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 – Re-Records
Le uscite discografiche risultato di residenze artistiche allo STEIM ad Amsterdam ci hanno sempre appassionato e anche questa volta non delude Takuro Mizuta Lippit – aka dj sniff – uno degli animatori a 360° dell’istituzione olandese dedicata allo studio della electro instrumental music. Europa, il nuovo album in formato esteso di dj sniff, già dai primi minuti d’ascolto ci catapulta in un universo metamorfico, mescolando intramontabili routine jazz con virtuosismi parossistici ai piatti, fondendo suoni di matrice differente nella tradizione del free-jazz e della musica improvvisativa sperimentale. L’uso del giradischi come uno strumento non è certo una novità, ma sottrarre questa pratica alla tradizione tipicamente hip hop e pervertirla ad altri approcci, coinvolgendo attitudini musicali che non sempre sono convergenti e banali nelle loro relazioni, non è affatto scontato. Europa è un po’ il compendio di tutta una stagione di sperimentazioni e dice lo stesso dj sniff: “la musica che ho sviluppato è ripetitiva, nervosa, è focalizzata sulle variazioni di brevi frasi musicali”. Ogni inviluppo è quindi subitaneamente ribaltato offrendo allo stesso tempo ganci per nuovi processi manipolativi creando di continuo nuovi significati e associazioni. Le registrazioni sono comunque ricostruite grazie a un sistema computerizzato che permette di campionare e riprodurre i suoni in un continuo movimento del crossfader e a completare il tutto dj sniff aggiunge anche le crudi tessiture di un sintetizzatore autocostruito – il Blippoo Box – un non convenzionale strumento analogico messo a punto da Rob Hordijk che viene aggiunto al già eclettico set-up. Le registrazioni effettuate allo STEAM risalgono all’estate del 2012 ma il tutto poi è stato mixato e masterizzato alla School of Creative Media di Honk Kong, megalopoli nella quale adesso è di base il brillante turntablista.
DJ Sniff
