It's that time again! Monochrom have just announced the next call for papers for the annual Arse Elektronika Sex and Technology conference. This year it's gaming themed! CFP follows:

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monochrom's Arse Elektronika 2012 September 27-30: San Francisco, USA

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4PLAY: Gamifuckation and Its Discontents

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Call for papers, talks, workshops, performances, and GAMES.

(In addition to traditional talks, workshops, and papers, this year we are also accepting submissions of games. This can include digital games, street games, LARPs, social rulesets, procedural game-art, or other forms, for demonstration, presentation, or debut during the conference.)

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Gaming, like sex, is a human cultural practice of apparent frivolity. Yet both afford surprisingly deep levels of analysis. How might models of critical gameplay inspire deeper critical reflection on issues of sex, and vice-versa?

What is the history of sexual games, particularly in the pre-digital era? What were the fairground and peepshow precursors in titillation? What was the design history of the "love tester" machine?

Why are game metaphors so prevalent in narratives of sexual conquest, and how did popular games in history influence the thinking of contemporary lovers? What can we learn about Roman gaming culture from Ovid's Ars Amatoria? What determines the many definitions of "cheating" in each of those contexts? How do the procedural rhetorics of modern game design encourage objectification of women?

How might contemplative gaming teach us to free ourselves from the tyranny of the climax?

How does the concept of the 'magic circle' in games coincide with safe spaces for sexual exploration? How do players act out transgressions of sex and gender expectations within the relatively safer spaces of games? What can we learn about social scripts and expectations from looking at society through a ludological lens?

What is the relationship of sex and games to the recent 'non-human turn' in arts, science, and philosophy? How might games engender empathy and understanding towards the non-human? What is the technological equivalent of Alan Moore's plant-sex issue of Swamp Thing? Could a game help you contemplate how a mantis fucks, or what it feels like for a fern to spore?

Beyond the simple human-to-human interfaces of the now-almost-quaint developments of sex machines and teledildonic, how might game design interact with biometrics and haptic feedback to create entirely new techno-sexual situations? Game-based learning and medical rehabilitation has been used in the past for stroke victims and the disabled to re-learn their bodies; how might those same techniques allow further bodily exploration towards positive pleasure? How much might BDSM simulators borrow from virtual pet trainers? How is predicament bondage like game design, and what can the two learn from one another?

If we are headed towards the 'gamepocalypse' envisioned by Jesse Schell, how might that affect our sex lives and our sexualities?

Is sex in danger of gamification?

If so, how can we stop it?

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Call for Submissions, Deadline: July 1, 2012

Please send submissions to [office AT monochrom.at][4]

http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika

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[4]: mailto:office AT monochrom.at

Welcome to the new Slashdong.

It's been over 7 years since I finally got this site running, put up my hastily crafted circuit board dildo in the header, and went to work becoming the minor blogging sensation I am today. While I've spent that whole time giving talks and being active in sex tech in one form or another, in the past few years the site itself had really fallen apart. I moved from MovableType to Jekyll, futzed with the sidebar a bit every so often, but got to the point of only having 3-4 posts a year. Partially because I felt like I was running out of stuff to say, and partially because the site itself just didn't feel right. I'd also been busy bringing up projects like OpenYou and whatever else I'd decided to hack together on my github account.

Around February 2012, for some reason that changed. With some of the new toys that have been coming out, and well as correspondances I've had with people since Art&&Code last year and the release of the Pen15, I've started feeling reinvigorated about the topic of sex, technology, and open source. With that, I decided to redo the look of the site. The first goal was a new simplified, easy to read look. I've had a long problem with tiny fonts and weird color combinations that make things damn near impossible to read, a problem I've hopefully fixed in this round. Next up was to get rid of the tons of different sections, since I had a blog, plus "articles" and "projects", which were really just extra long blog posts. I figure if people want to find certain information, they can search on it and it'll come up.

Of course, the header needed a change, too. My 3DSMax skills were awesome (read: making a curve, hitting lathe, adding a texture), but it's time for a logo that better fits the site. Thanks to Kelly Moore of Counter-productive Productions, we now have the Slashdongle:

It's everything I could've dreamed of and more, and yes, there will be Slashdongle merchandising soon.

There's still things left to be done. The site is being released before it's finished just because it'll never actually be finished. I could continue painting my bikeshed with a yak-hair brush, or just push it out and finish things as I get time. So, tasks left over include:

• Adding categories to all posts
• Updating About because I'm not in my 20's anymore
• Integrating old articles and projects, patching missing links
• Fixing botched markdown and HTML

Also, I'm starting to integrate some of my older sites into this one.

I'm slowly moving posts from MMOrgy that I wrote (we had multiple authors there) over to this site. MMOrgy stopped getting new content around 5 years ago now, and I'd really like to EOL the site and condense down to just slashdong.

So, there ya go. Plans laid out, and hopefully a new, bright future for Slashdong. Either that or I'll have just spent 2 months fucking with CSS and jekyll for nothing and let the thing stagnate again for another 7 years.

This may be the closest I ever get to being the TMZ of butt plugs.

It's almost AVN week (AVN is actually Jan 18-21 this year, a week after CES, and yet again, I won't be there.), and the stars are already twatting.

They are also on twitter. rimshot

Annnnnnyways. Above is a picture of star Kirsten Price holding what looks to be a dildo in front of a laptop with a webcam on it, taken by a porn company CEO at a party earlier tonight.

According to the originating tweet, this is Real Touch's dildo. Now, they're known for making innies, so what we see here may be the first mention of the Real Touch Outie. My guess this is a sensor filled stick that will relay movement information to remotely connected Real Touch machines.

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The Pen15 Board

Oh my god I can't believe we're actually doing this.

6 years ago, I started slashdong with a dream. A dream to one day do something absolutely silly like have a circuit board with penises drawn on it in traces.

Thanks to the wonderful people at Trinculo's Attic, that dream is now a reality.

The Pen15 Board is a relatively simple Arduino shield, built specifically for sex tech and teledildonics research. At its core is a MOSFET, 2 resistors for current regulation, and a jack to hook up vibrators to.

Actually, that's more than its core. That's the whole thing, period. Told you it was simple!

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Ok, after a month of code and blog work on self quantification, it's time to get back to what's important: Internet Dildos.

Today, I'm taking a look at VSex.com, or at least, as much as I can without actually getting an account or seeing the content of the site. I'd rather not sully myself with actual sex when I can just talk about video game theory as applied to pornography, anyways.

While VSex may look like your run-of-the-mill machine control site, there's a few interesting choices they've made that make it worth writing about. But first, the basics.

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