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.
. Art 
28.08.02 5k, art in a few lines of code.
Be creative today seems to imply necessarily require the use of expensive technological aids. The media-hype has accustomed us to the wonders that reveal the perfection of the new digital cameras rather than their actual usage. Those who work in the network instead is aware of how many and what are the limits imposed by the web. The power of the machines of the developer is not worth anything, in fact, if those who must interact with the work itself does not have, for example, broadband or monitor the resolution enough. It is with these intentions that comes the 5k contest , that is the basic idea that the rigid constraints of the web are the right strength to be truly creative. To participate in the basic requirement is to create a work (in HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, Flash, etc..) In just 5120 bytes. The works are judged and classified into various categories (Aesthetic Appeal, Concept & Originality) judges chosen by judges and 'popular', the registered users. In the third edition there have been striking results: the electronic puzzle generators graphic symbols (the first prize 'frutiger toy' of binky), in kaleidoscopes of colored letters (the second prize category Aesthetic Appeal 'ABC kaleidoscope' of Goodinson) to small and exquisite adventure-game/poem the philosophical meaning (fourth prize category Aesthetic Appeal 'Reflection' of Milov) to arrive at more conceptual ideas as to concentrate the entire solar system in just 5k ('Scale Model of the Solar System 'of astro38). Lack of participation among Italians who have submitted a few projects do not always live. Are still interesting ideas sabareb with its 'interface switcher', an interface generating stories and ccirillo with short and ironic stories made of graphic symbols in sequence or animated 'With or without'. The new edition scheduled for this will be reserved exclusively for projects in HTML / CSS.
Clement Pestelli
