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.
deadSwap è un sistema di filesharing clandestino offline che utilizza porte SMS anonime e locali per circolare una penna USB tra i partecipanti. L’uso di porte SMS gestite in maniera indipendente implica che il sistema non necessita della presenza di Internet. Questo significa inoltre che adottando le necessarie precauzioni, il network privato può essere piuttosto difficile da monitorare.Il percorso della penna USB e l’identita’ degli altri partecipanti infatti non sono noti agli utenti. Ai partecipanti e’ richiesto di agire da agenti segreti. Come in un gioco di spie si possono sempre trovare in uno di questi ruoli: il coniglio, il dormiente, l’agente. Per cominciare gli utenti possono scaricare dal website del progetto uno zip file che racchiude il deadswap wiki e il folder di contenuto. Anche il manuale dell’agente e’ disponibile per il download. deadSwap e’ stato sviluppato da Dymitri Kleiner e il gurppo Telekommunisten. Come si legge nella dichiarazione di intenti, il social web ha sostituito Internet peer-to-peer. Il networking ugualitario del P2P e’ stato minato dagli interessi commerciali di un sistema client-sever dove le interazioni tra gli utenti sono mediate dagli operatori dei siti. Perciò il sistema di file sharing libero può sopravvivere solo attraverso operazioni segrete. Come per tutti i progetti di Tlekommunisten lo scopo e’ promuovere la comprensione delle relazioni tra gli assetti produttivi, il potere politico e lo sfruttamento globale e individuare come le imprese controllate dai lavoratori possono contribuire a risolver questi problemi. Il caso vuole tuttavia che facendo una query a motore di ricerca per “deadSwap” in cima alla lista dei risultati resi ci siano un link a flickr ed uno a un post facebook dove Kleiner chiede: “c’e qualcuno interessato a iniziare un netowrk deadSwap nella loro area locale …” Che il P2P indipendente abbia bisogno del Web 2.0 per promuoversi?
Valentina Culatti
