SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Do android sleep with electric sheep? That’s one of the questions organizers hope to ask and have answered during the Arse Elektronica Sex, Tech and Science Fiction Conference scheduled to take place at CellSpace in San Francisco, CA, September 25th through 28th.The conference is presented by Monochrom, an art-technology-philosophy group based in Vienna, Austria, that defines itself as “an un-peculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, sub-cultural science, context hacking and political activism.”
Subtitled “Critical perspectives on sexuality and pornography in science and social fiction,” Arse Elektronica 2008 plans to take up where the successful 2007 Arse Elektronika conference left off. This year’s event’s theme is “future” and the ways in which the present sees itself reflected in what may yet come to be. This year’s conference will attempt to maintain a broadened perspective on technical development and technology while also putting special emphasis on social implementation of innovations in those realms.
The genre of the “fantastic” is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography, organizers feel: Actual and assumed developments frequently are depicted positively and approvingly, but just as often with dystopian admonishment. Here the classic, and continuingly valid, themes of modernism represent a clear link between the two aspects: questions of science, research and technologization are of interest, as is the complex surrounding urbanism, artificiality and control (or the loss thereof). Depictions of the future, regardless of the form they take, always address the present as well. Imaginations of the fantastic and the nightmarish give rise to a thematic overlapping of the exotic, the alienating and, of course, the pornographic and sexual, as well.
In order to contextualize the abundance of queries that are involved, the 2008 Arse Elektronika will be structured around three day-long discussion panels: “Talk Abstracts,” each devoted to a specific theme; “Narration,” and “Technology and Politics.” The impossibility of fitting many of these issues and relationships into such neat categorizations is not only accepted, but also encouraged.
Preceding the conference, on the evening of September 25th, is the Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2008 Awards Ceremony, which will honor sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics.
A veritable who’s-who of bloggers, v-loggers, cyber personalities, writers, authors, educators and entertainers from the world of eroticism, sexuality and technology will speak, including Violet Blue, Jason Brown, M. Christian, Daniel Fabry, Richard Kadrey, Verena Kuni, Isaac Leung, Susan Mernit, Kit O’Connell, Jens Ohlig, Carol Queen, Bonni Rambatan, Thomas Roche, Bonnie Ruberg, Rudy Rucker and Viviane.
CellSpace is located at 2050 Bryant Street in San Francisco. Conference passes range in price from $8 to $40 per person.
More information about the conference is available at http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/.
