tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art/8 2013-04-24T10:05:38Z Movable Type 3.2 tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10500 2013-04-24T10:07:57Z 2013-04-24T10:05:38Z

edited by: Carsten Seiffarth, Carsten Stabenow, Golo Föllmer - PFAU Verlag, ISBN 978-3897274877, 416 pages, 2012, German, English There was a long tradition of dismissing and repressing experimental music in Central and Eastern Europe during socialist times. And even after...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it edited by: Carsten Seiffarth, Carsten Stabenow, Golo Föllmer - PFAU Verlag, ISBN 978-3897274877, 416 pages, 2012, German, English
There was a long tradition of dismissing and repressing experimental music in Central and Eastern Europe during socialist times. And even after 1989 the West didn't fully explore what was missed in those decisive few decades. This book begins the process of making up for lost time, bypassing the classic academic approach ]]> in an elegant and constructive way. It's a trans-regional effort, funded by Goethe Institute, coordinated by the musicologist Föllmer and the two artistic directors Stabenow and Seiffarth, who have spent time and organized meetings, events and workshops in the culture capitals of the respective countries: Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Krakow, Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn. The involvement of local musicians and historians has reinforced the already existing international networks, and has also served to connect what happened since the 60s with the youngest digital generation. This networked research allows facts and names to emerge through a discursive chronology, unfolding the flourishing of audio arts and experimental music festivals and centres scattered over the reviewed regions, contextualized in general history and personal stories. Being carefully developed and having everything translated into English, it constitutes an excellent resource, extended by an online blog with audio files and pictures. Observing the quality of this product gives hope that there will be comparable future projects focussing on the Balkans, an area with similar history and similar forgotten underground cultural treasures. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10497 2013-04-22T09:21:45Z 2013-04-22T09:22:20Z

Jan Robert Leegte’s new works re-examine the hypermateriality of the digital domain. Educated as a sculptor and architect this Dutch artist has a unique approach to art in the context of the internet. His recent online work‚ Random Selection...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Jan Robert Leegte’s new works re-examine the hypermateriality of the digital domain. Educated as a sculptor and architect this Dutch artist has a unique approach to art in the context of the internet. His recent online work‚ Random Selection in Random Image pushes the boundaries of both the notion of creativity and of individual perception. Leegte has created a smart commentary on the]]> new prerequisites for the reception and production of art in a technology infested environment. By highlighting random areas within random images from Flickr he both undermines and reinstates Ronald Barthes’ idea of the punctum in photography. “The notion of the manifested or materialized cognitive process of selecting intrigues me,“ says Leegte about this work. Also the punctum is no longer a purely immaterial, social or psychological phenomenon, but it merges fluidly with an encoded and embedded media-material reality. Images and particularly photographs have lost a great deal of their magic and appeal since they started flooding the net. By taking them as raw matter for the new camera (computer software) and the new eye (the network) images are reinvigorated. In Random Selection Leegte brings back the element of surprise to each photograph by robbing us of our alleged privilege of being at the basis of our own point of view, our own gaze, literally. In an interview with V2, Canadian theorist Brian Massumi describes this kind of manipulation as elementary to art: “Every art object works by tapping into a certain aspect of “natural” perception in order to re-abstract it, so that some actual potentials that were there are suspended while others that tended not to appear before, or even had never appeared before, are brought out.“ In this work the uncertainty brought on by the use of software agents and bots is used to our advantage. It is used to reinstate the poetry and the magic of the image. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10559 2013-04-15T06:03:13Z 2013-04-19T19:20:55Z

Check the Open Your City - Share Festival 2012 Report photo set here. Reappropriation of urban space, visions about the city of the future and grassroots participation. These main themes of Share Festival 2012 were given expression in the edition’s...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Check the Open Your City - Share Festival 2012 Report photo set here. Reappropriation of urban space, visions about the city of the future and grassroots participation. These main themes of Share Festival 2012 were given expression in the edition’s title - Open Your City - an imperative formula suggestive of sharing spaces and services and stressing the need for active involvement in the process of technological and social transition. This year’s Share prize included six finalists connected]]> Ylenia Cafaro ]]> tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10493 2013-04-11T10:56:53Z 2013-04-11T10:57:32Z

edited by Rasa Smite, Eric Kluitenberg and Raitis Smits - RIXC, The Centre for New Media Culture, ISSN: 1407-2858, 168 pages, 2012, English Acoustic Space is a journal founded in 1998 that for a few years now has functioned as...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it edited by Rasa Smite, Eric Kluitenberg and Raitis Smits - RIXC, The Centre for New Media Culture, ISSN: 1407-2858, 168 pages, 2012, English
Acoustic Space is a journal founded in 1998 that for a few years now has functioned as a peer-reviewed journal, usually printed every year and coinciding with a festival on the same topic (including conferences and an exhibition), held in Riga (Latvia). The main theme of issue #11 (relating to the 2011 event) is shaped on Felix Guattari's]]> call for integrated dramatic technological and scientific transformation on earth. He formulated three "ecological registers" which have been adopted as sections of the publication (Environmental Ecology, Social Ecology and Mental Ecology) plus one focussing on the exhibition. From this perspective Eric Kluitenberg (who coined the techno-ecology concept) cites the philosopher David Rothenberg in his paper and his concept of "deep technology", which stresses the need for symbiosis with ecology, subverting the misleading industrial propaganda of self-empowerment. His concept of "inhabiting technologies" perfectly categorizes a number of different contributions such as Tatiana Goryucheva's essay on "food traceability", Ojars Balcers’ piece on the lifecycle of flame retardant materials, and the richly argued call for a "Cultura Experimentalis" by Siegfried Zielinski. RIXC has become one of the centres most sensitive to the need for a pragmatic relationship between science and art, reflecting the research investment in local universities around renewable energies. The theoretical texts are excellently integrated with performative artworks and there is a strong experimental science component, forming a compelling publication. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10496 2013-04-08T10:02:11Z 2013-04-12T23:30:28Z

The reward-return system Facebook uses to entice users back to their profile to check for likes on posted photographs, comments on their status updates and peruse their ever-growing friend count creates an algorithm of addiction most users can testify...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it The reward-return system Facebook uses to entice users back to their profile to check for likes on posted photographs, comments on their status updates and peruse their ever-growing friend count creates an algorithm of addiction most users can testify to. Statistical number-crunching and manipulation of this data ]]> Facebook Demetricator is a free web browser add-on that hides Facebook metrics in order for a user to focus on content and people and not the numbers commonly representing them. All counts disappear so that a user can interact within a social network without enumerated rewards. According to Ben Grosser, the author of the software, “the quantifications of social connection play right into our (capitalism-inspired) innate desire for more”. This can clearly be backed up by that very notion that the advertising revenue raised by Facebook is dependent on the content the users put into it, which is in turn not rewarded by a monetary payment [as it is the case with some other online systems] but with the gratification of 'numeric popularity'. When we are presented with a status update, or a photograph, what degree of autonomy do we have in our experience? How does our perception change according to whether 2 people have liked a status update compared to several hundred? How many less photographs might be posted if Facebook removed its like button all together? These are some of the questions the author of Demetricator raises. The software works by removing all traces of counts from the interface - for example 'You and 7 other people like this' becomes 'You and other people like this'. It's important to note that the software doesn't affect the database content, but only the display of these counts seen on the user’s page. Grosser is taking feedback from users of Demetricator to gauge how their experience of Facebook is changed by it. He is inviting users to engage with the questions ‘Who are my friends?’ ‘How do they think?’ and ‘What have they said?’]]> tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10440 2013-04-04T09:23:00Z 2013-04-04T09:31:19Z

Replay Compiler / Tweaklab [booklet + DVD], ISBN 978-3952285930, 2012, English The fourth volume of Compiler is dedicated to the multiplicity of reuse practices in audiovisual artworks produced with digital tools, interfaces and paradigms. The development of this attitude...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Replay Compiler / Tweaklab [booklet + DVD], ISBN 978-3952285930, 2012, English
The fourth volume of Compiler is dedicated to the multiplicity of reuse practices in audiovisual artworks produced with digital tools, interfaces and paradigms. The development of this attitude was once the preserve of artists, though in the second half of the 00s social media and the phenomenon ]]> of the instant celebrity increased the contribution of amateurs, leading to various aesthetic reconceptualizations such as the notion of “post-digital”. The selection documents how visual sampling has become a street phenomenon able to reach a critical mass of practitioners more efficiently than audio sampling. The videos here plunder content from every source, mixing, sequencing and cutting with an almost absolute lack of prejudices and standardized categories. Most of the time the cut makes it impossible to date when videos were created, giving them a special quality, although material from the eighties, for example seems to be in vogue, as well as weird amateur internet videos. Hip-hop generated a whole generation of unsophisticated musicians sampling and rhyming, many of whom produced a few demos and then stopped – something which connects to the current over-production of videos hosted on YouTube. In parallel, independent hip-hop artists have produced innovative experiments that have shown how to think outside the box using the same tools. Compiler 04 gathers a similar roster of artists, using material "found" in one way or another, defining new prototypes for "sampling" and reassembling. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10485 2013-04-03T10:02:44Z 2013-04-03T10:03:06Z

Cod.Act's Pendulum Choir explores the relationship between gravity, vocal movement in space and choral composition by placing a 9-piece choir on tilting, continuously moving platforms. A revolving, undulating hydraulic jack supports each singer. These movements have a direct physical...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Cod.Act's Pendulum Choir explores the relationship between gravity, vocal movement in space and choral composition by placing a 9-piece choir on tilting, continuously moving platforms. A revolving, undulating hydraulic jack supports each singer. These movements have a direct physical impact on the singers, causing ]]> specific sonorous effects. The performance is constrained not only by the effects of gravity on the body and lungs but also the interaction in space between singers as they move in and out of close proximity with one and another. In this sense Pendulum Choir can be viewed as a system of local entities interacting to create global behaviour - individual voices merge to create complex polyphonies guided by spatio-temporal movement and gravitational force. Although there is vocal autonomy for each singer, the overall impression is one of a single controlling robotic intelligence - a many-headed cyborg hydra. Visually we are reminded of multiform systems such as those found in magnetism or particles affected by elastic forces. After initial explorations into the relationships between movement and sound using the hydraulic platform system Cod.Act realised that the effects these spatial and gravitation constrains had on the vocal abilities of the singers could be harnessed as a compositional parameter in itself. This is a prime example of how an explorative technique can generate new parameters to be exploited in the compositional process. Gravity and spatial configurations not only affect performance but have also driven the composition from the outset. The composer and architect saw evocations of a living organ, a lung and subsequently realised the composition's narrative, sonically and metaphorically, according to the workings of the respiratory system. Each singer represents one of the lung's alveoli. The authors suggest that the music is based on readings of Virgil, Ovid and Horace: "The choir blows and sings the breath. It travels from life to death, exhales, suffocates, loses its equilibrium while recounting its sensation of the last breath on its descent to hell". The voices appear to be generating the movement of the machine and being affected by it simultaneously – suggestive of a feedback loop. This two-way process is reflected by cycles of sonority that recall previous cycles and further create an accretion of vocal motifs. The echoes of the breath instantiate a kind of robotic Pranayama where the machine derives its life-force from the choir. Cod.Act is André and Michel Décosterd, respectively a musician/composer and an architect, a team that develops artistic productions, performances and interactive installations using devices to translate physical movement into sound phenomena. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10488 2013-04-02T11:53:45Z 2013-04-02T11:58:32Z

Polity, ISBN: 9780745650265, 200 pages, 2012, English To understand the "futuristic" present we live in it's very important to know our past. This seems particularly true when it comes to media culture. In fact it appears that the only feasible...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Polity, ISBN: 9780745650265, 200 pages, 2012, English
To understand the "futuristic" present we live in it's very important to know our past. This seems particularly true when it comes to media culture. In fact it appears that the only feasible kind of time traveling is what is usually defined as "media archaeology", which allows us to re-create and use the same mediations on content that]]> have been used by people in the past, refashioning their specific media context. This book discusses Media Archaeology as an important field in a number of disciplines, studying the preservation and history of (new) media art from different angles. Parikka’s interest in logically connecting different “worlds” – such as the oft-cited “Steampunk” aesthetic – introduces a methodology for understanding the present through examining the past, exploring the death of certain media, archiving and various artistic techniques. One of the most interesting chapters is "imaginary media" which discusses the emergence of many important ideas (such as anachronism), with a technical analysis of specific characteristics. There are quite a number of artworks discussed along the line, especially in chapter 7. Is it the case that "fascination with old media technologies can help understand the new and the emerging digital culture", as the author states? Definitively yes, although maybe "fascination" can be replaced with "focused interest", something that may trigger the building of accessible collections/archives of tools and content, as has successfully been experienced in other domains of culture. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10443 2013-03-29T08:52:21Z 2013-04-12T09:46:26Z

Algae Opera is a work realized between Mezzo-Soprano Louise Ashcroft, composer Gameshow Outpatient and actor Samuel Lewis that uses a novel approach to cross-wire the sense of hearing and taste using algae. During a performance of this work CO2...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Algae Opera is a work realized between Mezzo-Soprano Louise Ashcroft, composer Gameshow Outpatient and actor Samuel Lewis that uses a novel approach to cross-wire the sense of hearing and taste using algae. During a performance of this work CO2 gas which is extracted from the singers breath ]]> Paul Prudence]]> tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10388 2013-03-26T11:09:38Z 2013-03-26T11:22:30Z

Taschen, ISBN: 978-3836525015, 416 pages, 2012, English In 1991 two of the most talented graphic designers of all time (Jon Wozencroft and Neville Brody) launched a unique experiment: FUSE, an annual publication packaged in a cardboard box that contained a...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Taschen, ISBN: 978-3836525015, 416 pages, 2012, English
In 1991 two of the most talented graphic designers of all time (Jon Wozencroft and Neville Brody) launched a unique experiment: FUSE, an annual publication packaged in a cardboard box that contained a printed zine with articles relating to typography culture, a floppy disk with four fonts and four posters that utilized]]> the same fonts. In the middle of the IT revolution and just before internet for the masses, this production was a milestone in contemporary graphic design and a novel form of publishing (we would have said ‘multimedia’ at that time). Creative Review described it as "the magazine of the future" referring to the idea that the form was designed specifically for the content, which in turn was a tool for creating new (potentially disparate) content. Each issue had a theme such as "Codes", "Religion" or "Pornography", around which the article, the fonts and the posters were created. The alphabet started to be considered (together with the computer keyboard) as a medium for digitally coded sense. This anthology celebrates FUSE and acts as a form of preservation. It also includes unpublished issues #19 and #20. Aside from the two editors, several radical innovators were involved, such as Peter Saville, David Carson, the Tomato collective and many other designers keen on opening new conceptual windows between the machine and the printed page. The nineties aesthetic is easily recognizable (think techno flyers, for example), but in fifty years’ time this project is more than likely going to be labelled as avant-garde. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10362 2013-03-25T09:14:33Z 2013-03-25T09:26:32Z

"The decelerator" designed by German artist Lorenz Potthast is a helmet made with reflective metal, aiming to provide total detachment from reality. The helmet does not generate a virtual or augmented reality, but instead changes the temporal perception of...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it "The decelerator" designed by German artist Lorenz Potthast is a helmet made with reflective metal, aiming to provide total detachment from reality. The helmet does not generate a virtual or augmented reality, but instead changes the temporal perception of what is happening outside: it gives the user a  "slow motion" ]]> Chiara Ciociola]]> tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10386 2013-03-22T12:18:37Z 2013-03-22T12:19:46Z

Brouillard Anarchive [book + DVD-rom + DVD], ISBN: 978-2951813229, English, Japanese, French In what format can a monograph be shaped in current times? It's an open question that deals with two main domains of problems: the content should be as...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Brouillard Anarchive [book + DVD-rom + DVD], ISBN: 978-2951813229, English, Japanese, French
In what format can a monograph be shaped in current times? It's an open question that deals with two main domains of problems: the content should be as complete as possible in every direction; and to prolong its intrinsic referential attitude, it should be accessible for as long as possible. This monograph ]]> gives a possible answer in the evolving tradition of Anarchive, a series of artist monographs meant as a portable archive. Curated by Anne-Marie Duguet, the books come with digital discs and are produced together with the artist, usually with rare or unpublished documents. Volume #5 is about Fujiko Nakaya, a remarkable artist who dedicated most of her artistic life to creating fog sculptures (more than fifty are presented here), intended to be enjoyed in public spaces. In the thick catalogue there are texts in three languages and pictures, plans, videos, maps of locations and other varied data documenting her work. In a separate internal case there are two DVDs. The first contains 13 videos (dating back to her intervention at the Pepsi Pavilion in 1970 to more recent ones). The second is a DVD-ROM, with a searchable database of her works including interviews, proposals, more than 600 pictures, 75 videos (including excerpts from her works), accessible via an interactive fog/cloud interface (designed by doubleNegatives), and updated with links on the web. The release contains a huge quantity of information, all very well integrated and mostly durable, as a portable archive should be. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10360 2013-03-20T10:53:51Z 2013-03-20T10:58:32Z

In recent decades, and perhaps nudged by the exponential growth of new technologies, media artists have demonstrated not only an increasing interest in the history of technology, but also with the non-synchronous merging of incongruous technologies in their artworks....

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it In recent decades, and perhaps nudged by the exponential growth of new technologies, media artists have demonstrated not only an increasing interest in the history of technology, but also with the non-synchronous merging of incongruous technologies in their artworks. Vintage futurism and ]]> Tworse Key. Using an open source, open hardware framework, Martin has hard-wired a classic Morse Telegraph key-switch to send Twitter messages via a standard LAN network cable. Morse signals, created by analogue tapping gestures on the Telegraph key, are converted to digital format ready for transmission to the Twitter API using a built-in Arduino Ethernet board. In the spirit of hardware hacking and open source philosophy Martin also supplies detailed instructions, schematics, software configurations and general requirements on how to build your own Tworse Key on his website. The quasi-musical nature of Morse code has been exploited in much current experimental electronic music. The staccato rhythmic beeps have acted as percussive refrain for those exploring data-infused soundscaping. Typing a twitter message is a percussive action on a standard keyboard - inputting the same message through Tworse Key accentuates the percussive quality of digital communication in such a way that a 150 character tweet is heard as a kind of minimal binary-bit step music. Telegraphy is a long gone technology but Morse, as a communication protocol, is still popular with HAM radio enthusiasts to key transmitters on and off and calibrate their systems. Not surprisingly these radio enthusiasts have been to quick to pick up on Tworse Key and some of their tweets, as well as other examples of telegraphic tweeting, can be accessed at Tworse Key . Tworse Key gives Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail’s invention, which is around 170 years old, a new, albeit tiny kiss of life and a due salute.
Paul Prudence]]> tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10383 2013-03-19T11:05:20Z 2013-03-19T11:06:04Z

Princeton University Press, ISBN: 978-0691144610, 264 pages, 2012, English The whole ecosystem of hacking and FLOSS has rarely been considered by academic research, despite often being recognized as a terrific collective production. It has been considered more as a...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Princeton University Press, ISBN: 978-0691144610, 264 pages, 2012, English
The whole ecosystem of hacking and FLOSS has rarely been considered by academic research, despite often being recognized as a terrific collective production. It has been considered more as a "tool" and not recognized as an important abstract "laboratory" of labour and freedom. Coleman focuses on hacker communities]]> and what they mean and prove to the rest of society. The book develops along different paths, looking at hacker identities, gatherings, models and politics. There is, in fact, an attempt to describe a "typical" hacker, investigated through seventy different interviews conduced live or via email. Coleman (defined by Cory Doctorow as a "geek anthropologist") also functions as a hacker ethnographer, attending a number of Debian GNU/Linux conferences ("Debconfs") and describing Debian's internal organization and its strict management of skill together with essential ethical commitments. One of the most interesting parts is the analysis of FLOSS sustainable economic models and the permeation of radical values through production. Hacker communities are also characterized by the trust and the cleverness of their members, and the shared believe that they will impact society by "acting" and serving as examples. The common trait the author identifies as binding hackers from disparate backgrounds is the achievement of "productive freedom". The work also looks at the hacker belief that the claim "code is speech" deserves to become a crucial paradigm around which to structure a seminal part of our society. tag:www.neural.it,2013:/art//8.10356 2013-03-15T11:06:52Z 2013-03-15T11:06:57Z

Exploring the urban space with the nose: the work "Blind Smell Stick" by Peter de Cupere invites us to rediscover the familiar spaces in which we live. The object created looks like an ordinary walking stick but functions like...

Aurelio Cianciotta http://wickedstyle.neural.it Exploring the urban space with the nose: the work "Blind Smell Stick" by Peter de Cupere invites us to rediscover the familiar spaces in which we live. The object created looks like an ordinary walking stick but functions like the nose of a guide dog for the blind. The lower part of the stick is able to pick up odours through ]]> Chiara Ciociola]]>