The PSIgasm Project is very proud to announce that we won the Golden Kleen award at Arse Elektronika 2011. The Golden Kleen is, “An unobjectionable award for sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics,” according to the Arse Elektronika team. The “Sex Prize” was also announced and it’s going to be science sexy. I can’t say much, but I can say this much: robots, artificial intelligence, sex, and a Turing Test. We want to thank everyone on the Arse production team as well as the venues who hosted the conference this year. It was fantastic to meet so many other sex geeks!
There were a lot of fantastic talks and we enjoyed watching everyone. We learned a lot as well. During the workshop session, our language of “citizen science” was challenged on the merits that it favors citizenship and nationalism. “Citizen Science” is the phrase that will connect people in non-academic settings to the best information and resources for conducting science but we agree that it does not represent the aims of the project. A dialog is ongoing about better terms like, “community science.” It was fantastic to have the opportunity to get some good feedback.
We were also questioned about our research guidelines. At this point in time we are still in the construction phase of the PSIgasm and have not yet begun research. It has been our intention from day one to be transparent about our methodology in such a way that others can duplicate it. Although we are working outside of an academic setting, there are some frames of research methodology that are vital to follow for this project. We are also creating a code of ethics for our research to protect those who are gracious enough to serve as subjects and donate their orgasms to the project and to maintain a level of professionalism and safe space as well as accessibility.
Here are some photos from the event:
