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Arse Elektronika Hits San Francisco in October

By: Bianca Fox

Posted: 09/13/2007

VIENNA, Austria - Arse Elektronika, a conference about pornography and technological innovation, will  hit Kink.com's Porn Palace in San Francisco from Oct. 5-7.

 

Arse Elektronika is organized by monochrom, an art-tech-philosophy group based in Vienna. Conference curator and monochrom founder Johannes Grenzfurthner described the event as a serious academic conference with a fun attitude.

 

He said Arse Elektronika will focus on the continuing role of sex in technological development.

 

"The porno effect accompanies every new technological development," he said. "Print, photography, instant photography, video, telephone sex, broadband Internet, you name it. The question is not whether these technologies alter humanity, but how they do so."

The event's speakers will include philosophers, historians, culture researchers, tech wizards, feminists and bloggers sharing their viewpoints. Grenzfurthner said the conference will take a performance-based approach to the discussions.

 

"We will be featuring talks from uber-minds like [keynote speaker] Mark Dery, online superstar Violet Blue and brilliant theoretical minds like Thomas Ballhausen, Jonathan Coopersmith, Tina Lorenz and Amanda Williams," he said. "They walk softly but carry a large theoretical stick."

 

The schedule also includes talk and performance abstracts.

 

Talk abstracts include "A Brief History of Cultural Genitals" led by Katherina Zakravsky, "A Futurist's History of Sexual Technology" led by Annalee Newitz, "Ceiling Cat Hates Your Porn: Sexual Privacy Online" led by Violet Blue, "Porn and Personal Development" led by David Dempsey and "Your Great-Grandmother's Vibrator: How the Technologies of Our Times Shape Sex and Pleasure" led by Carol Queen.