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.
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.
Rapper Prince Harvey, after his computer crashed and his external drive was stolen, managed to record an entire album in Apple Store SoHo in four months, befriending employees, hiding files and using USB sticks and mail. as support. Abbie Hoffman would have been proud.
Exhibit No. 1: A large black rubber dinghy lying in the entrance festival centre hall like a stranded whale. The boat had been transported from the Greek island of Lesbos to become part of the festival exhibition. Before its last →
Each year artists, gallery owners, collectors, curators and critics from around the world gather in Basel to attend a series of contemporary art fairs. Although the most significant of these is undoubtedly Art Basel, there are a number of satellite →
“Money is a social construct that largely exists in people’s minds” Brett Scott
Money Watching (2007) was a performance by Cesare Peitrousi as part of the series ‘Paradoxical Economies’ by Ikon Gallery. A shop in a commercial area of Birmingham was →
See the Elektra 12 photo set on Flickr
Montreal is the undisputed cultural capital of Canada and the largest city in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Although there’s a visible and perceivable strong legacy →
Check the Electrohype 2010 photo set here.
After a fascinating snowstorm, the sixth edition of Electrohype, the biennial for electronic art, opened at the Ystad Art Museum in Ystad (Sweden). A point of →
Check the Vivo arte.mov 2011 photo set here.
arte.mov has been a major Brazilian fes- tival of art and new media in the last few years. It’s especially focused on mobility, in part because it’s →
Check the Culture(s) of copy photo set here.
Copying as a tool of the re- appropriation of meaning, amplification and creation of sense: this was the territory chosen for the exhibition “Culture(s) of copy” hosted →
Check the Pasajes. Viajes por el híper-espacio photo set here
Moving through the imposing Greek columns made of neon that are reminiscent of typical ancient ones, immediately evokes the feeling that →
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Check the ISEA2010 photo set here (140 pictures).
The 2010 edition of the “nomadic” ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art) was even more nomadic this year, traveling through three cities: Essen, Dortmund (where the core →
Check the Interferenze photo set here.
The idea of the nonconformist as no longer the black sheep but the one now wearing a digital player and headphones admirably sums up the theme of the 2010 →
