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.
Mad Player is shaping up as one of the musicians Gameboy electronic toy from a similar fashion to a controller for playstation able to manipulate and create music with extremely intuitive controls and performance more than respectable. In addition to endorsing the conceptual change from the notes of the musical stave to the samples as a unit essential for contemporary composition, the trinket in question is likely to spread to a wide audience of another avant-garde techniques of automatic music, since it also includes capacity generative. In fact, by setting one of the styles, you can activate the automatic dialing through algorithms owners. In the presets are all the most popular styles of electronics: Hip Hop, Rap, RnB, Downbeat, Ragga, Manga, Drums &Bass;, Jungle, House, Garage, Techno, Trance, Ambient, New Age, Ballad and Bossa, while integrated is a library of 550 and 800 instruments sound samples. The device consists of about a pound of electronics (without batteries), with headset and microphone supplied, and uses as a medium of choice SmartMedia cards (standard than 32 megs, but compatible to those from 128 megs). In addition to the standard inputs and outputs (stereo jack) Mad Player can be connected to mac and pc via USB. The reproduction of external files supports formats MP3, Windows Media Audio, MIDI, WAV and Karaoke, while his compositions uses a proprietary format, probably similar to MIDI, which still allow the use of vocals and external samples in just a few Kb memory space. Technically, the songs are considered as the result of six variables: bass, percussion, solo, riffs, samples and microphone. Also record the songs externally obtained is simple, as you just connect the audio output to a PC and synchronize their 'play' and 'rec'. Its not cheap however the retail price: about 320 euro.
