Arse Elektronika kicks off at Kink.com

Arse Elektronika, a conference about pr0nnovation kicked off tonight at Kink.com's Porn Palace in San Francisco. The opening speech by Johannes Grenzfurthner of Monochrom was considerably delayed due to, not surprisingly, a porn shoot that had run two hours late earlier in the day. After cleaning up spots and stains, Johannes apologized and took the stage. Opening the speech with looking back at a patent for a condom containing a computer chip that played music, he asked, "is this progress?". To some perhaps, to others, the envelope needs to continually be pushed, or in this case played with.

From polaroids to VHS to virtual reality, technology has always been quick to appeal to porn consumers. Johannes pointed to films like the Lawnmower Man (a movie he says is more outdated looking than Tron) and his experiences with an iPhone (the first thing his friend showed him on it was porn and said "you can even zoom in!"). Talking about merging sex with technology, a wise crack from the crowd yelled "I gave up my penis for an iPhone!".

Up next was a short film about overhead projectors. The film began with "Overhead projection is a dying medium. The only way to save it is to explore porn possibilities." A man then proceeded to masturbate using an overhead projector to document his "results". Somehow, I felt my years of grade school lecture notes being violated.

Skipping the Electric Orifice Orchestra due to technical difficulties, the Moaning Lisa was proudly propped up on stage. A modified mannequin of sorts, the Moaning Lisa is a life-size (and in some areas, augmented life-size) "doll" that contains sensors in an assortment of places around her body. Matt Ganucheau explained that partially due to the Nintendo Wii, alternative controllers on a public scale made people ask what can we interact with to enhance experience? As such, the Moaning Lisa's controls are unique, and like the female orgasm, there are no instructions. Photo sensors in her eyes detect presence and others around her body make her moan. The moaning is generated by the sound of 200 pleasured women. Why 200? Matt says it just sounded cool.

More from Arse Elektronika to come, the Flickr album can be viewed here.