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Arse Elektronika, digested

Several days later, coverage of Arse Elektronika is all over the internets. I don't have good notes on all the excellent talks featured there, but Autumn Tyr-Salvia does. (Links to her very thorough individual entries at the bottom.)

I've already discussed a bit about the demos, and Jonathan Coopersmith's and Kyle Machulis's talks.

Violet Blue gave a really insightful talk on sexual privacy online. There was a lot more to it that I had originally thought. Starting off with the stuff that we kind of already knew, she points out that anonymity is important because it makes sexual information and accessible, allowing us to "assemble our own sexual operating systems". Then getting into the legal stuff that I know very little about, she pointed out some of the nasty consequences of the 2257 laws meant to ensure that models in pornography are legal adults. (This is what was used to prosecute "unmitigated douchebag" Joe Francis.) Every industry has to deal with child labor laws -- 2257 requires the adult entertainment industry to keep records of models with pictures of their face, ID, social security number, real name as well as stage name, etc. Increasingly these laws are being enforced for secondary providers -- those who may reassemble or redistribute pornography, as opposed to doing the actual filming or photographing -- which tend to really affect people who participate in internetish distribution models. As a secondary provider (working for fleshbot), Violet would be sent all that information about the actors in some of the porn she reviewed, information that she didn't want to be responsible for protecting, and that the actors had no idea was being sent around. Creepy stuff, and she suggests that this is not an accident, but rather that lawmakers are all too happy to intimidate anyone doing anything remotely related to porn, hoping that they'll just cut and run. As an aside she notes some ridiculous measures being pushed by the CP80 foundation in Utah to penalize people who happen to run open wireless access points because kids might get on them and look for porn. And these are guys -- yes apparently all guys -- who claim to be all tech-savvy.

So, she ends by discussing: who needs sexual privacy? Well, LGBT folk, for starters, who face violence if publicly exposed. Anyone into kink, BDSM or fetish, which is still not cool outside of a few places like San Francisco. Anyone looking for accurate information about sex, which we need more of with all the abstinence only bullshit. Women, whose "gender makes us sexual targets" already. Sex workers and cam girls, for whom online privacy equals sexual safety, and for whom exposure can mean dangerous stalkers. This list covers... well, just about everyone, actually, except maybe for a few of those guys in Utah. (OK, OK, they deserve privacy too. Even scary assholes deserve privacy.)

Aaron Muszalski spoke about the prevalence of digital visual effects and their present and future role in the production of pornography. He begins by showing a particularly sexy bit from the animatrix (and i think a smart questioning of gaze and stuff, since the fighters undressing each other are -- mostly -- blindfolded). Then, unfortunately, moves on to JarJar Binks renderpr0n [that link is potentially triggering], which I really nope never to see again because honestly I didn't like that character even before I saw him fucking a large-breasted fake woman. Renderporn, or renderpr0n, is cheap, usually not photorealistic, made with poser, and often fetish-based, depicting acts that are physically impossible or really hard to convince real models to do. He notes that this stuff is usually on the safe side of the uncanny valley, (though I think that's different for everyone and a lot of it fell right into the valley for me) and speculates how to get to the other, photorealistic, side of that valley. Currently, digital effects are everywhere, from virtual sets, which are often cheaper than real ones, to surgically painting out blemishes. He speculates that painting out condoms in porn might allow both viewers and models to get what they want in terms of safe sex. He talks a bit about CG actors and motion capture. Think Davy Jones and tentacle porn.

Hilariously, he talks about how, in the recent remake of Lolita, they digitally copied the legal breasts off of one actress, and pasted them over the underage, illegal breasts of another actress. More seriously, we get into issues of what happens when you can make photorealistic depictions of illegal, abusive acts without harming any actual humans (er... or animals?).

Looking forward, with cheaper computers and digital artistic skills becoming more common, more commodified and cheaper, and porn becoming more mainstream and thus maybe a more acceptable career choice for art geeks (or as he puts it "kinky geeks"), even in relatively cheap porn productions, this will probably become a regular thing.

Stefan Lutschinger spoke on The Re-Judgement of Paris: How "Ob/scenity" gave the World Modern Art in 1863. This refers to two things, first, the Judgement of Paris, which started the Trojan War. After not being invited to a bit party, Eris, the goddess of discord, tossed an apple inscribed "to the fairest" into the crowd. Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite each thinks it's theirs, so Paris must choose. They all offer him bribes, and he goes with Aphrodite's offer of the most beautiful woman in the world (Helen of Sparta). The other event he refers to is the judgment of Paris the city, and the Salon Des Refusés of 1863, in which Manet's painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe was displayed. This painting was considered by the Salon to be pornographic because, while nude women of Antiquity were art, a realistic modern nude woman sitting amongst modern clothed men was obscene. The assertion here is that porn, art, and politics intersect. Sexual repression is an instrument of power. Porn can be (besides being arousing) a medium of expression, criticism and resistance. Porn should be a language of public discourse. He ends by showing a long segment from Dusan Makavejev's WR: mysteries of the organism.

Autumn's notes on almost all of the talks, liveblogged:

Porn I might actually have to check out:

  • Project Uranus
    Zero-gravity money shot, involving some old Soviet astronaut training equipment?
  • Behind the Green Door
    This is considered a classic, but I had not heard or seen anything about the totally psychidelic, drawn out, day-glo money shot.
  • Pirates
    Cuz, jesus, it's fucking pirates. i don't really care if it's arousing or not.
  • WR: Mysteries of the Organism
    Because really, what is the communist revolution without free love?

Other coverage:

by metamanda
10.13.2007
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