Out of their announcement:

The city spreads out before you. Rushing from point to point, lit by the slow strobe of fluorescent buses in dark streets. Stumbling into situations for a stranger’s signature. Fleeing unknown pursuers, breathing hard, admiring the landscape and the multitude of worlds hidden in it.

For one night, drop your relations, your work and leisure activities, and all your usual motives for movement and action, and let yourself be drawn by the attractions of the chase and the encounters you find there.

Try to make it through a series of checkpoints as quickly and as stealthily as possible, while avoiding being caught by chasers. Should you be captured, you become a chaser yourself and have to pursue your former friends and allies. No skates, no bikes, no cars — just your feet and public transport.

Starting point for the Journey will be a shallow pit in Prater, near the tram 1 stop Prater Hauptallee and U2 station Stadion (GPS: 48.20673 / 16.40878; see map).

Join in a free street game of epic proportion; a pursuit across the city in multiple parts – and be sure to wear comfortable shoes & bring water =)

This is to coincide the exhibit “sinnlich, weiblich, flämisch – Frauenbilder rund um Rubens” under the Intermezzo project held at Hall VIII. A special tour concerning the exhibit is also slated, for free.

At 6:30 pm a podium discussion will tackle the theme “Das Bild von einer Frau–was ist das Prinzip Weiblichkeit?” with the prominent guest, the Secretary on Women Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek.

Programm-Highlights im Überblick:

ab 10 Uhr halber Eintrittspreis für alle Besucherinnen des Kunsthistorischen Museums

13 Uhr Führung durch die Ausstellung „… sinnlich, weiblich, flämisch“ (Saal VIII)

15 Uhr Sonderführung durch die Ausstellung „… sinnlich, weiblich, flämisch“ (Saal VIII) mit Kuratorin Gerlinde Gruber

16 Uhr Performative Installation mit Fanni Futterknecht und Valerie Oberleithner (Saal VIII) mit Unterstützung von Impulstanz

17 Uhr Führung durch die Ausstellung „… sinnlich, weiblich, flämisch“ (Saal VIII)

ab 18 Uhr freier Eintritt für alle Besucherinnen und Besucher

18.30 Uhr Talk-Runde „Das Bild von einer Frau – was ist das Prinzip Weiblichkeit?“ (Saal VIII)

Teilnehmer: Generaldirektorin Sabine Haag, Frauenministerin Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek, Tänzer Michael Birkmeyer
Moderation: Erna Cuesta

Musikprogramm:
Natalia Ushakova, Opernsängerin
Inge Kuhn, Flötistin

Wir wollen eine Bring-Your-Own-Beer Trinkaktion im Hof des Museumsquartiers
veranstalten. Dazu müssen wir Leute und die Presse mobilisieren.

­ ORT/ZEIT: Samstag, 20. Juni 2009, 18.00-18.05 Uhr. Innenhof des
Museumsquartiers (Museumsplatz 1/5, 1070 Wien).

­ VORGEHENSWEISE: Ab 18 Uhr wird 5 Minuten lang während des Trinkens
regelmäßig laut zugeprostet!

­ ZIELGRUPPE: Alle, die ein Interesse daran haben, ihre mitgebrachten
Getränke weiterhin im MQ trinken zu dürfen.

­ GRUND: Das MQ ist ein öffentlicher Platz und wird mit unseren
Steuergeldern finanziert, im Jahr 2005 mit ca. 11 Mio. Euro. Wir sehen
nicht ein, wieso wir dazu gezwungen werden sollten, das Bier vor Ort zu
kaufen!

Es haben sich schon mindestens 2 facebook-gruppen gegründet und es gibt ein
geplantes protestereignis:

http://bringyourbeer.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=89218829570

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=96081236267

18:00: DIE WIEDERKEHR DES MARS – THE RETURN OF MARS
(Sebastian Voltmer, D 2008, 58 Min)
The director and amateur astronomer Sebastian Voltmer graduated from the art school Kassel with distinction with this movie.

19:00: JURI GAGARIN UND DER BEGINN DER BEMANNTEN RAUMFAHRT – JURI GAGARIN AND THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT
Space Show, duration: approximately 60 min (hosted by Johannes Grenzfurthner/monochrom)

22:20: IM SCHATTEN DES MONDES – IN THE MOON’S SHADOW
(David Sington, GB/USA 2007, 99 Min)
Astronauts from the Apollo programme talk about their experiences – 40 years after flying to the moon. The documentary has won several awards and will be shown fort he first time in Austria!

Link

It  is a good day to go for a walk today. That is if you have nothing to do and you don’t know what to do. It is funny to look at the building snow hills in front of your neighbours’ roofs while sipping your tea but perhaps going for a stroll and listening to the Vienna guides is way much better to spend your weekend.

Welttag 2009 offers free guides and lectures about Hofburg and Albertina. The history of the Habsburgs dominate, of course, the event. One of the topics includes a discussion on the plight of the female members of the dynasty. It is an interesting way to find out how the archduchesses and princesses reacted to their fates through historical facts. Some of them rebelled openly. While others went to seek their Christian gods.

And for the first time there will be guides in English, French and Spanish though you need to register first in order to avail this guide in your preferred language.

The program starts at 10. This is another way of learning and re-discovering Vienna don’t you think? You still have two hours to prepare.

Organized by Monochrom, SHIFZ and the Bureau for Philosophy, the year 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the festival, which not only centers on the obvious thematics around robots and drinking culture, but also goes along with a series of panel talks, events and shows.

One of the most interesting and current topics the talks were dealing with certainly was the future of technology and DIY culture. Under the title Back to the Future – of Utopias in Cybernetics and Robotics, international artists, theorists, technologists and hackers discussed the importance of gaining more and more knowledge about (reverse-)engineering consumer electronic products and the change our world is currently undergoing.

The opening party of Roboexotica 2008 started off in front of the MQ, where the 25 foot tall interactive public sound installation RoboVox by media artist Martin Bricelj, speaking out text messages it receives via SMS, was set up.

As for the festival weekend, the exposition involved several recurrent ‘classics’ such as the Robomoji by Robert Martin or the enhanced Chassis by Jon Foote and Al Honig; as well as lots of new, shiny and superb inventions like Liquidator by recurring guest Mikhael a Crest Sator or Sloth by Kal Spelletich, only to name a few.

In the context of Roboexotica, Monochrom’s Taugshow #17 was dedicated to the subject, and held at Vienna’s collaborative technology/new media lab & hackerspace Metalab, featuring Mitch Altman, founder of 3ware and inventor of TV-B-Gone and the Brain Machine; maker/hacker/teacher/artist/podcaster/puppeteer/NYCResistor & Thingiverse co-founder Bre Pettis; SF-based Geek Entertainment TV producer, documentary filmmaker and technologist Eddie Codel, Monochrom’s artist in residence of November; and Krach der Robot, who provided the audience with noisy sounds and self-made attachable mini-antennas.

The official closing event of the Roboexotica 2008 festival took place at the MQ on Sun, Dec. 07th, and Chris Janka ushered the evening with a very special high voltage music show, performed on a Tesla coil connected to his electric guitar, followed by the awards ceremony.

The winners of Roboexotica 2008’s Annual Cocktail Robot Awards, ACRA v10.0, were announced as follows:

5 ‘CLASSIC’ CATEGORIES:
Serving: Fairy Juicer (Mitch Heinrich, David Fine) and Sloth (Kal Spelletich)
Mixing: Construction Wanker and K&K Kavalier Klavier (both exhibits by students of the FH Joannum)
Conversation: Chassis (Jon Foote, Al Honig)
Fire & smoke: Temporarily suspended!
Other achievements: Rim Shot Bot (CTP) and RepRap Shotbot (Marius Kintel, Philipp Tiefenbacher, Bre Pettis)

3 SPECIAL CATEGORIES:
Human subjugation: Gina (students of the FH Joanneum)
Most legally challenging: RoboVox (Martin Bricelj)
Reproducability: Lego Shot Bot (Anthony Fudd)

LIMES:
Most spectacularily breaking robot: Sloth (Kal Spelletich)
Stickiest, ickiest: Globo (Johannes Grenzfurthner)
Most displaced in cocktail environment: Drill-pro-mill (students of the FH Joanneum)
Most politically and genderifically incorrect: Construction Wanker (students of the FH Joanneum)

Some of the exhibits (unfortunately lacking US contestants who already had to leave home) will still be on display until Fri, Dec. 12th (closing at noon) at the MQ, so if you haven’t been there yet, go have a look!

Also, on the occasion of the event’s 10th anniversary, the retrospective Roboexotica in the form of a paperback was published by Edition Mono and can be purchased via Amazon.

* * *

More info and useful links:
More photos on Flickr
Pre-Roboexotica 2008 post by Scott Beale on Laughing Squid
Post-Roboexotica 2008 post by Eddie Codel on Laughing Squid
Announcement of the Annual Cocktail Robot Award winners on SuicideBots

* * *

All photos featured above have been taken by Eddie Codel, Bre Pettis, CTP, and SHIFZ, and are released under Creative Commos License AT-NC-SA.

Ruth Klüger's first book about growing up in an antisemitic society

Who doesn’t want freebies? Most of all, free books?

In this time of high prices and recession one after another it is nice to know that the city of Vienna is going to distribute 100,000 free books for the masses. The program “Eine Stadt, Ein Buch” is on its seventh year, to coincide with the Lesefestwoche and the International Book Fair. I think this is Austria’s way to save one’s sanity during the darker months of November and December, read a book.

Starting today at noon Ruth Kluger’s “Weiter Leben” a story of her girlhood in the Nazi Austria, her deportation, the antisemitism that was the rage then, and the death of the family members falling as victims of the Holocaust. It is also the story of her survival, hence the phrase, “to live continually.”

November also marks the 70th anniversary of the horrible Reichskristallnacht. The actors of this era are slowly dying and a stunning 30 per cent of Austrians today, mostly young people, voted for the rightwing parties, it is time to learn something from the past and think of the future.

October 18, 2008:
Meeting: 12 noon @ Brut Theater Karlsplatz for getting zombie make-up.
And 3 PM the zombies will hit the streets and walk/crawl over to Stefansplatz.

More info

I digress.

Automat by Edward Hopper, 1927

Do you know this painting? I bet you do. More than a decade ago I saw it on a page of a book. Then as a part of a film. It was from Cameron Crowe, “Singles,” which many people misconceived as his ode to Seattle and the music revolution that was grunge.

I searched and searched until I forgot that I was searching for the name of the painter and the title of the work.

Finally, and hopefully, this painting is included in the upcoming exhibition of works by Edward Hopper at the Kunsthalle Wien, Halle 1 in the 7th District starting on Oct. 3.