Critical digital culture and media arts · Since 1993
The Neural Archive is a repository of publications collected by us during the years. Browse our collection here.
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.
4 cd box + booklet – Sussidiaria
Massimo Pavarini, who died at the age of forty-two in 2012, has without a doubt embodied the very essence of the Italian underground music of his generation. Pavarini was a great listener with a genuine passion for new styles and trends, a musician, a composer and a collaborator in seminal electronic and experimental groups like Marmo, T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata), Le Forbici di Manitù and Le Orbite. Between 1993 and 1994 Massimo Pavarini moved to London, and, while remaining in similar areas of work, his relationship with music underwent a decisive transformation. The productions became sporadic and his interests were focused more toward criticism and collecting, even indulging in a pop and dreamy curatorial enchantment. These are his old friends and accomplices in the experimentations heard here: Andrea Landini and Manitù Rossi, along with others such as Vittore Baroni and Simon Balestrazzi. There there is Elisa Landini and Virna Zampolini, who made the artwork for the box set, drawing on original graphics, photographs and collages. The release from the Sussidiaria label, includes four CDs with mostly unreleased productions. Alea, a solo project of Massimo Pavarini, composed of nine pieces published in 1980 on 60′ cassette, occupies the first of the four CDs, while the latter cover Eleven Titles, recordings that have been reworked by Le Forbici di Manitù: both of these works have been remastered and re-presented in their original form. The third CD brings together the most electronic pieces composed by Massimo, six solo unpublished works and three again with Le Forbici di Manitù, while on the last CD are some of the main and most significant partnerships with the entire repertoire of Le Orbite. These are largely live.. It is very interesting to follow this personal creative path, infused by so fine trajectories, course changes and fruitful illuminations. What results is a powerful narrative about how music comes into our lives, and how, in any case, it never leaves us.
Massimo Pavarini – Materiale Sferico – Alea
