[3] The group's members are: Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger, Harald Homolka-List, Anika Kronberger, Franz Ablinger, Frank Apunkt Schneider, Daniel Fabry, Günther Friesinger and Roland Gratzer.

[6] On the occasion of Monochrom's 20th birthday in 2013, several Austrian high-profile media outlets[7][8][9][10][11][12] paid tribute to the group's pioneering contributions within the field of contemporary art and discourse.

[14][15] Grenzfurthner's motivations were to react to the emerging conservatism in cyber-cultures of the early 1990s[16] and to combine his political background in the Austrian punk and antifa movement with discussion of new technologies and the cultures they create.

Over the years the publication featured many interviews and essays, for example by Bruce Sterling, HR Giger, Richard Kadrey, Arthur Kroker, Negativland, Kathy Acker, Michael Marrak, DJ Spooky, Geert Lovink, Lars Gustafsson, Tony Serra, Friedrich Kittler, Jörg Buttgereit, Eric Drexler, Terry Pratchett, Jack Sargeant and Bob Black,[20] in its specific experimental layout style.

[21] In 1995 the group decided to cover new artistic practices[22][23][24] and started experimenting with different media: performances, computer games, robots, puppet theater, musical, short films, pranks, conferences, online activism.

Context hacking transfers the hackers' objectives and methods to the network of social relationships in which artistic production occurs, and upon which it is dependent.

[6]From its very foundation, the group defined itself as a movement, culture[18] (referring to Iain M. Banks's sci-fi series) and "open field of experimentation".

Some collaborations have been rather short-lived (for example the publication of a 1993 fringe science paper[30] by Jakob Segal, projects with the Billboard Liberation Front and Ubermorgen or the administration of Dorkbot Vienna[31]), some have been going for many years and decades (for example with Michael Marrak, Cory Doctorow, Jon Lebkowsky, Fritz Ostermayer, V. Vale, eSeL, Scott Beale/Laughing Squid, Machine Project, Emmanuel Goldstein, Jason Scott, Jonathan Mann, Jasmin Hagendorfer and the Porn Film Festival Vienna), Michael Zeltner, Anouk Wipprecht, VSL Lindabrunn).

[38] Pettis wanted to create a robot that could print shot glasses for Monochrom's cocktail-robot event Roboexotica and did research about the RepRap project at Metalab.