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.
Mark Batty Publisher, ISBN 978-0982075487, USA, 2010, English
Quadrato e compatto, questo libro fa pensare ad una vecchia scatola di latta, di quelle che contengono prelibatezze misteriose o biscotti allo zenzero. Dalla sua collezione personale Eric Shneider ha creato questa deliziosa antologia di strumenti musicali giocattolo provenienti da tutto il mondo, risalenti a partire dagli anni ’60. Ogni pezzo è catalogato con immagine, anno di messa in vendita, provenienza, e un (esilarante) logline che ne illustra il funzionamento o le varie tipologie di suono prodotte. Qualche fortunato esemplare è corredato anche della scatola: bambini sorridenti e testimonial improbabili accompagnano, ad esempio, tastiere a forma di skateboard (con utilissime rotelle), vari sintetizzatori vocali e un mitoco “magico oggetto musicale” dal design anatomico e dalle mille possibilità d’uso. Unico esemplare in bianco e nero è l’oggetto che ha innescato tutta la collezione, anelato regalo di Natale mai ricevuto dall’autore: il “one & only” Stylophone, un pocket organ usato da David Bowie in “Space Oddity”. Feticci dei “circuit benders”, questi strumenti musicali giocattolo, sono oggetto di massima attenzione da parte dei music hacker, in quanto antichi scrigni di infiniti (nuovi) suoni. L’introduzione di Dj Spooky focalizza l’attenzione sul valore musicale (più che nostalgico ed estetico) di questi oggetti. In un videogame arcade non possiamo passare al livello successivo senza aver definitivamento vinto in quello precedente. Allo stesso modo la collezione di Eric Shneider ci porta indietro, al momento in cui la musica elettronica personale era al suo stato embrionale, regalandoci un perfetto punti di partenza per comprendere quella contemporanea.
Chiara Ciociola
