Critical digital culture and media arts · Since 1993
L'Archivio Neural è un archivio di pubblicazioni noi raccolte nel corso degli anni. Sfoglia la nostra collezione qui.
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.
book+dvd – debalie / NAi Publishers – ISBN 905662539X
Dalla tradizione orale in poi, il potere della comunicazione è stato strettamente connesso al controllo, alla memoria e all’immaginario. Quest’ultimo era ed è il più efficace motore dietro ogni nuova tecnologia o dispositivo (fisico o incorporeo) e l’immaginario dei media è altresì basato sulla suaimmaterialità. L’eterea trasmissione dei contenuti attraverso segni, contrasti e colori variamente combinati è in grado di toccare profondamente le nostre fantasie e creare mitologie e mondi separati nelle nostre menti. Quindi l’uso collettivo dei media è capace di generare un’anima fittizia e autonoma, fatta di desideri proiettati socialmente. Un ristretto gotha di teorici americani ed europei (l’editor Eric Kluitenberg, Siegfried Zielinski, Bruce Sterling, Erkki Huhtamo, Timothy Druckrey, Richard Barbrook e altri, formalizza qui una summa storica di antenati visionari dei cosiddetti ‘new media’, scandagliando la storia e riconoscendo il ricorrere delle idee. Tracciando peculiari eventi ripetuti, come le bolle speculative finanziarie, o ricostruendo fenomeni come l’Afrofuturismo, l’editor si confronta anche con un aspetto sottile della relazione fra tempo e informazione. In realtà i media immaginari incorporano il potere della comunicazione infinita, prendendo il controllo del tempo e il medium specifico. Il processo di trasmettere riguarda direttamente al vita dell’informazione / comunicazione, e quindi la sua immortalità, ossessionando eprfino un eminente scienziato come Edison e vari altri artisti e sperimentatori in diversi periodi storici. Come realmente trascendere la nostra vita corporea per continuare le nostre attività di elaborazione personale dell’informazione e la loro trasmissione è l’ultima e allo stesso tempo più antica domanda senza risposta. Il dvd accluso offre una conferenza/performance di Peter Blegvad e alcuni bellissimi cartoni animati / fumetti che interpretano l’argomento. Con un tale assortimento di contenuti e decine di esempi dal passato inclusi in piccole dimensioni, questo libro si accinge a diventare un classico futuro degli studi sui media.
