Zaho de Sagazan in Vienna

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song for the Week)

This week it's not one song of the week, but two, and of course both are by the wonderful Zaho de Sagazan. I could, and probably should, name five instead of two, but I chose these two because of their beautiful melodies and her outstanding voice and expression:

Here’s a live-version showing also that one of her background musicians seems to prefer to constantly turn his back to the audience - for whatever reason.

The second one is the song she finished the Vienna concert with

It’s a cover version of Brigitte Fontaine’s song that really does have its merits on its own:

I was, as briefly reported last week, at Sagazan’s concert in Vienna and enjoyed it a lot.

The audience was remarkably mixed - from very , very young to people in their eighties, the french community in Vienna as well as many locals, I didn’t feel as akwardly out of the age span than, in particular, in the Cigaretts after Sex-concert last year (Weekly 46/2024) and also not so much as part of the mainstream as with Ernst Molden and Sigrid Horn (Weekly 11/2025 and 12/2025).

In particular her focus on her music, her kindness, her energy and restraint were impressive. This is a superstar, still very young (25!) and oustandingly gifted behaving so remarkably politely and unpretentiously. If one met her on the street one could easily believe that she is just an average student; she stands on stage with something which looks very much like a diving suit, black (Deichmann?) sneakers, accompanied by three men in black, one of them consequently turning his back to the audience, lots of synthesizer music and a piano - and that’s it.

In some parts she reminded me of Laurie Anderson (Weekly 25/2024) and a concert of her that I must have seen anytime in the early 90ies, but she is much directer and more energetic and less “artificial” than Anderson - and she has a much, much stronger voice - so that her performance touched me a lot - also as she represented somehow her whole generation to me on that evening - trying to do some things better than mine - more authentically and more carefully - in a much complexer world.

She sang neither Vienne, nor 99 Luftballons that evening as implied in this Schachinger-review - of which many of the comments are better than the text on its own.

Retrospect

Legal Hackathon

We had the opening of our hackathon at Fachhochschule Campus Wien. Heimo Hirner and me have been doing this for eight years now, still smiling when feeling all the energy in the room.

I was grateful, as always, to our external advisory, role models and jury members, in this year in particular Veronika Haberler (LeReTo), Barbara Ofner (LexisNexis), Christina Helf (parlament.fyi), Bianca Wöhrer (FH Campus Wien), Paul Eberstaller (RIS+, GSV & AI:ssociate), Nicole-Angela Krywult (ERGO) and Pascal Lotter & Christoph Slouka (PatCheckX).

Kyoto

Professor Tatsuhiko Inatani from Kyoto University was in Vienna and gave a lecture at the department.

This was very interesting for many reasons, among them Tatsu’s constructively critical approach to European concepts such as informational self determination and purpose limitation. In particular the idea that informed consent is the right instrument to protect people’s interest and fundamental rights in the best possible way was heavily challenged. I was - again - fascinated by the Japanes idea that the main goal of (data protection) law is the protection of the right to pusue happiness. In addition, the Western dichotomy of individualistic and collective goods was, again, deciphered of what it is: a (solely) Western concept.

I was also introduced into (and fascinated) by the Japanese concept of Iriai - commons

and started reading a little about its meaning in ecology, legal history and law. Tatsu gave an oustanding presentation, reflected by the group’s perspective in all its diversity, with legal/cultural backgrounds from around the world (Egypt, Turkey, France, Canada, Germany, Austria, to name a few).

It was an afternoon showing me once again how wonderful the profession is I have - and how fragile this can be.

Court of Auditors

I had an oustandingly nice gig at Austria’s Court of Auditors (Rechnungshof) on the AI act.

First thing that I felt when entering the building was that - different from what one might perhaps expect - the working athmosphere was remarkably friendly and positive. Everyone was really nice and polite , not only to me, but also with each other. The audience consisted of about 40 people with diverse backgrounds, different in age, hirarchy, prior knowledge etc., but united in curiosity, interest and openness.

I spoke in some detail about illegal AI-practices and high risk systems and asked myself whether the Austrian Court of Auditors is a “judicial authority” in the sense of Annex III nr. 8 AIA (spoiler: probably no, but hard to tell).

What I enjoyed in particular was the very open discussion after my presentation of which I learned much more than from my gig’s preparation. And the venue’s view was gorgeous.

Medical Association Vienna

The Medical Association Vienna (“Ärztekammer für Wien”) organised a symposion on digital transformation in medicine.

It was a little like a family reuinion. I met, inter alia, Georg Langs (CD Labor) , Günter Schreier (SmartFox) and Franz Leisch (Praevenire). And, of course, many medical doctors.

Georg Langs (below) had the positive role, wheras I was booked as the legal killjoy - the person talking about the risks.

My role implied therefore also (at least in my reading) to make fun of fax machines as communication devices.

I learned, in particular (from Dr. Polacsek-Ernst), that about one third of all Austrian medical doctors having a contract with social security (“Kassenärzte”) will reach retirement age within the next five years - which sounds like quite a challenge for the system. I have my doubts that digitalisation wil solve this issue.

Legal Professions

Žiga Škorjanc from the department organised and chaired a well attended panel on digital change in legal professions - together with Juristenverband.

Juristenverband’s President Dr. Scheuwimmer, opening the event

A very interesting statement came from Dr. Wolfgang Pichler who argued that in his opinion the training of LLMs is covered by the DSM-text and data mining exception, wheras it remains unclear whether the output infringes authors’ copyrights - and that MANZ is currently willing to take the risk of uncertainty here.

It was equally intriguing to hear that LexisNexis has business relations with OpenAI that might - as I speculate - have an impact on the willingness of the former to fight for and with their authors on alleged copyright infringements by the latter. That such issues might exist has become even more apparent by an article - and a database - published by The Atlantic recently, showing, as the Atlantic says, that millions of texts were copied for Meta’s LLM development.

I enjoyed very much to discuss this with Dr. Veronika Haberler at the event’s reception. Recently, she had written a very interesting LinkedIn-Post on her PHD-thesis to be found in this database - and possible legal consequences she might take due to this.

Better4U

had its consortium meeting in Vienna. I am proud to be somewhere in the crowd below - like Clara, Olga and Rodessa who were just great in every aspect of this meeting.

The project’s topic - obesity - is of growing importance, as well as our role dealing with interplay of GDPR, AIA, EHDS etc.

Prospect

#arsboni

If you’re reading this Friday morning, you might want to join Prof. Barbara Geyer and me live in a conversation on AI in higher education (28/03, 9.00 CET).

In addition, I will meet Dr. Andreas Pollak in the laundry in order to speak with him on the law of sanctions (on Russia). He recently organised a whole conference on the matter. I’m planning to put the interview online later during next week.

7. PRAEVENIRE Digital Health Symposion

Dr. Franz Leisch, former head of ELGA, kindly invited me on a panel at this (commercial) event on Wednesday. It’s an opportunity to meet, inter alia, state secretary Ulrike Königsberger-Ludwig and many other highl level health experts.

Social Artificial Intelligence Night

Friday, April 4th, will bring me to St. Pölten (again). I am delivering a keynote on “Is AIA like GDPR - just worse?” at the Social Artificial Intelligence Night (SAINT) at University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten.

The programme is online, as well as last year’s presentations and a promotional video.

Free entry, registration required.

Look and Feel

Hannes Tretter

It was with great dismay that I heard about the death of Hannes Tretter. Hannes was a leading figure in Austrian Human Rights Law, a truly engaged and empathic and brilliant scholar and thinker, an outstandingly talented and dedicated manager of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights., and much more.

For me, he was a role model, a mentor and enabler (the LLM-programme on information law would not exist without him) and a friend. I miss him very much.

Die Presse, Der Standard, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Wiener Forum für Demokratie und Menschenrechte have obituaries, as well as his close colleague and friend Manfred Nowak.

This is a photo of him on his boat that he sent me in 2014.

Volkswagen and Renault

I asked myself after Sagazan’s concert, how come, that some of the greatest songs I know end up in car-commercials. That’s true for her

but also for one of the greatest songs ever written (in my personal judgement, see also Weekly 38/2024) from Nick Drake

As usual, I am not the only one recognising this, and there’s a (Forbes) list for this on the internet from 2011 already.

(The link to nr. 1., Eminem, no longer works, but this is it, I believe - and it DOES have power):

Here’s (probably) the commercial:

And Spotify has a whole playlist on the “genre”.

I tested this today while commuting in central Vienna: You can very well listen to the list on a bicycle as well, it has lots of (positive) energy.

Careless People

I am currently reading

- an insider story about working at Meta. The book is nr. 1 bestseller, mainly because of the Streisand effect. When I bought it (March 14th) it was 50 % more expensive than now. It’s below 10 € now in its ebook version, but I am however not sure whether one needs to read the whole (rather anecdotical) book after this interesting review.

Daisy

© Birgit Forgó-Feldner

seems to see something we don’t see.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)