Arse Elektronika

Arse Elektronika is an annual conference organized by the Austrian arts and philosophy collective monochrom, focused on sex and technology. The festival presents talks, workshops, machines, presentations and films. The festival's curator is Johannes Grenzfurthner. Between 2007 and 2015, the event was held in San Francisco, but monochrom wants to move the event to Europe.
The name Arse Elektronika is a pun on Ars Electronica, the name of an arts and technology organization also based in Austria.
Speakers at past conferences have included Violet Blue, Mark Dery, Richard Kadrey, Annalee Newitz, Carol Queen, Susie Bright and Rudy Rucker, with demonstrations by Kyle Machulis of the blog Slashdong; Heather Kelley; Allen Stein of Thrillhammer; and other engineers of the pornographic website "Fucking Machines".
Arse Elektronika became a point of reference for many debates around sex and technology.
Additional exhibitions and performances.
Arse Elektronika organizes exhibitions and lecture performances world-wide that are not always part of the actual conference. In April 2010, the first Arse Elektronika exhibition "Techno(sexual) Bodies" was presented at "Videotage" in the city of Hong Kong; it was curated by Johannes Grenzfurthner and Isaac Leung.
In March 2019, monochrom presented (as part of an Arse Elektronika special at "NRW-Forum" in Düsseldorf) a sex robot called "Nekropneum Fuckenbrust Neckhammer 40k".
Publications.
"pr0nnovation? Pornography and Technological Innovation" (Arse Elektronika Anthology #1)
"Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep? Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction" (Arse Elektronika Anthology #2)
"Of Intercourse and Intracourse – Sexuality, Biomodification and the Techno-Social Sphere" (Arse Elektronika Anthology #3)
"Screw The System – Explorations of Spaces, Games and Politics through Sexuality and Technology" (Arse Elektronika Anthology #4)