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.
La net.art appartiene già alla archeologia dei media, come la mostra “Written in Stone” (Oslo 2003) ha chiaramente mostrato. Esporre la net.art è questione d’impegno, perché impossibile evitare interpretazioni, se si desidera mostrare quest’arte in un modo che coinvolga il pubblico in uno spazio espositivo aldilà di un semplice clic del mouse. Tuttavia cosa succede se l’azione di mettere in mostra la net.art diventa un’opera d’arte in sé e l’area di visualizzazione è lo spazio pubblico? Nel suo ultimo intervento pubblico “Highscreen” Aram Bartholl ha dimostrato come gli spazi pubblici possono essere manipolati da un atto curatoriale di archeologia dei media. Ha recuperato schemi CRT abbona donati sulle strade di Berlino per mostrare internet art su di loro prima che questi dispositivi elettronici, come dice lui, “finiscano nell’inferno elettronico”. Ha vagato per città al fine di trovare monitor abbandonati che ha poi collegato a un disco esterno e alimentato di energia per mostrare opere quali 404 ‘di Jodi 1997,’crema ‘da Evan Roth 2010, ‘therevolvinginternet.com’ da Constant Dullaart 2010, ‘Super Mario Clouds’ di Cory Arcangel 2002. La maggior parte del tempo, i pedoni ignari passavano senza prestare attenzione ai vecchi dispositivi e al loro canto del cigno. Fedele alla sua pratica artistica, Aram Bartholl tematizza il rapporto tra la rete dati e lo spazio pubblico tutti i giorni. Mette in discussione la società guidata dall tecnologia e la tensione del pubblico spazio on-e offline: “In quale forma è il mondo della rete dati si manifesta nella nostra vita quotidiana? Che torna dal cyberspazio nello spazio fisico? In che modo le innovazioni digitali influenzano le nostre azioni quotidiane. Nello specifico pero’ questo progetto scava più a fondo e si confronta l’essenza dell’archeologia dei media e cioè non necessariamente informazioni contestuali su mezzi di comunicazione passati, ma la creazione di tali situazioni in cui si entra in contatto con i media nella loro operatività radicale e temporalità.
Valentina Culatti
