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.
Routledge, ISBN 9780415961325, U.S.A., 2008, English
Il “gigantesco libro sulla media art” sembra essere un marchio di fabbrica dello ZKM. Questo nuovo tomo è di 840 pagine e pesa 3 chili e mezzo, similmente a “Future Cinema” e “CTRL-SPACE”, altri due massicci volumi sulla storia della video art (da una prospettiva differente). Tutti questi libri sono co-curati da Peter Weibel (il deus ex machina dello ZKM), che è anche fra gli autori. I tre libri sono i pesanti “cataloghi” delle rispettive mostre, la prima ospitata allo ZKM. Weibel è andato avanti, curando Future Cinema e quest’ultima mostra. Egli è anche fra gli artisti selezionati in tutte e tre le mostre. Si tratta quindi solo di una questione interna? No davvero. Sebbene le questioni di cui sopra sembrino essere più che semplici coincidenze, stiamo ancora parlando di importanti eventi dello ZKM, la maggiore istituzione di media art tedesca. Ciò che è stato prodotto ancora una volta qui è storia della media art, e per fortuna ciò è ben documentato in quest’ultimo libro. Si tratta quindi di un eccellente raccolta di documenti, che consiste in numerose fotografie, schermate e riproduzioni di materiali originali come flyer, poster, programmi e moltissimi testi relativi alla fondazione del visionario dipartimento “Department of Media Study” alla State University of New York di Buffalo, nel 1973 da Gerald O’Grady. O’Grady è pure una delle otto figure celebrate qui insieme a James Blue, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Steina e Woody Vasulka, e naturalmente Weibel. In ogni capitolo ci sono documenti preziosi (sia in formato visuale che scritto), perloppiù inediti, confermando che qui il fattore di ricerca è il test di qualità primario.
