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. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993.
Johannes Grenzfurthner will give a talk at SIGINT 2010: “Reach Out and Touch Face: A rant about failing”. Science and Technology Studies (especially Langdon Winner and Bruno Latour) have convincingly demonstrated that the widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only … Read more
Frank Apunkt Schneider will give a talk at SIGINT 2010: “The Medium is the Messiah. On the implicit ideology of media activism” In the media age nearly all forms of political interventionism show an inevitable tendency to become media activism. This is to say that the activists’ focus has shifted from what could be considered … Read more
The Wizard of Oz as economic fable? Here is a piece on the economic interpretation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 vision, brought to the masses through the 1939 Judy Garland film, and brought to the world’s understanding in 1964 by high school teacher Henry Littlefield: “The Tin Woodman represents the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is … Read more
monochrom presents the third part of a lecture series by Johannes Grenzfurthner. As it emerged in the 90s, the concept “communication guerilla” was, not least of all, a response to the exhaustion of traditional leftist activism after the fall of the Berlin wall. The search for new forms of praxis led (at least in some … Read more
One of our monochrom classics from 2007, featuring Bre Pettis. Link
Tissue engineering has long held promise for building new organs to replace damaged livers, blood vessels and other body parts. However, one major obstacle is getting cells grown in a lab dish to form 3-D shapes instead of flat layers. Researchers at the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) have come up with … Read more
Well… yes. 1982. It’s known that there were British nuclear weapons in the Falklands conflict zone, according to the Times. And two years after the war, the Labour Party demanded an inquiry into a report that Britain had sent a Polaris submarine to Ascension Island, the staging ground for Britain’s naval task force, to be … Read more
A startling silhouette of Saturn is created in this Cassini spacecraft portrait. Although the sun is eclipsed by Saturn in this dramatic image, some sunlight scatters through the uppermost part of the atmosphere to reach Cassini’s cameras. Link
Excerpted from The Politics of Genocide (Monthly Review Press, 2009). Elsewhere we have written that the breakup of Yugoslavia “may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years.” But the far bloodier and more destructive invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars that have ravaged several countries in the Great Lakes … Read more
monochrom presents the second part of a lecture series by Johannes Grenzfurthner. The terms guerrilla communication (and communication guerrilla) refer to unconventional forms of communication and/or intervention in more conventional processes of communication. Communication guerilla is a specific style of political action drawing from a watchful view of the paradoxes and absurdities of power, turning … Read more