The dismantling of the corporatized and militarized model of schooling should be a top priority under the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Obama has appointed as his secretary of education someone who embodies this utterly punitive, anti-intellectual, corporatized and test-driven model of schooling.

Eric Weinstein has spoken about an "economic Manhattan project". This means getting a group of good scientists together, some who know a lot about economics and finance, and others, who have proved themselves in other areas of science but bring fresh minds and perspectives to the challenge, to focus on developing a scientific conceptualization of economic theory and modeling that is reliable enough to be called a science.

Techno dank Porno
Warum ist das Internet so schnell? Wieso benutzen so viele Menschen digitale Tauschbörsen? Und weshalb sind Videostream-Plattformen so fortgeschritten und beliebt? Jeder weiß die Antwort, bloß sagen trauen es sich nur die wenigsten: Wegen der Pornos natürlich!

In 1952, Austrian big-game hunter and Africa ‘researcher’ Ernst Zwilling (a colonial revisionist and member of the Nazi party) brought a male chimpanzee from Cameroon to Schönbrunn, the Viennese zoo. In his African home, ‘Honzo’ had reportedly been a friendly and amiable animal, but in the zoo he began to show a rather violent temper. Due to his choleric outbreaks, poor Honzo was kept in solitary confinement. The chimpanzee was given beer and cigarettes. He got addicted and died an alcoholic and chain-smoker. After his death, the chimp was taxidermied and put into the Viennese Museum of Natural History. Now people from all over the world stare at him.

We want to create a page that is dedicated to Honzo: the victim, the choleric, the drug abuser.

Editors: Günther Friesinger, Magnus Wurzer, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Franz Ablinger, Chris Veigl

ROBOEXOTICA

The Festival for Cocktail Robotics

Although today robots have lots of different applications, they are still rarely involved in interactions with human end-users. The steady progress in the development of service and helper robots which has been made in the last couple of years seems very promising, though. While for quite some time now robots have been assembling cars in the blink of an eye, towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century, what we are witnessing is still just the beginning of efforts to be made on introducing robotics to the various cultural environments.
ROBOEXOTICA takes a look at the broadly interpreted field of (modern) cocktail culture along with a variety of arts contributing to it. Until the year 1999 there were no attempts to create a competition of developing technologies or to introduce cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological achievements in everyday life and as a means of documenting the creation of new interfaces for man-machine-interaction, a priori dedicated to hedonism. For a whole decade now that void is filled by the ROBOEXOTICA, the Viennese cocktail robotics festival around which a pool of creative people has gathered who, year after year, are actually providing new ideas on the topic.

The ROBOEXOTICA aims at establishing contact between developers in the field of cocktail robotics worldwide and functions as an international platform for everyone interested in the topic.

edition mono / monochrom

Color print. Euro 10.

(European) ISBN: 978-3-9502372-3-8

It is our pleasure and privilege to present you with the first Arse Elektronika Anthology: "pr0nnovation?"

From the depiction of a vulva in a cave painting to the newest internet porno, technology and sexuality have always been closely linked. No one can predict what the future will bring, but history indicates that sex will continue to play an essential role in technological development. Is it going too far to assume that research in nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be influenced by our sexual needs? The question is not whether these technologies alter humanity, but how they do so.

Edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry.
Published by RE/Search Publications (San Francisco) in cooperation with monochrom.

Featuring: Michael Achenbach, Timothy Archibald, Peter Asaro, Thomas Ballhausen, Binx, Violet Blue, Jonathan Coopersmith, Mark Dery, Thomas Edlinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Ema Konstantinova, Tina Lorenz, Stefan Lutschinger, Kyle Machulis, Aaron Muszalski, Annalee Newitz, Carol Queen, Thomas Roche, Autumn Tyr-Salvia, Frank Apunkt Schneider, Katie Vann, Rose White, Amanda Williams, Katherina Zakravsky.

Video from one of the solid rocket boosters facing the intertank (middle part of external tank). Not too much going on, except the weird noises of the tank draining, until booster seperation. At the end, the camera switches to a view looking straight up so you can see the parachute deployment. The launch clock is in the upper left corner.

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

As man moves to colonize the cosmos, the realities of sexual relationships and reproduction need to be addressed. Probe the physiological, psychological and cultural challenges of sex in space. From the sex act through birth, look at how the extreme environments of space exploration might effect copulation, conception and developing human tissues, as well as how issues around sex might impact the emotional lives of astronauts. Get to the bottom of the rumors to find out if space sex has already happened, and look at how the burgeoning space tourism business may soon lead to a boom in space sex.

Monochrom is a Vienna-based artist collective. I consider them the most cutting edge contemporary artists. They are 1 part pop culture, 1 part technology, 1 part prankster and 1 part pure awesome.

Art teachers often talk about how artists make people think differently or see things from another perspective. Most art fails at that, but Monochrom hits the mark everytime that you see something they do, you’ll be challenged.

Thingiverse is a place for you to share your digital designs with the world. We believe that just as computing shifted away from the mainframe into the personal computer that you use today, digital fabrication will share the same path. Infact, it is already happening: laser cutters, cnc machines, 3D printers, and even automated paper cutters are all getting cheaper by the day. These machines are useful for a huge variety of things, but you need to supply them with a digital design in order to get anything useful out of them. We're hoping that together we can create a community of people who create and share designs freely, so that all can benefit from them.

monochrom presents:
++TAUGSHOW #17++
Roboexotica Special

Friday, Dec 5, 2008 / 8:00 PM @ Metalab, Vienna (presented by Johannes Grenzfurthner und Roland Gratzer)

But who are our guests?

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/// MITCH ALTMAN

Mitch Altman is a San Francisco-based hacker and inventor, best known for co-founding 3ware (with J. Peter Herz and Jim MacDonald), his pioneering work in Virtual Reality at VPL Research and inventing TV-B-Gone. He is also President and CTO of Cornfield Electronics.

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/// EDDIE CODEL

Eddie Codel is a videographer, documentary filmmaker, technologist, political activist, open source evangelist, robot enthusiast and occasional conference organizer who strongly believes in the notion of empowering others through open information exchange. Codel currently resides in San Francisco where he makes online videos for political campaigns, blogs, Internet startups and produces Geek Entertainment TV, a weekly videoblog on passionate geeks.

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/// BRE PETTIS

Bre Pettis makes things. Bre Pettis is a founder of NYCResistor, a hacker collective in Brooklyn and in his recent past he's created new media for Etsy.com and been host of Make: Magazine's Weekend Projects podcast He's also been a schoolteacher, artist, and a puppeteer. Bre is passionate about invention, innovation, and all things DIY.

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/// KRACH DER ROBOT

Da Music Extraordinaire.

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/// Regulars:

EVELYN FÜRLINGER, MA.

Evelyn presents "Wicked Wordz", our regular column about lingustics.