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.
The outsourcing project, presented at the ReadMe 100, Temporary Art Factory by software artist Leonardo Solaas, finds its founding principle in a finding of socio-economic nature. There is a substantial gap between salaries and wages earned in developed countries in developing countries. The difference makes the phenomenon of outsourcing, or the outsourcing of specific functions or services, palatable to both parties involved: on the one hand, the employer, a member of the wealthy minority, can save on production costs, from ' another employee, the talent of 'third world', takes advantage of higher pay. But what seems like a fair trade is actually a form of exploitation, corrupted by greed at the base of the first, which keep a high percentage of earnings, and competition among the latter, forced to lower prices to get orders and use their know-how at the service of others. The idea Argentine Solaas aims to subvert the rules of this unequal exchange through the conclusion of a special agreement in which the artist, 'Contractor', offers his knowledge to develop the project of one of the possible ' Employers' interested in making a proposal. The idea is chosen by the artist and the proposer sees realized and becomes master of the rights as if he himself was the author. In this case the contract has seen the participation of a 'MetaEmployer', Readme 100 Temporary Software Art Factory, responsible for payment. In preparing its proposal the 'Employer took into account the background of the artist, his skills and his interests. The artist has chosen instead the idea for his most inspiring and feasible. The latter was found to be 'Go-Logo' by Eric Londaits. Even the creator started with a reflection on contemporary society, arguing that the only chance to get exposure and be heard in the future will be to have 'a flashy logo and a catchy tune'. Go-Logo is nothing but a survival kit that allows you to instantly create a unique and eye-catching logo. Solaas has developed a flash application that generates a random image in response to the input, the words, which the user types in the field. What software art is a concept under construction, but if we accept the definition of Florian Cramer according to which it is an art form, whose matter is the algorithm and the purpose of which is a creative concept for the application, then that of Solaas is a good example of encoding an artist.
