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.
CD – Not On Label (Origami Galaktika Self-released)
Benny Braaten, aka Origami Galaktika, può vantare dal 1996 ad oggi una lunga serie di produzioni – LP, LP doppi, Cdr, CD, edizioni in proprio e su label quali Speeding Across My Hemisphere, Black Orchid, Jester, Blade e Monochrome Vision – seppure 021226 Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, la sua penultima uscita, fu registrata live e risale oramai ben al 2009. Questa pausa di riflessione evidentemente non ha nuociuto allo sperimentatore norvegese, musicista avvezzo a field recording naturali, con una particolare propensione per il suono “reale”, frammisto agli strumenti suonati, registrati e riutilizzati elettronicamente. Sembrano sequenze adesso che fluttuano nello spazio, rarefatte e ispirate, nelle otto partiture nelle quali è suddiviso questo One: musica ambient che non è solo un sottofondo ma anche una maniera differente e più contemporanea d’interpretare pulsioni space e psichedeliche, comunque esigenze che per l’autore sono una maniera d’esprimere concretamente i suoi interessi e il suo personale gusto per le articolazioni meditative e sognanti, intrise di religiosità neopagana e permeate da una visione della musica come accadimento. Ogni cosa è “uno” e da sempre le filosofie orientali affermano quanto l’interconnessione sia il vero motore che muove le nostre vite. Anche certa scienza sembra oggi interessata ad una visione olistica della realtà: dalla neurobiologia alla meccanica quantistica si sottolineano finalmente quelle che prima erano solo le intuizioni di artisti e filosofi. Il messaggio che viene da Origami Galaktika è comunque spiritualmente ben chiaro, un ponte tra intuizioni antiche e odierne consapevolezze, una poetica sviluppata con coerenza e impeccabilmente, gradevolissima nelle trame e mai scontata.
Origami Galaktika Live at K4, Praha
Origami Galaktika Live at K4, Praha from Per Åhlund on Vimeo.
