Arse Elektronika Starts Tonight
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 25 of September , 2008 at 3:39 am
If you’re in the San Francisco area and like robots and sex, the Arse Elektronika conference (nominally about sex, science fiction, and technology) kicks off tonight with a party and awards ceremony. BotJunkie was in the audience last year, and we came back with some extraordinarily interesting perspectives on the future of robot/human interaction, as well as some other stuff that’s extraordinarily NSFW. This year I’m looking forward to a lot of column A with a little bit of column B for good measure. Don’t worry, though… I’ll do my best to keep things interesting, informative, civilized, and tasteful. Here’s a general rundown of what we’ll be looking forward to:
Taking up where the successful conference in autumn 2007 left off, this year’s Arse Elektronika stands under the motto “future” — and the ways in which the present sees itself reflected in it. Maintaining a broadened perspective on technical development and technology while also putting special emphasis on its social implementation, this year’s conference focuses on Science and Social Fiction.
The genre of the “fantastic” is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography: actual and assumed developments are frequently 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 of control). Depictions of the future, irregardless 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/sexual as well.
The conference schedule can be found here.
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