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Meet Moaning Lisa, the orgasmic mannequin

 At a sex and technology conference, a doll to test -- and improve? -- your skills at helping a lady ... well, you know.

By Farhad Manjoo

Oct. 08, 2007 |

Moaning Lisa

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

I'll leave the social comment to Machinist's feminist sisters -- I'm posting this mainly for the clickthroughs. At Arse Electronica, the sex and technology conference that took place in San Francisco this weekend, musician Matt Ganucheau showed off Moaning Lisa, a busty mannequin rigged up with a network of touch sensors, potentiometers, and light sensors that work together to detect the manual stimulation of love.

Think of it like a flight simulator, but here the goal's not quite as easy as landing a Boeing 747 at Baghdad International Airport. Like in real life, Moaning Lisa's got no instructions, and as Oh Gizmo's Evan Ackerman explains, her specific pattern of sensitivity is unknown.

Based on audio feedback alone, you work this and that here and there in search of hot and cold spots, hoping against hope that you can come up with something -- dear god, anything, please -- to salvage what had seemed, until your fumbling attempts, the start of something beautiful.

In her write-up, Wired's Regina Lynn points out that Moaning Lisa is not easy. The doll lived up to her name when her creator fondled her on the conference stage, but the lady went cold when a member of the audience was called up to give it a try.

Not to Monday-morning quarterback, but dude, I think your mistake was not buying her flowers first.

-- By Farhad Manjoo