(That
is what hydrogen atoms are capable of when you give them 15
billion years to evolve.)
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having
its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work,
pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. monochrom has existed in
this (and almost every other) form since 1993.
[more]
[deutsch]
Our news feed, shoggoths. Our mission is culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets)
of ideology and entertainment. [atom/rss/archive]
monochrom press package 2011
Roland finally created the monochrom press collection for 2011. Enjoy.
Another day at the United Nations Offices in Vienna. The Austrian Foreign Affairs Ministry invited members of the European Protocol Service, the UN Strategic Command Center for Central Europe, the United States Air Forces and a regional politician from Lower Austria to talk about the future of Soviet Unter-WHAT?!
Sierra Zulu's "Earthmoving": Shooting done! Proudness!
We finished the filming of Earthmoving (Sierra Zulu's prequel) at UNOV and VIE.
Two days of intense, creative work with a truly marvellous team! Here's to them!
Some images for your enjoyment -- taken by our wonderful set photographer Magdalena Fischer.
More pictures can be found on Sierra Zulu's Flickr page.
monochrom's KIKI AND BUBU: RATED R US - in Orlando!
Our favorite sock puppets Kiki and Bubu have some feelings, so they sign
up for an online dating site. When the People of China want to become
their friend, they are excited. However, sending the People of China a
video of themselves proves to be difficult: Their content gets flagged
as inappropriate and taken down from YouTube. On the long quest for
knowledge which follows, Kiki and Bubu learn all about Internet
censorship. And love.
Join us for the Florida premiere of Kiki and Bubu's longest (50 minutes!) and most epic movie adventure!
monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner will present the film and share some behind-the-scenes knowledge. Yada, yada!
January 12, 2012 at 7:00 pm @ Urban ReThink, Orlando Facebook-Event
monochrom's ISS / Episode 7 / "Ender's Scam" -- HD video online
monochrom's ISS is a ten-part improv-reality-sitcom about living and working on the International Space Station. The four actors playing the ISS crew must develop strategies on the fly in response to surprise situations, which are loosely based on actual ISS data uncovered by monochrom.
In space no one can hear you complain about your job.
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience on June 25, 2011.
Actors: Jeff Ricketts (Star Trek: Enterprise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly), Maciej Salamon (Musicals: Barbarella, Tanz der Vampire, Sweeney Todd), Claire Tudela (Carmen, Musical: The Producers), Geoff Pinfield (Aoterroroa, Lovepuke)
Directing (aka live torture of actors): Johannes Grenzfurthner and Roland Gratzer
monochrom's KIKI AND BUBU: RATED R US - Austria Premiere in Vienna
Our favorite sock puppets Kiki and Bubu have some feelings, so they sign
up for an online dating site. When the People of China want to become
their friend, they are excited. However, sending the People of China a
video of themselves proves to be difficult: Their content gets flagged
as inappropriate and taken down from YouTube. On the long quest for
knowledge which follows, Kiki and Bubu learn all about Internet
censorship. And love.
Join us for the Austrian premiere of Kiki and Bubu's longest (50 minutes!) and most epic movie adventure!
monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner and voice talent David Dempsey will present the film and share some behind-the-scenes knowledge. Yada, yada!
monochrom's DER EXOT: a mobile anti-crowd source robot
Der Exot is the resurrection of a project monochrom started as early as 1997: a mobile robot with a mounted camera that can be controlled via web interface. But that's tricky. If too many people try to control the robot at the same time it is counter-productive. Der Exot would behave schizophrenically. It would move without plan, and wander aimlessly. Der Exot is the anti-crowd source robot. The users have to discuss and cooperate via a chat interface to communicate where they want to go, what corners they want to explore, what to crush.
Der Exot is currently visiting London and is stationed at the Science Museum.
Future plans? Building mazes! And the Internets will have to rescue our poor robot!
Roboexotica is the annual festival where scientists, researchers,
computer experts and artists from all over the world build cocktail
robots and discuss technological innovation, futurology and science
fiction.Until recently, no attempts had been made to publicly 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. Cheers!
Roboexotica is a coproduction of monochrom, Shifz and the Bureau for Philosophy.
"The title for the 12th edition of Pixxelpoint 2011 is appropriately
enigmatic: LETS GET READY..., merely defines a space of engagement
driven forward by a generative force: 'to begin again from the
beginning' for those who seek what formulates new media art in its
fluent transition between the various manifestations, which can take on
new meanings in multiple contextual re-configurations no matter what of
their materiality or mediality. Especially when considering the
articulations from the fundamental/historical register to what this
could foster at the intersection of new media art's "mission, its
destiny."
The fourth 'Wolfgang Lorenz Memorial prize for Internet-Free Minutes' has been awarded to A1 Telekom Austria CEO Hannes Ametsreiter by the Monochrom artists' collective. He won the booby prize for his rejection in February of the idea of net neutrality, saying the operator owns the technology and infrastructure and therefore should have the right to decide how it is used. The prize is named after the director of Austrian broadcaster ORF, who made a scatalogical remark in 2008 about young people disappearing into the internet. Lorenz said TV would remain the top medium with or without young viewers.
Review of monochrom's "Urban Hacking" book on 'Other Cinema'
Urban Hacking, as a book, tracks numerous strategies, including
Augmented Reality interventions, billboard alteration, graffiti, tags,
and greening, as a kind of "programmable literature", made possible
through open sourcing of code and the artistic re-use of place. From
this admixture, we have the foundations of an urbanism made by and for
"the people" which, at the same time as interrogating the fabric of
spaces overtaken, outsourced, managed and mined, hales radical, digital
cultures, and opens surfaces for dialogue with urban environments from
within a post-colonial critique. The book is an attempt, I would argue,
to identify strategies for the problem spaces which might be creatively
detourned, delimited, or re-designed. It articulates the problem of
politicized urban art as requiring a much-needed re-invention of itself,
on toothier terms.
But, the book is, also, self-consciously, historical. There is a
chapter on Lenin's vision for the center of Lviv, for instance, which
shows how he re-engineered the monuments and central squares of that
city.
Dan Massey of Venus Plus X sent us a very interesting article he wrote.
I thought you might enjoy my recent socialist-capitalist fusion blog "comparing and contrasting" Arse Elektronika and Singularity Summit. Can us wild futurists ever work together? Will the rich invest in erototech?
monochrom's ISS: Episode 11 / "Bounded in a nutshell, king of infinite space"
Secret recording at Ballhaus Ost, Berlin.
Will only be available as part of the upcoming ISS 2011 DVD box!
Preorder now!
Standard 3-disk set (episode 1-11, making of) for EUR 24.99
Limited edition box (episode 1-11, making of, ISS 2011 patch, signatures of all crew members and team) for EUR 49.99
monochrom in Paris @ La Gaite Lyrique: The image of computers in popular music
"I can count every star in the heavens above but I have no heart I can't fall in love..."
A talk (with audio examples) by monochrom, presented by Johannes Grenzfurthner.
Bourgeois culture was paralyzed and finally overrun by modern technologies which broke through the traditional class barriers. It went into a panic and produced these very stupid technophobic manifestos and images e.g. of "the computer". Pop music discovered and explored the computer not only as a musical instrument but also as something to sing and reflect about in a less aversive way. In doing so it influenced the conception people had of computers. The public image of computers was shaped by groups such as Kraftwerk as well as through obscure Schlager songs such as France Gall's "Computer No. 3". Not only was that image influenced by high culture computer panic but also by naïve technomania, and so it delivered the very dialectics of the computer as a means of cultural technology in capitalist society.
October 26, 2011, 7pm @ La Gaîté Lyrique, 3 bis rue papin, 75003 Paris, France.
monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner @ TEDxVienna 2011
Johannes Grenzfurthner is an artist, writer, curator, and director. He is the founder of monochrom, an internationally acting art and theory group. He holds a professorship for art theory and art practice at the University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria. He is head of the "Arse Elektronika" festival in San Francisco, host of "Roboexotica" (Festival for Cocktail-Robotics, Vienna and San Francisco), and co-curates the Paraflows Symposium in Vienna
At TEDxVienna 2011 he will speak about Sierra Zulu.
The presentations were extremely wide-ranging, and showed the
creativity possible as a new age of sexual freedom emerges. Each one
incrementally stretched the group or "hive" mind in real time.
Among the dozen+ offerings, we heard from Kitty Stryker in her frank talk, "Sex Work, Disability, and Stigma" and Maymay presented "A Class Analysis of Social Status in the BDSM Scene” (also available on YouTube). David Fine, who vaguely describes himself as "a Sex Robot from the 25th century" spending his
time in our era guiding technology in useful, or at least interesting,
directions, brought us his reimagining of the Mindflex kids' toy (available on Amazon) which he modified to activate a vibrator, simple and perhaps the first attempt we’ve seen to apply an EEG headset to a sex toy; The future possibilities are endless.
Roboexotica 2011: Festival Date/Location Announced
The Roboexotica 2011 Festival dates are set for December 1st-4th in Vienna. If you're into robots, and are of legal drinking age, this is one event absolutely not to be missed.
Here's how the Roboexotica organization website positions this totally unique annual celebration featuring robots contributing to improving life in a meaningful way...
Cheers! Roboexotica will take place in Vienna December 1-4, 2011. Until recently, no attempts had been made to publicly 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.
Pages translated
into English by
Melinda Richka
David Fine
Aileen Derieg
Sharon Bradley
Bre Pettis
Lilly Lotus
Sean Bonner
David Bovill
Patricia Futterer
Jake Appelbaum
Dave Dempsey
Evelyn Fürlinger
Christopher Barber
Douglas Irving Repetto
Francesca Birks
Cory Doctorow
Walter Seidl
Jonathan Quinn
Daniel Eberharter
Stephen Zepke
Georg Cracked
Johannes Grenzfurthner
Leo Findeisen
Violet Blue
Upcoming performances & lectures in English language
(rss) (ics)
yuri's night vienna 2012 with tons of great talks and space-related performances. 6pm on april 12, 2012 @ naturhistorisches museum wien.
technosensual. where fashion and technology meet freiraum quartier21 international, museumquartier wien
opening: 14 june 2012, 7pm
duration: june 15 to august 31, daily 10 am ? 7 pm
Electronic feedback is Electronic
feedback is Electronic feedback Postal address: monochrom, Quartier 21/Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz
1, A-1070 Vienna, Austria/Europe
Vox: +43-676-7831453 or +43-650-2049451 // Fax: +43-1-952 33 84
. . . . . . .
. . .
For
visitors: It is left up to each individual to decide how to spend his or her free
time. --- For journalists: Be aware of your position and
act according to a catalogue of ethical values of your own design. Send
it to moral AT monochrom.at
--- For art theorists: Interpret this site according
to form and content using the following concepts: intercontextuality,
processualisation, deconstruction, actualisation, contingency, deregulation,
immanence critique, non-disciplinary deportment, interfacing, reception
coding, flagellate protozoan. Send your contribution to flagrant AT monochrom.at