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.
Pogus, CD+DVD, ASIN: B00BCNWPIY, 2013
Brian Chase, il batterista della band Yeah-Yeah-Yeahs, non a caso ha così titolato questa uscita, Drums & Drones, un progetto che esplora il tipo di droni prodotti da tamburi sintonizzati a specifici livelli di pitch, processando i suoni con l’ausilio di computer ed altoparlanti. Il musicista e sperimentatore esplora il cosiddetto “just intonation tuning”, teoria basata sul suono armonico, inizialmente ispirata da La Monte Young e da “Dream House”, un’installazione newyorkese di Marian Zazeela. Le vibranti superfici sono presentate nelle forme d’un intero territorio pronto per essere esplorato utilizzando i caratteristici ed intriganti sistemi del compositore, implementazioni per le quali la vicinanza dei microfoni gioca un ruolo importante. I suoni sono ricorrenti ed emessi definendo ambiti acustici molto differenti. L’intero album può essere apprezzato sia come audio o come audio-video: Ursula Scherrer ed Erik Z hanno realizzato infatti minimali ed astratti video che possono essere graditi a partire dal DVD allegato. Due di questi video sono a colori (“A cymbal drone” e “Drum state of mind, v.2”) ed esibiscono un caratteristico range di colori, alcune texture materiche e una sfocatura costante che danno loro un aspetto visivo che risale a qualche decennio fa. Gli altri video sono in bianco e nero e sono popolati da forme abbastanza primarie che muovendosi all’unisono riempiono lo schermo come seguendo una griglia invisibile. Tutti i video condividono un sentire onirico, visivamente correlato a qualcosa in bilico tra astrazione e realtà. Quello che emerge poi sono le contemplative caratteristiche dei suoni, rafforzati dalle loro rispettive animazioni, creando una simbiosi perfetta e riflettendo le qualità compositive ad esse relazionate con evidenti conseguenze visive ed emotive.
Brian Chase – Drums & Drones
