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.
Con “Bicycle Built for Two Thousand” Aaron Koblin si conferma artista specializzato in crowdsourcing. Come ha scritto Jeff Howe, il crowdsourcing è l’atto di una società o di un’istituzione di prendere una funzione una volta svolta da impiegati e appaltarla ad un network di persone indefinito (e generalmente ampio) sotto forma di chiamata aperta” (Wired, June 2006). In questo caso Koblin e Daniel Massey hanno dato in crowdsourcing la canzone “Daisy Bell” usando Mechanical Turk, il web service offerto da Amazon B2B. La canzone è stata divisa in 12 tracce audio e 6 tracce per tastiera. Ad ogni utente è stata suonata una singola sillaba o nota dalla versione sintetizzata ed è stato chiesto di riprodurla, ignorando a cosa stessero contribuendo. Loratori online da 71 paesi diverse sono state pagate 6 cents a testa per registrare la propria voce. I campioni audio risultanti sono stati combinati insieme e si possono ora ascoltare attraverso il website del progetto. Gli autori non hanno scelto questa particolare canzone a caso. Nel 1962 Artur C.Clarke stava visitando i laboratori Bell quando assistette alla dimostrazione di “Daisy Bell” (comunemente nota come “Bycicle for Two”) suonata da un computer. Clarke e Kubrick decisero di farla cantare al computer HAL in 2001: Odissea nello spazio. “Bicycle Built for Two Thousand” è il terzo lavoro di Aaron Koblin basato su Mechanical Turk, dopo i precedenti Sheep Market e Ten Thousand Cents. Come testimoniano queste opere, nell’ambito della sua ricerca Koblin prende dati sociali e infrastrutturali e li usa per esaminare tendenze culturali e modelli emergenti. In qualità di leader tecnologico del Creative Lab di Google, ha detto: “Sono estremamente interessato a vedere dove tutta questa raccolta dati stia andando. Mi domando se finiremo tutti ad inquinare i nostri spazi tanto da farla diventare insignificante, o se saremo capaci di fare crescere la nostra capacità di archiviazione e di organizzazione della ricerca mantenendo ogni cosa rilevante” (Creativity, February 2009). “Bicycle Built for Two Thousand” è un interessante esempio di collaborazione e aggregazione, tanto quanto una sforzo corale di “artificiale intelligenza artificiale” dove i lavoratori online svolgono compiti che i computers non sanno ancora svolgere.
Valentina Culatti
