Revision as of 18:07, 9 February 2023

Hatching Alien Babies

At the end of my Bachelor’s studies I started a research about the performance of sex, specifically on the online video-chat platform Chaturbate.com. The platform is freely accessible and features performers acting out various sexual acts – most often against a financial transaction. A lot of them use remotely controllable bluetooth-sextoys (teledildonics) that can be activated by the financial transactions of the users. In the platform and especially in the use of the I found a lot of subversive „countersexual“ (term borrowed from Paul B. Preciado) potential, that is unfortunately not used at all. Most of the chats follow patriarchal, pornotopic and capitalistic standards that are so hardened in our society. Ever since I wrote my thesis on this topic I have been wondering how I can find a practical approach to work with those teledildonics and possibly with the platform in order to crack open the subversive, posthuman, postgender potential of them.

For more info on the topic, see the chapter about Dildos from my thesis „Performing Sex: Sexual Practices at the Interface Between the Physical and the Virtual on Chaturbate.com“: File:4_Dildo.pdf

After realizing the idea’s potential to form an utopian prospect, I brought it to class this semester.

As a starting point I got two of the most frequently used teledildos on Chaturbate.com in order to use them for a performative or installative approach. I came up with the wish to interfere with the functions of the dildos by hacking them. But since I have not a lot of knowledge of electronics, silicone casting and programming, I had to start from the beginning.

During the process I realized, that in order to really crack open a subversive potential, it would be worthwile to open up the process already and make it more communal. This is how the idea formed, to look out for fellow sextoy-hackers and form a community, entitled to follow the open-source approach. It should be free for anyone to join in, in an anticapitalistic, non-hierarchical, sex-positive manner. We will learn from each other’s various skillsets – nobody needs to be a programmer/hacker/sex-enthusiast. We will figure it out togther.

However, In order to start off I still want to find out how to build my own teledildo…

So I started to recreate the sextoy I had bought: