Silicon Meets Sex--It’s Real, Virtually

Talk about oil and vinegar. Thursday evening at Hollywood’s Dragonfly, that virtual dungeon’s usual tattoo-and-leather brood witnessed a close encounter with a hipster of a radically different kind.

You could call them chipsters--silicon chipsters, that is. All this to celebrate the release of the hold-the-Mylar Sex issue of boing boing, a high-end cyberpunk ‘zine that investigates hip uses for a high-tech world.

“This is an experiment to see what would happen if we mixed the two groups--the bondage/discipline exhibitionists with the techno/wireheads of boing boing,” said Mark Frauenfelder, editor and publisher. “Their ultimate goal is altered consciousness in the same way that boing boing’s is. Except we use technology to do it, and they’re using body modification.”

Modern Primitives and cyberpunks rubbed elbows, and God-knows-what-else, for a night of “TechnoErotic Stimulation,” “SimSTim Overload” and various other “cyborgasmic” phenomena.

There was a virtual reality erotic playground. Step onstage and you’re incorporated into a “video projection environment.” Simple interactive fun could be had by batting a video ball around. The steam quotient rises though, when the environment changes to bikini-clad women whose coverings disappeared at the virtual touch.

To keep things relatively PC, June Lavenberg, one of the “virtualists” at the helm of what’s called the video toaster, switches to computer-generated beefcake. Suddenly, the screen fills with hunky RoboMen whose pecs and buns could be made to quiver with a well-directed caress.

The biggest high-tech draw was a pair of flashing LED, synchro-energizer glasses that purportedly induce a dream state in their wearer. The line of electrohedonists waiting to bliss out on the flashing lights and pulsing noises snaked all the way around the club.

Still, the reaction to all this, like the crowd itself, was mixed.

“They’re really relaxing,” said 26-year-old Stacy Hookingarner, who has completed an unpublished novel about vampires. “It’s almost like your mind slows down and your whole body just like melts. It’s like you become part of the couch.”

But although Nicki Ellison, an employee at a local software company, found all the attractions “pretty neat,” even the brief appearance of cyberpunk fan and rocker Billy Idol didn’t have enough cachet for her up-to-the-nanosecond tastes.

“I thought there would be more nerds here,” she gripes. “I haven’t seen one PowerBook or plastic pocket protector.”