Arse Elektronica equals pr0novation

In Las Vegas October 5-7, 2007 at Kink.com’s Porn Palace in San Francisco, CA , Arse Elektronica is an exploration of pornography and technology. While we love people like Regina Lynn, and have discussed the concept of porn and technology from the IGasm to what porn is doing with Web 2.0, this conference is going to take this one whole step further.

Sponsored by Kink.com they really are looking at the whole history of where technology and sex intersect. There have been few if any technological innovations that in one form or another has also equated down to humans, sex, and reproduction or the control of reproduction. They state:

The porno effect accompanies every new technological development. Immediately after producing his famous bible, Gutenberg used his press to print erotica. Photography was utilized just as quickly. In 1874 the London police discovered 130,000 pornographic photos in the course of a single house search. The introduction of cinematic technology also confirmed the close relationship between pornography and technological innovation: in 1896 a pornographic film was shown publicly for the first time, two years after the premiere of the first films of any interest to the general public. Since then, more pornographic films than nonpornographic films have been produced.

That in 1977 the first video cassettes to appear on the market featured pornographic content should come as no surprise. The development of the camcorder and the instamatic camera made it possible for anyone so inclined to produce porno in privacy at home. The fact that the first affordable Polaroid model was named “The Swinger” seems to indicate that the industry was well aware of this possible use. Source: Arse Elektronica

We have discussed this, and society has discussed this many times, technology allows for more things to be done, either alone or sharing. Printing, pottery, art, painting, cinema, every technology has been used for porn. We joking laugh that the internet is for porn, but given the sheer amount of porn on the internet, it is not really a joke.

While folks might decide this is a bad thing, this will be one of the more interesting conferences to go to this year. The speaker and performance abstracts are a combination of the profane and the sublime. As a culture, we do adopt technology to sex, and sex to technology.

This is the “must attend” conference this year if you are interested in the conjunction of sex and technology.