Scottish SF author Iain Banks created a fictitious group-civilisation called “Culture” in his eponymous narrative. The vast majority of humanoid people in the “Culture” are born with greatly altered glands housed within their central nervous systems, who secrete - on command - mood- and sensory-appreciation-altering compounds into the person’s bloodstream. Additionally many inhabitants have subtly altered reproductive organs - and control over the associated nerves - to enhance sexual pleasure. Ovulation is at will in the female, and a fetus up to a certain stage may be re-absorbed, aborted, or held at a static point in its development; again, as willed. Also, a viral change from one sex into the other, is possible. And there is a convention that each person should give birth to one child in their lives. It may sound strange, but Banks states that a society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other. Pressure for change within society would presumably build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity will be established. Does this set-up sound too futuristic? Too utopian? Too bizarre?We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and tool-using species. And that’s why monochrom’s conference Arse Elektronika deals with sex, technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this anthology sees us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer. Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough. “Bizarre enough for what?” – you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century. Don’t you think, replicants?

Johannes Grenzfurthner is an artist, writer, curator, and director. He is the founder of monochrom. He teaches art theory and aesthetical practice at the University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria. Tag cloud: contemporary art, activism, performance, humor, philosophy, postmodernism, media theory, cultural studies, science fiction, and the debate about copyright. Guenther Friesinger lives in Vienna and Graz as a philosopher, artist, writer, curator and edu-hacker. He is founder and head of the paraflows festival, co-founder and head of the QDK - quarter for digital culture, member of monochrom, co-organizer of the Arse Elektronika festival and the Roboexotica festival. Tag cloud: activism, contemorary art, media theory, radical innovation, science fiction, free software and copyright. Daniel Fabry is designer, researcher and lecturer in the lofty fields of media and interaction design, working at the University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria. He is multiartist and polyatheist and member of monochrom.