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.
Revolver, ISBN 9783865884558, Germany, 2008, English
t0/Public Netbase ha indubbiamente giocato un ruolo storico nell’arte e nella politica dei nuovi media. Konrad Becker il suo visionario fondatore, ha dislocato l’epicentro delle sue attività a Vienna nei primi anni novanta (il suo sito web è stato uno dei primissimi nella scena ad essere zeppo di testi e biografie). Questa antologia di testi attraversa una decade di saggi, che rendono in dettaglio eventi che vanno dai tempi pionieristici ai giorni nostri. Possiamo apprezzare ricordi di diversi celebri artisti e performer che sono passati per la capitale austriaca per conferenze o performance. Curato da due membri dell’associazione amica Kuda.org, questo libro cristallizza l’approccio unico impiegato dal Netbase fin dagli albori. Infatti, come ricorda Francisco de Sousa Webber (co-fondatore del Netbase), la loro tradizione è stata “dissenso, spettacolo e umorismo da guerriglia”. Così l’istituzione viennese più influente della cultura dei nuovi media è stata coinvolta in molti progetti impegnativi e controversi che spesso precorrevano i tempi, nonostante i pericoli di sopravvivenza a lungo termine per un possibile conseguente taglio di fondi pubblici. Effettivamente, Netbase è stato uno dei tentativi più radicali per mettere in campo temi come il controllo dello stato e la propaganda, investendo in arte e teorie sovversive e pubbliche al tempo stesso (come per esempio il loro famoso evento “Sex, Lies and the Internet” che dopo le proteste ad alta voce di Haider ha minacciato tutte le loro attività successive). Insensibile a queste pressioni, Becker non ha mai realmente fermato il suo lavoro, ed è semplicemente passato negli ultimi anni ad una dimensione più personale, pubblicando una certa quantità di libri e organizzando la serie di eventi e conferenze WorldInformation.org in giro per il mondo. Grazie a dio non ha mai gettato la spugna.
