

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced ‘oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf’) is the last existing appanage republic of the USSR… located a couple of miles outside of Vienna.

The enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding so-called ‘Republic of Austria’ or with the Fortress ‘European Union’. The downfall of her motherland — the Soviet Union — in the early 1990s had a particularly bad effect on the country’s economic situation.

It is a great challenge to secure survival for the small but proud confederation. External reactionary forces put the country in danger. It’s a lack of respect due to a morally corrupted and perhaps even non-existing unity of the peoples. The goal of a glorious future is almost unreachable.

But there are a handful of people who don’t give up on a vision for a better tomorrow. Let us tell you the stories of the brave citizens in the beautiful little country of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf.

It’s a story that will go into history.

Game for IBM PC.
Windows or Linux/BSD.
Russian with English or German subtitles.
Appealing graphical game interface.
Creative Commons License.

Featuring music by ‘Negativland’, Jazz Dance Combinat ‘Vibemaster’, ‘Motion Picture Expert Group’, ‘cccp.at’, Joerg Piringer and others.

Link

It has been blogged and reblogged on boingboing and other sites, but I think it’s good to post it here, too.

Last week the netznetz.net Sprint took place…

netznetz.net:

netznetz.net — a newly established Vienna/Austria-based ‘meta-community’ which consists of all kinds of digital initiatives, net artists and technicians who are associated with the term ‘net culture’ — has been assigned by the commissioner for the arts (member of the social democratic party of Vienna) to develop a software-supported system of distributing funding money in the ‘net culture’ sector.
It all started with the frequently announced ‘crisis of net culture’ in Vienna. The well established institutions of the scene were cutting their services and activities, while many activists of the field had been relying on other means of income as a resource for their work for years, anyway. New forms of collaboration and presentation were emerging.
Coordinating resources via a simple mailing list, the quickly growing netznetz-movement launched its first project in 2004 with the ‘netznetz Festival of Net Culture’, bringing together members of the open source community, net artists, people of the cultural sector, technicians and the audience in Vienna’s K

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Quintessenz is a Vienna-based digital rights group.

Info:

Together with different clusters of cyber liberties groups from five continents quintessenz has run worldwide information kampaigns since 1996. Our main topiqs are the current governmental and private sector surveillance overkill, new data retention law proposals by the EU, the Council of Europe or the so called G7 states that undermine fundamental rights: freedom of information, the right to personal privacy and data integrity, the right to communicate freely.

At the moment they feature a new campaign:

Datamining the NSA: An inquiry into the strategies, methods and actors of the “Biometrics Consortium” an NSA led incubator project in the field of biometrics.

Link