Arse Elektronika Linz 2023

Speakers

Anouk Wipprecht
What does fashion lack? “Microcontrollers” according to Dutch based Hi-Tech Fashion Designer and Innovator Anouk Wipprecht. As she is working in the emerging field of “FashionTech”; a rare combination of fashion design combined with engineering, science and interaction/user experience design. Producing an impressive body of tech-enhanced designs bringing together fashion and technology in an unusual way: she creates technological couture; with systems around the body that tend towards artificial intelligence; projected as ‘host’ systems on the human body, her designs move, breath, and react to the environment around them.
Strangely ahead of her time; Anouk combines the latest in science and technology to make fashion an experience that transcends mere appearances. Sensors embedded in the design monitor the space around the wearer, and body-sensors check in on stress levels as comfort or anxiety. Her Intel-Edison based ‘Spider Dress’ is an perfect example of this aesthetic, where sensors and moveable arms on the dress help to create an more defined boundary of personal space while employing a fierce style. “This robotic dress attacks when you come to close” she mentions. Facilitating and augmenting the interactions we have with ourselves and our surroundings in an bespoke manner. Other than handheld devices, Wipprecht researches how we can interface in new ways with the world around us through our wardrobe.
Partnering up with companies such as American multinational technology company INTEL, software producer Autodesk, internet giants Google and Microsoft, car brand AUDI, crystal creator Swarovski, and leading 3D printing innovators amongst others - she researches and develops how our future wardrobe would look as we continue to embed technology into what we wear.
She works/travels between San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Amsterdam.


Bloom (NL)
Bloom is a creative collective founded by Mahalia Henry-Richards and Abel Enklaar who share an interest in examining the dynamic between humans and technological tools. The collective’s philosophy is grounded in promoting playfulness, inclusivity, and innovation.
The collective is dedicated to designing and prototyping toys that prioritize inclusivity, with a focus on non-prescriptive products that facilitate shared moments of joy. Bloom’s research explores the broader social and cultural implications of these innovations and intertwines it with their academic work on technology, interaction, and playfulness.


Ania Malinowska (PL)
Ania Malinowska is a cultural theorist and author with an interest in emotion/intimacy cultures and semiotics of feelings. She is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice (Institute of Culture Studies andCentre for Critical Technology Studies), and a former Senior Fulbright Fellow at The New School in New York. Malinowska’s work is associated with critical posthumanism and cultural semiotics, gathering approaches from media and cultural studies, anthropology, philosophy of technology, and digital humanities. Hercritical writing focuses on technologically shaped love practices and emotional traditions under digitalism. She also writes about robot cultures using her own approach termed " roboneutics ".


Claudia Virginia Dimoiu (AT)
Claudia Virginia Dimoiu is an independent visual artist, based in Vienna, born in communist Romania raised between Romania, Spain and Germany. Her visual work focuses on the representation of visual illusions, dreams and emotions of an alternative world in which the colours, the lighting, shadows and composition of the image map out the unknown immaterial world through mixed visual arts like photography, projections, sculptures and video design.


Jasmin Hagendorfer (AT, she/her)
Jasmin Hagendorfer, founder and creative director of Peaches & Cream, is a Vienna-based artist, writer, curator, filmmaker and TEDX speaker. Her main artistic focus lies in installation, performance, and film. As the Festival Director of the Porn Film Festival Vienna she deals with post-porn politics and questions of feminism and gender identity; topics that she also frequently lectures on.


Thomas Kranabetter (AT, he/him)
Thomas Kranabetter, founder and managing director of Peaches & Cream, studied in London, Vienna, and Hagenberg. He is an expert in communication and marketing for international clients, as well as an artist and media designer. Thomas leads global marketing projects and campaigns for the Kapsch Group. Moreover, he designs and builds sex- and body-positive installations and exhibitions.


Damijan Stranner (AT)
works in education and digital literacy. As an activist Damijan works on the topics of access and participation in the context of digitalisation from a queer, radical, feminst, decolonial perspective.


Dan Steinberg (US)
Dan Steinberg has over 20 years of experience in information privacy. He assists organizations in designing information systems and training programs, mitigating risks to privacy, and increasing the trust of individuals who provide their personal information to these organizations. He has particular interests in reputation and privacy harms, especially as these relate to social media. He holds a law degree and certifications in information privacy. He is also a bartender who crafts tiki cocktails, and is passionate about sherry and rum. He and Quill Kukla share a home in Washington DC and a corgi named Ivy.


Ekaterina Osipova
Ekaterina Osipova is a researcher and doctoral student at TU Wien. Their doctoral thesis, which they pursue at the Human Computer Interaction Group, explores how different forms of intimacies materialize through digital and technological interactions. In this context, Ekaterina studies how sex technologies are used, commercialized and diversified in sex work, marketing, and artistic/DIY communities. Having a background in Science and Technology Studies, Ekaterina strives to critically attend to and emphasize marginalized perspectives within technological developments. Their research interests include gender and sexualities, understandings of health and the body, and new materialist theories and methods.


Johannes Grenzfurthner (AT)
Johannes Grenzfurthner captivates audiences with his blend of intriguing, often surreal narratives. An award-winning artist, filmmaker, author, and performer, he deftly combines fact and fiction to create unique experiences. He is the founder and artistic director of monochrom, an internationally renowned art, theory group, and film production company. The popular blog Boing Boing humorously referred to him as a “leitnerd,” a clever pun emphasizing his influence in nerd, hacker, and art cultures. Among his most recent works are the feature-length movies “Masking Threshold” (2021) and “Razzennest” (2022). Johannes is also currently working on two additional feature films: the horror film “Solvent”, and the documentary “Hacking at Leaves.” Beyond filmmaking, Johannes lectures on transmedia arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and teaches communication theory at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany. He heads Arse Elektronika, a sex and tech festival in San Francisco, and organizes Roboexotica, the Festival for Cocktail-Robotics in Vienna. Johannes has presented at numerous prestigious events and institutions, such as Fantastic Fest, SXSWi, O‘Reilly ETech, FooCamp, Maker Faire, HOPE, Chaos Communication Congress, Google (Tech Talks), ROFLCon, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Influencers, Mozilla Drumbeat Barcelona, Neoteny Camp Singapore, Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, and more. His work and projects have been featured in various high-profile media outlets, including The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Liberation, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, Reuters, Slashdot, Playboy, Boing Boing, New Scientist, The Edge, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, ZDF, Gizmodo, io9, Wired, Süddeutsche Zeitung, TAZ, CNet, the Toronto Star, Mental Floss, Rue Morgue, and more. Johannes openly identifies as a leftist and an atheist.


Kate Devlin (GB)
Dr Kate Devlin is Reader in Artificial Intelligence & Society in the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. With an undergraduate degree in archaeology and an MSc and PhD in computer science, her research investigates how people interact with and react to technologies, both past and future. Kate is the author of the critically acclaimed Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots (Bloomsbury, 2018), which examines the ethical and social implications of technology and intimacy. Kate is currently Advocacy and Engagement director for the UK’s Trusted Autonomous Systems Hub – a collaborative platform to enable the development of socially beneficial robotics and AI systems that are both trustworthy in principle and trusted in practice. She is a board member of the Open Rights Group, a UK-based organisation that works to preserve digital rights and freedoms, and is a campaigner for gender equality to improve opportunities for women in tech.


Katta Spiel (AT)
Katta Spiel holds a career position on ‘Critical Access in Embodied Computing’ at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria and I am working in the field of Human Computer Interaction. I research marginalised perspectives on embodied computing through a lens of Critical Access drawing on queer and crip theories. My work informs design and engineering supporting the development of technologies that account for the diverse realities they operate in. In my interdisciplinary collaborations with neurodivergent, Deaf and/or nonbinary peers, I conduct explorations of novel potentials for designs, methodologies and innovative technological artefacts.


maiz (AT)
maiz is a self-organization by and for migrants in Linz, currently active in 6 areas: Counseling, Education, Culture, Youth, Sex&Work and Research/Knowledge Production. Our goal is to improve the living and working situation of migrants in Austria, to promote their political and cultural participation and to bring about a change in unjust social conditions. @vereinmaiz


Noam Youngrak Son (NL)
Noam Youngrak Son is a communication designer practicing queer publishing. In their work, Son explores revolutionary methods of disseminating deviant narratives. They attempt to convey the voices of marginalized bodies, which often include that of themself, into designed forms that do not conform to the cis-hetero-normative and colonial power structure.


Nina Comtessa (FR)
Sexworker IRL, camgirl. Discovered camming during the Covid pandemic. Sine reaching her 40s she is categorised as a MILF in sexwork business. She is an activist working on solidarity and radical friendship care and love, sexuality and consent in queer communities, strategies on surviving racism, whore stigma and agism in sexwork from an intersecional perspective. Collaborated with STRASS, J’En Suis, J’Y Reste - Centre LGBTQIF de Lille Nord, Red Edition (Vienna).


Quill Kukla (DE)
Quill Kukla lives in Berlin and Washington, DC. They are Professor of Philosophy and Director of Disability Studies at Georgetown University and a visiting Humboldt Researcher in the Institut für Philosophie at Leibniz Universität Hannover. They have published extensively on sexual negotiation, sexual agency, and consent, among other topics, and are finishing a book entitled Sex Beyond ‘Yes’, forthcoming from W. W. Norton & Company in 2024. They are a competitive amateur boxer and powerlifter, and live with their corgi and two cats, as well as with their co-presenter and sweetie Dan Steinberg.


Stefan Lacina (DE)
Stefan is the initiator of this project and a feminist activist. Apart from the conceptualization of this short film, he also did the composition and production of the film music together with a composer. Stefan produces music for his band TOUGH MAMA and for other acts. His motivation for gender equality lies in one simple sentence. “If something is not fair, we should change it.” Whether as a woman or a non-woman, Stefan takes this attitude as a guide to fight for equal rights for everyone. Besides intersectional feminism and music, he also just launched an organization for barista trainings called BOHEMIAN BARISTAS.


Stefan Lutschinger (GB): A Connoisseur of Digital Art's Evolving Horizons
Meet Stefan Lutschinger, a discreet yet profound artist, philosopher, curator, game designer, creative technologist, and academic, whose contributions to Media Art continue to shape new realms of artistic expression. Stefan has taught at a range of international universities and art academies and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Middlesex University London, where he has held various academic roles since 2010.
An ambassador of novel ideas, Stefan’s work challenges viewers to question their preconceived notions about reality. With a keen eye for unraveling assumptions, he invites viewers to venture beyond their comfort zones and explore fresh perspectives on the world. Born and bred in Vienna and Linz, Stefan’s thinking draws inspiration from eminent figures such as Freud, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, Viennese Actionism, and Wilhelm Reich, shaping his thought-provoking creative endeavours. As a member of the enigmatic Class Wargames, a Situationist political art-games group from London, he created participatory performances of Guy Debord's The Game of War, captivating audiences in art spaces, galleries, and museums including prestigious venues like the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Victoria & Albert Museum, Furtherfield Gallery, and at numerous arts events, exhibitions, and festivals throughout Europe and Asia.
Notably, Stefan Lutschinger held the distinguished University residency in 2018 at Arebyte Gallery, London's premier institution for avant-garde digital art – an experience that further fortified his standing as a unique figure in the digital art scene.
Delving into the frontier of Web3 and spatial computing, Stefan's current work thrives on the cusp of technological innovation. He also plays a significant role as a Trustee for the London-based think tank Cybersalon, which hosts regular events on digital art, culture and technology, including cybersex and artificial intimacy, in prime London locations.
His latest project with Cybersalon chair and digital pioneer, entrepreneur and investor Eva Pascoe, the Social VR Metaverse Cyberia —39 Whitfield Street, is an intriguing exploration of virtual realms. Recent collaborations with renowned artists, such as Mark Farid, Hallidonto, Miss Naivety, Simon Sarginson, and Alexander Felch, continue to elevate his artistic trajectory.
At internationally acclaimed events like Ars Electronica, Transmediale, or community festivals for Web3, blockchain and creative NFT such as Tech Adventures Glasgow, Stefan's magnetic presence intrigues audiences, as he gracefully beckons them to embrace the ever-evolving possibilities of digital artistry—encouraging audiences to broaden their horizons and embrace the possibilities of the digital age.


sugar pa! (AT)
shameless whore, sex workers rights activist, educator, writer
not a technical nerd-at all
dedicated to exploring, living and creating collectively and aiming at revealing and deconstructing power dynamics. most enthusiastic about artistic activism.
past collaborations with fusion festival lärz, at.tension festival lärz, maiz & das kollektiv care-flechtungen-kämpfe verbinden, raumschiff Linz sex, love intimacy, Salon Souterrain Vienna: Tummies and Moods.


Wenzel Mehnert (AT) Wenzel Mehnert is a futurologist working on the imaginaries of new and emerging technologies. He writes and teaches experimental methods of futurology. In his work, Wenzel Mehnert focuses on the intersection between speculative fictions and the assessment of new and emerging sciences and technologies (e.g. A.I., SynBio, etc.). Currently he lives in Vienna and works at the Austrian Institute of Technology in the research field Societal Futures.


Daniel Bierdümpfl (AT), Maxiliam Modl (AT) and Susanne von Floreschy-Weinfeld (AT) preferred to say nothing about themselves but you can check their webpages.