From the Vienna Bienalle: 1. Intelligent robots must serve the common good of humanity and help us humans to lead an ecologically, socially, culturally and economically sustainable life. Read the rest

REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

Cat 'Luca' sleeps in his basket as a waitress serves some food to customers in Vienna's first cat cafe May 7, 2012. After three years of negotiations with city officials over hygiene issues, Austria opened its first cat cafe last Friday. 'Cafe Neko', "Neko" meaning cat in Japanese, was opened by Vienna resident Takako Ishimitsu, 47, from Japan. Customers can stroke and interact with their five feline hosts, named Sonja, Thomas, Moritz, Luca and Momo, who all came from an animal shelter and now freely roam about the cafe and take naps. There's a slide show with more photos here. Read the rest

Johannes sez, "monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner gave a short presentation about traditional narrative cinema, the problems of storytelling in the digital age -- and monochrom's feature film project 'Sierra Zulu.'"

Sierra Zulu at TEDxVienna: Video online

(Thanks, Johannes!) Read the rest

StagConf is a European conference on stories and games, to be held in Vienna's adorably insane Natural History Museum (the world's maddest, overflowingest taxidermy displays, including a broke-necked giraffe with Frankenstein stitches, an infamous alcoholic chimp, and many other critters etoufees). It's a one-day affair, on Sept 27: "You will meet game designers and writers who have worked on games in every imaginable form: from adventures to MMOs, from AAA console to the web, from social games to pen and paper RPGs." (Thanks, Alice!) Read the rest

Johannes from Vienna arts/pranks/tech collective Monochrom gave this fun TEDxVienna talk on "context hacking" -- making pranks out of pranks, subverting subversion, transcending mere grossouts, and being melancholic postmodern leftists.

TEDxVienna-Johannes Grenzfurthner-On how to subvert subversion

(Thanks, Johannes!)

Mischer'Traxler's "Relumine" project sticks fluorescent tube-lights between new fixtures in discarded lamps, creating the illusion of two lamps exchanging a beam of solid light. The lights were exhibited at the Gallery Klaus Engelhorn's "Bulb Fiction" show during Vienna Design Week 2010.

Relumine by Mischer'Traxler

(via Crib Candy)