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.
I titolari di Pirate Bay Gottfrid Svartholm (alias anakata), Peter Sunde (alias brokep), Fredrik Neij (alias TiAMO), e Carl Lundstrom, sono stati recentemente condannati per il loro ruolo nell’amministrare un aggregatore di torrent che centralizza lo scambio libero di musica, film e software. Con una sentenza che li obbliga a pagare 30 milioni di Corone Svedesi, Anakata ha invece lanciato una campagna intitolata “internet-avgift“, ossia “canone di internet”, un gioco di parole centrato sul canone che si paga per i canali della televisione svedese, il tv-avgift, appunto. Usando un sito web modellato su quello gestito dalla società televisiva, i fondatori di Pirate Bay incoraggiano i loro fan ad assisterli, mandando denaro alla Danowsky & Partners, uno studio legale che ha rappresentato l’industria discografica al loro processo. La “internet-avgift” consiste infatti in un attacco “DDO$”, riferendosi ai classici DDOS, attacchi di tipo (Distributed Denial of Service). Mentre un attacco DDOS standard genera un traffico di informazioni digitali tale da mettere offline un sito web, questo cosiddetto DDO$ vuol generare una pioggia di pagamenti per mandare in tilt il conto corrente della vittima. Ricevendo infatti non più di una corona svedese per volta, la società Danowsky sarà costretta a spendere una notevole quantità di tempo elaborando dati che generano poco più che spiccioli, visto che il conto bancario a cui i pagamenti saranno inviati ha solo 1000 movimenti gratuiti, dopo i quali ogni transazione ha un sovrapprezzo di 2 Corone per il titolare del conto stesso. I “capitani” di Pirate Bay sono fra i più subdoli filesharer al mondo e i loro perfidi atti potrebbero portare persino al fallimento dello studio legale. Finirà che gli incapaci avvocati soccomberanno ad un “torrent” di pagamenti? O si ritroveranno in cima a tutto? Il processo continua.
Valentina Culatti
