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 – Discreet
Subito dopo aver apprezzato l’artwork davvero elegante ed originale, comprensivo di un cd tutto nero e che emula i solchi delle tracce in vinile, abbiamo iniziato l’ascolto di Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, un progetto collaborativo di Attilio Novellino, Saverio Rosi, Rob Mazurek e Tim Barnes. Novellino e Rosi – che da tempo operano anche sotto il moniker Sentimental Machines – insieme avevano già lavorato al recupero del Lanificio Leo di Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro), utilizzando le antiche macchine industriali al fine d’estrarne specifiche sonorità. I campionamenti effettuati sono stati usati come materia grezza alla quale aggiungere poi gli apporti di Mazurek e Barnes, musicisti che vengono da ambiti più legati alla sperimentazione free form e all’elettroacustica. Com’è logico, il tutto ha funzionato come un vero e proprio quartetto, dove ognuno degli elementi merita pari dignità e importanza, risuonando di magiche atmosfere, intrise di jazz, avanguardia, contaminazioni elettroniche e ambient. La combinazione di strumenti sia analogici che digitali con field recording e sample vari è sempre origine di risultati interessanti quando non abusata negli sperimentalismi e quando il virtuosismo strumentale è tenuto al guinzaglio. Così può apparire scontata la riuscita dell’operazione – che prevede anche organi, chitarre, bassi trattati e sintetizzatori modulari – se perfino la dorata cornetta di Mazurek fa la sua comparsa oculatamente. Un album del genere, almeno ci piace immaginarlo, potrebbe essere apprezzato da pubblici differenti ricucendo quegli steccati stilistici che impediscono a chi oggi ascolta jazz – per esempio – d’avvicinarsi a produzioni più sperimentali di taglio ambientale ed elettronico. Comunque un’uscita godibilissima all’ascolto, ricca di spunti interessanti e dal crogiolo d’elementi quanto mai raffinato e curato.
Novellino/Rosi/Mazurek/Barnes – Objects in mirror are closer that they appear(SideA_Excerpt)
Novellino/Rosi/Mazurek/Barnes – Objects in mirror are closer than they appear (SideB_Excerpt)
