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.
In posti come il CERN di Ginevra non è certamente possibile vedere ad occhio nudo le microparticelle accelerate dagli enormi macchinari in funzione. L’invisibilità dei processi legati a questi esperimenti rende ostica la loro comprensione, lasciando sopiti molti potenziali fan della fisica. E’ per questo motivo che Niklas Roy ha realizzato l’opera “Sponge Ball Pneumatic Acceraltor”, rispondendo alla chiamata del curatore dello Tschumi Pavilion, spazio espositivo dalle pareti trasparenti posizionato al centro di un crocevia della cittadina olandese di Groningen. L’installazione simula il meccanismo di un acceleratore di particelle tramite pochi elementi: 1000 palline nere di spugna posizionate in due grandi bolle trasparenti, un aspirapolvere casalingo, 150 metri di tubi pneumatici, sensori a raggi infrarossi e un Arduino. Al segnale del sensore che intercetta il movimento dei passanti, l’aspirapolvere si accende e le palline schizzano da una bolla all’altra grazie alla differenza di pressione dell’aria nei tubi. Posando inoltre la mano sulla sagoma illuminata dalla luce cangiante a vari colori fluo si continua l’esperienza, poichè si inverte la direzione delle palline. E’ in questo momento che si riuscirà a vederle, a discernere il percorso, poiché le piccole sfere rallenteranno per un po’ la loro corsa, si fermeranno, per poi lanciarsi nella nuova direzione fino a che la velocità di movimento di circa 4 m/s non tornerà a regime. Descrivendo la sua opera l’artista afferma: “I decided to construct a machine which would bring the tremendous joy of particle acceleration to everyone!”. In effetti le luci colorate e la grande freccia rotante che indica il sensore ricordano l’estetica di un luna park. Forse anche il gesto dell’imposizione della mano forse fa parte dello stesso immaginario. Come fosse una macchina della verita’ sembra sancire la possibilita’ di una scienza liberata dal mistero, trasparente e per tutti, semplice da comprendere come un’aspirapolvere, aperta come il codice scaricabile che governa l’installazione. Chiara Ciociola
Pneumatic Sponge Ball Accelerator – An installation at Tschumi Pavilion, Groningen
