Konrad Becker

Konrad Becker is an interdisciplinary communication researcher, director of the Institute for New Culture Technologies/ t0, and World-Information Institute (World-Information.Org), a cultural intelligence provider. Co-founder and chairman of Public Netbase (1994 - 2006), he has been active in electronic media as an artist, author, composer as well as curator, producer and organizer. Becker realized numerous electronic intermedia productions, exhibitions, conferences and event designs for international festivals and cultural institutions as well as a range of interventions in public space. Publication of media works, electronic audiovisuals, texts and books, lectures at various universities and participation in many conferences. He has published extensively on theoretical backgrounds of electronic "underground" practice and pioneered contemporary techno culture. Konrad Becker created Monoton in 1979, the seminal Austrian electronic music act, provider of distinguished electronic sound-scapes and psycho-acoustics. The Wire magazine singled out Monoton’s record "Monotonprodukt07" from 1982 among the 100 most important records of the 20th century. He has pursued his audio interest under a range of different projects (Wissenschaftliche Sensation) and collaborations, covering a large field from the very abstract and conceptual to the very danceable. From street parties to the highly formal, his work is strongly based on live performance, site specific installations, sound-sculptures and video. With only a few documents available on vinyl or CD his productions include an opera ("Parzival"), various hypermedia productions (like "Mantron") and several experimental stage productions. His work has been characterized by extensive cooperation with many protagonists of a new artistic practice and has been acknowledged with several awards. The field of work and artistic production includes all areas of electronic art and culture, from audio, video, TV and radio, multimedia productions and installations, audio-visual software, VR games and brain-machine interfaces to social interventions. As an author and writer on infosphere politics he analyzes cultural and social implications of technology in information societies. Particular emphasis is placed on the investigation of interrelations of the symbolic and the real, immaterial information regimes and tangible reality. In response to the dominant security paradigm and to turn risk into cultural business opportunities in the global war on terror he initiated the information peacekeeping agency Global Security Alliance and its PsyOps Soundsystem..