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.
Laboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre will be inaugurated on March 30. Located in Gijon, Asturias, the building designed by Luis Moya as an orphanage for miners’ children, was then altered and expanded when it was decided to house a multidisciplinary space devoted to the exhibition, research, training and production of new art and industrial creation forms. Labcyberspaces Project is part of the inauguration program and consists in ten selected artworks elaborating on the connections between art and technology and industry. The international jury members (Alex Adriaansens, director of V2_, Christiane Paul (Whitney Museum adjunct curator of new media arts, Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica artistic director and Rosina Gómez-Baeza, director of Laboral), have chosen projects that effectively use technology as a consubstantial part of the artwork conception. Sheep Market by Aaron Koblin and Logo.Hallucination by Christophe Bruno are two of them. ‘Alerting Infrastructure!’ by Jonah Brucker Cohen is a physical hit counter that translates web site hits of a physical location into physical building interior damage. ‘I’m a net artist’ by Area3 is a cartoon video which answers with humour and irony to the question ‘does net art exist?’. The same irony is behind he project ‘Seven Mile Boots’ by Beloff, Berger and Pichlmair, a pair of interactive shoes with audio; one can wear the boots, walk around as a flaneur simultaneously in the physical world and in the literal world of the internet, while the pieces on ‘www.re-move.org’ by Lia are an attempt to articulate mathematical and natural principles below a visual surface in an enjoyable and sometimes playful way. ‘Amazon Noir’, by Ubermorgen.com, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico, can be positioned within the actual discussion of property rights for non material goods and their use/violation on the internet. ‘Cartografía Táctica del Estrecho de Gibraltar’ by hackitectura.net e indymedia estrecho, ‘Elgiroeneleje’ by Gabriel González (dhijo-) and Deconstructed Music #1 by RAN (Carlos Navarro, Ramón Prada and Javier Ideami) complete the program. If a special attention has been paid to works exploring the notion of cyberspace as a universal meeting point, the global-localization attitude of the new digital culture centre is also quite evident. The establishment of this kind of centers in fact is aimed at a fruitful confront and collaboration between the regional cultural roots and international visitors. In this case, Asturias’ industrial tradition will be the starting point for a fruitful cultural exchange.
Valentina Culatti
