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.
Mark Batty Publisher, ISBN 978-0982075487, USA, 2010, English
Square and compact, this book is reminiscent of an old tin box, like those used to contain ginger biscuits or other mysterious delicacies. From his personal collection, Eric Schneider has created this delightful collection of toy musical instruments from around the world. The earliest pieces are from the 60s, but most coincide with the golden age of home computers, the period between the 70s and the 80s. Each piece is cataloged with its picture, the year of its release, its place of origin, and a (hilarious) pay-off illustrating its workings or the various types of sound produced. Some lucky models are also accompanied by their boxes: skateboard-shaped keyboards (complete with useful wheels), folding wrist watch-keyboards, and a legendary “magical musical object”, which is anatomically shaped and has thousands of possible uses. The only black and white picture shows the object that triggered the entire collection, the author’s coveted Christmas gift that he never received: the “One & Only” Stylophone, a pocket organ used by David Bowie in “Space Oddity”. Appealing to the fetish for “circuit benders”, these toy musical instruments are objects of interest for hacker musicians, forming a treasure box of endless (new) sound. DJ Spooky’s introduction focuses on the musical value (rather than nostalgic and aesthetic) of these objects. In a video game arcade we can’t progress to the next level without winning the previous one. Similarly, the collection of Eric Schneider invites us to go back to when contemporary electronic music was in its embryonic state, giving us a perfect perspective for understanding the present.
Chiara Ciociola
