monochrom presents:

++TAUGSHOW #12++
Friday, August 10, 2007 / 9:30 PM @ FOO, Chaos Communication Camp, Finowurt

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.

[taugen; Viennese slang: to dig/love/adore something]

Host: Johannes Grenzfurthner
Content Manager: Michael Zeltner (replacing Roland Gratzer)

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Thanks to the wonderful folks of the CCC and the Metalab for helping us...

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/// RICH GIBSON ON MAPS AND REALITIES

Maps tell stories, and the stories they tell both reflect and create reality. We live in a phenomenal Universe. What we see, smell, hear, taste and touch is mediated by our senses. What we see are the records of photons hitting our eyes, and what we smell is the effect of molecules of that material binding with receptors in our nasal passages (think on that as you visit the porta potty). Because we live in a phenomenal universe in which our experience of reality is mediated by our senses the maps that we create to represent reality also create reality. Rich Gibson is interested in the geospatial component of what people do. Everything we do, think or experience we do, think or experience somewhere. But who cares where you were when you added 'milk' to your grocery list? Consider that our primary source on the lives of many people, including in recent historical time, is their middens and outhouses. That is, their garbage dumps and shit. The locative part of our history is at least as important as our shit! And if handled well we can learn from where we have been.

Rich Gibson appears to be a mechanism for turning sugar and alcohol into energy and ideas. He lives in Sebastopol California where he writes code and words, and tries to understand and perhaps change the ways he and the world interact. He is the co-author of "Mapping Hacks" and "Google Maps Hacks". He works with Meadan.org. We care about what is close to us, and Meadan is working to bring the world close to all of us.

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/// B9PUNK ON PIRATES AND RADIOS

Pirate Radio is not only possible in the US, but easy, affordable, low-risk, and a useful important medium. KBFR (K-Boulder Free Radio) was a enormously successful and long-lived (5 years on the air) station in Colorado, which was made more successful and long-lived with the involvement of hackers. In the end, we had 40 Djs, a rented space, benefit concerts and a cd of local music we recorded at our studio, thousands of listeners, and an unforgettable impact on the community. Together we confronted, and have lots of funny stories to tell about, the many interesting questions involved in running a free station, like pleasing the community, advertisers, free speech at large, "real" radio competition, and of course those evil bastards the FCC.

B9punk is basically a "hacker enabler," meaning that she has had a hand in setting up projects like making a new 2600 meeting, starting a pseudo-hackerspace in New York (the Hacker Halfway House), designing and coordinating the HOPE conference, and most recently Hackers on a Plane. Her most interesting and favorite adventure in this line of work so far, was being involved with a pirate radio station in the US. She currently lives in New York City, but has been spending a lot of time in Europe lately in an effort to pick up some class and avoid being a stereotype.

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/// PHILLIP STEARNS: "I <3 COMPUTER MUSIC TOO!"

Phillip Stearns is a Los Angeles based sound and visual artist, composer and recent graduate of the California Institute of the Arts music composition department. His most recent work is centered around the notion of the circuit as a site for expression through subversion. His projects are personal inquiries into electronic technologies and their role in shaping our notions of community, space, isolation and interconnectedness. The tools of his practice include hacked and custom designed electronic hardware, misused audio hardware, compromised and abused commercial software, and recently antiquated technologies.

"I <3 Computer Music Too!" goes right to the core of electronic media: The Hardware. Rather than engage with the tradition of software programming to generate sound and image, custom designed analog/digital circuitry is used to hack, augment and transform the electronic signals flying around the motherboard of a PC computer into an abstract audio/visual mind-warp. The performance is improvised and deals with negotiations between the performer and equipment in the creation of a real-time media based performance work. Instead of creating a system which converts from one media to another, sound to audio or visa versa, the hardware in "I <3 Computer Music Too!" treats all signals equally. All electronic signals are analog and are without meaning until they are "formatted" to suit a particular display or output device. Within the piece, this formatting is done as directly is possible with the goal of minimal translation.

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/// monochrom regulars:

JAKE APPELBAUM

Jake Appelbaum will talk about Flickr, Yahoo!, unintended consequences of censorship, and publishing on the net as an artist.

Jacob Appelbaum is the monochrom Ambassador. He's currently living in San Francisco.

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/// Showband:

MONOCHROM ALLSTAR BAND featuring Michael Zeltner

An eternity of whetstones per kilo-newton!

Enjoy!