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 – Ad Noiseam
Uscendo nove anni dopo Grist (Ad Noiseam adn70, 2006), un album che ha dato origine a intensi spettacoli dal vivo, procurando a Drumcorps una notevole base di fan, Falling Forward non poteva certo deludere, seppure dopo tutto questo tempo le scene industrial, metal e breakcore sono sicuramente molto mutate, grazie a nuovi generi e influenze che sono apparsi all’orizzonte, effetto anche della maniera di fruire la musica, che sempre più massicciamente infusa dalle piattaforme streaming ha portato a un consumo decisamente differente rispetto al passato. Nonostante sequenze urticanti, glitcherie vacue, tagli devastanti e intoppi, aleggia tra i solchi un pizzico di mutoide sound grunge anni novanta e Mike Justian (Madball) abbellisce tre tracce con il suo drumming metalcore, potente e soul, mentre Leo Miller (Animosity) contribuisce con il suo pesante marchio di fabbrica vocale su due piste e Iggor Cavalera, batterista brasiliano (ex-Sepultura, Mixhell) completa il novero delle collaborazioni al fine di costituire una massiccia struttura ritmica. Alla Ad Noiseam sono avvezzi ai densi riff, ai feedback e ad ogni sorta di contaminazione noise nelle forme più caotiche e parossistiche: non poteva trovare di meglio per questo album il maestro bostoniano, un musicista abile nell’organizzare distorti e contundenti hardcore breakbeat. Se le estetiche glitch e principalmente l’idea del malfunzionamento sin dai primordi del genere breakcore sono state fra le seminali ispirazioni, Aaron Spectre – questo il vero nome nascosto dietro il moniker – ha voluto insistere su questo riferimento e non solo nei vortici, nelle forzate accelerazioni dei suoni o nei salti e nelle distorsioni vocali: anche l’artwork è partecipe di questo traballante concetto concedendosi una foto del sound-maverick ad arte difettata, con pixel distorti o mancanti. Un ulteriore maniera di sottolineare la diversità e l’asprezza di questi suoni nati e prosperati indefessamente all’ombra dell’underground più genuino ed elettronico.
Drumcorps – Falling Forward (Full Album)
