Critical digital culture and media arts · Since 1993
The Neural Archive is a repository of publications collected by us during the years. Browse our collection here.
Sometimes the online world reveals unsuspected parallel dimensions. This is an unknown restyle of Neural independently (and secretly as we never knew about it) made by NY-based Motion and Graphic Designer, Clarke Blackham. Very nicely made, perhaps only a bit glossier for the magazine’s line, it testifies once more how even your most familiar outcomes can have another life somewhere else.
The value of craft after software sounds rampant sometimes, expressing the freedom of escaping repetitive taps and clicks to accomplish some assumed tasks. Mixing media, electricity, electronics, mechanics and inert objects Graham Dunning has realised a structured track/performance/open script in his “Mechanical Techno: Ghost in the Machine Music.” More than a proof of concept a machine music declination.
Isn’t ASCII Art a perfect form of “graffiti” in 2010s? The 8-bit aesthetics is among the strongest visual references connecting the analogue recent past with the omni-digital present, so why not adopt it to finally have some public art embedded in the present? In Varberg, Sweden, 2016, the GOTO80 crew (feat: Karin Andersson) did it, choosing (not by accident) the Mo Soul Amiga-font.
YesNo by Timo Kahlen feels like “traditional” net art, a well crafted stuck webpage for the user’s aural and clickable enjoyment.
The relationship between Andy Warhol and personal computers (becoming quite popular during his last years) has been only partially investigated beyond his Amiga works. In November 2015, Sotheby’s sold his “Apple (from Ads)” (acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas) for 910.000 USD, and in catalogue’s notes Warhol tells about his meeting with Steve Jobs insisting to give him one and showing him how to draw (even if still in black and white): “we went into Sean [John Lennon’s son]’s bedroom–and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, ‘Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.’ And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color…I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who helped invent it.”
Harsh Noise Wally, is a sophisticated mashup mixing strips of Wally, the lazy and cynic colleague of Dilbert with some epic noise music extreme attitudes. Well conceived and assembled.
Minority Report comes closer… Three huge screens at Birmingham New Street railway station are scanning passers-by and play advertisements accordingly. http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/new-street-station-advertising-screens-9920400
GoPro ancestors in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly sport and movie persons like F1 driver Jackie Stewart, Bob Sinclair and Steve McQueen.
. EMusic 
07:05:01 Napster decline, minors and Denmark.
The waters of navigation Napster began to be troubled. The license for the software from Gracenote, which scavenge similar names has cost $ 750,000 and has caused, among other factors, a decline of users in April by 41 percent compared to February, or other figures, the average of downloaded files Each user has dropped from 220 at the beginning of March to the current 37. And despite the RIAA Hilary Rosen has fanfaronato that according to her, "Napster, emotionally, is already closed", the Minister of Culture of Denmark, Elsebeth Nielsen, said that his government is preparing a law to allow the private use of digital copies of any piece of music, sending upside down the whole policy of terror music industry. And the alternatives continue flocking, as well as encouraging studies. Aimster, Napster-like software that is based on the AOL messaging, first used the sixteen year old daughter of the owner (pictured) to reinforce its image in the market and then counter-sued the RIAA, which in turn, had sent a letter of formal notice. A report of PC Pitstop also indicates that they are very strong growth in installations of mIRC as an alternative to Napster, with a strong increase well AudioGalaxy, BearShare, LimeWire and WinMX. Another study (this time the 'Pew Internet and American Life Project'), reports that currently the main use of the web is to download music files, with an estimated six million daily users among which there are just kids, but even thirty percent of adults consulted.
