Sunday, 27 January, 2013
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The place where sex and technology blend together perfectly.
Last Saturday, the Sundance Film Festival took a delightful bruising when it debuted Christina Voros’ (127 Hours, The Broken Tower) documentary, Kink. This film explores the daily ins and outs of premiere BDSM porn studio Kink.com, a subject that Kink’s producer, James Franco (Spider-man, Pineapple Express), found fascinating while touring the 200,000 square foot San Francisco studio during a shoot for another project, About Cherry.
Founded in 1997 by Columbia University alumni Peter Acworth, Kink.com is the alternative pornography site, its wide umbrella encompassing sites such as FuckingMachines.com, Hogtied.com, and PublicDisgrace.com as well as hitting the alternative gay male demographic with MenOnEdge.com and BoundGods.com.
Acworth has devoted his adult life to bringing alternative pornography to the mainstream, not just to fill an already established need, but to help educate those still exploring their sexuality. Constantly expanding and exploring new directions, the Kink.com brand he created is an excellent representative of the alternative adult industry not only due to its longevity and integrity, but also due to its vision and sense of community.
Bringing the talents of Franco and Voros together to create a film about such an industry giant might finally allow the rest of the world to banish their illusions of not just the alternative porn community, but the adult industry in general. We have high hopes that this film, as well as the two other adult industry-related films showing at Sundance, Leatherbar and Lovelace, will topple some of the longstanding walls between mainstream viewers and filmmakers and the adult industry.
Read the Sundance Review of Kink here
Learn more about Kink.com and Peter Acworth in The Unsexpected Story
So Roxxxy isn’t the most attractive robot I have seen, however she is a clear sign that the progress of sexual robotic technology is striving ahead. TrueCompanion is the company that engineered and sells Roxy (and Rocky), however their website seems to lack the pizzazz of what I would expect from a state-of-the-art technology company.
Here is a link to a video that was shot at the 2010 AEE show. If for nothing more than to set a base line for where and when it all began, this is where this industry is heading.
Launched in 2003 by the industrial design and engineering team of Eric Kalen, Carl Magnuson, and Filip Sedic, intimate lifestyle company LELO has since expanded from a single office in Stockholm to a worldwide brand with over 200 employees in the U.S., Australia, Asia, and Europe. Now selling in over 40 international markets, LELO has more than doubled its sales volume annually since its inception.
At an average retail price of $100 per vibrator, LELO’s luxury products range from the diminutive “lipstick” model, MIA, and the motion-controlled, waterproof TIANI, to the ultra-high end, 24-karat gold-plated INEZ, priced at $15,000. In 2010, LELO expanded its offerings to include cuffs, ties, and blindfolds, as well as massage oils, candles, and a water-based personal moisturizer. In 2011, LELO debuted its SUSSURRA line of silk lingerie and loungewear, as well as PicoBong, a lower-priced brand designed to appeal to a younger clientele. Every one of LELO’s products is certified as body-safe before being brought to market.
LELO’s products have been featured in Forbes,Cosmopolitan, Elle, Women’s Health, Maxim, GQ, Wired, and the New York Times, among others. LELO recently appeared at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, and has signed partnerships to sell its products through Walgreens, Apoteket, and Wynn Las Vegas, as well as luxury boutiques in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, and its native Stockholm.
