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.
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30.05.02 Artbots, competition for creative robots.
It was held at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (New York), the first ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show , an exhibition / competition of robots 'talented' built by many malicious users. Ten projects were selected, respectively, by artists, engineers and geeks. The Audience Award went to 'AO2000', by David Webber, a musical automaton made of different common objects and old computers that form an interactive sound machine, which works by detecting the presence of the spectators and creating melodies in constant variation. The Jury Prize was awarded instead to 'SYMET Studio' Joseph Stefan Prosky, a group of ten robots powered by solar energy that draw abstract images made with marks traced through mild jolts that require several hours to complete and are totally dependent on the type of light used to power the robots themselves. Among other works are: 'Color Musically Yours. Love, Todd. ' Mira Friedlaender, Stephanie Hunt and Keith Waters, in which a computer scans colorful designs created by visitors by converting the data into music, through a simple calculation of the amount of light is reflected from the paper, 'do not break anything (after christian wolff) 'of douglas irving repetto, instead, consists of a turntable covered with a layer of stones with three robotic arms terminating with different materials (a stone, a piece of metal and a piece of wood), which rubs against the tiny rocks produce different types of sounds in a set of improvisation in which the different arms take into account what others are doing. 'Light Motive', David Birchfield, consists of a series of 'organisms' autonomous robotic that interact with each other and with the surrounding environment. Each 'organism' is equipped with a light, some light sensors and a number of prisms and reflective surfaces in addition to a microphone and a loudspeaker. The interaction takes place with the purpose of spreading their light in a more intensive way possible, with the microphones that amplify the twists of the strings they hang from the various organizations. 'Patterns of Metric Amplitude' Gregory Shakar, is a life-size kinetic sculpture that creates unusual rhythms through eight additional metronomes that emit a tone when crossing the middle of their run. Via a control panel is possible to vary the speed of each metronome in order to create different melodies. 'Roving Walter Walter' of mxHz.org (lahaag and chip.kali) consists in a set of 4 wheels independently controlled which are mounted under a video camera and two microphones. Scrolling through the room the unit analyzes the audio / visual, piling a bit 'as humans do when they move. All this, analyzed for similarities is shown by an lcd screen and two small speakers integrated into the project. From the results purely graphic is, on the contrary, 'Sketching Device # 1' of Ranjit Bhatnagar, which through simple move instructions wheel unpredictably with low-frequency vibrations that move a sheet of paper so that it is colored by specific colors. 'Sumi-ebot' Eva Sutton and Sarah Hart consists of an autonomous robot that paints according to an ancient Zen style, in coordination with others, as appropriate, via infrared signals and detecting the boundaries of paper and their respective areas of intervention allowed . Absolutely evocative, finally, 'The Reader' by John S. Lathram III, created sull'integrazine of an organic structure (a wooden arm) with micro-motors and mechanical parts that create a total entity, almost 'alive', created to turn the pages of a book, in this case of Shakespeare and project its image on the back wall.
