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 – 12K
Federico Durand è un compositore argentino ben conosciuto per una serie di raffinate e delicate uscite su etichette come Spekk, Own e Desire Path L’idea seminale di A Través Del Espejo risale al 2014, quando Durand ha partecipato ad un tour giapponese con altri artisti della 12K, condividendo musica e idee per tutto il tour e focalizzando un approccio intimo ai suoni. Solo successivamente l’artista ha sviluppato rotte melodie utilizzando registratori a cassette come uno strumento, assieme a loop-machines (come il Roland Space Echo o l’electro harmonix 2880) e allo scopo di finalizzare il progetto ha iniziato meticolosamente ad accumulare sequenze e trattamenti. I paesaggi sonori – come singole immagini che si ripetono attraverso due specchi riposti l’uno di fronte all’altro – acquisiscono un’appeal particolarmente onirico e meditativo, trasformandosi in un flusso che scorre maniacalmente verso l’infinito. Fra i solchi fanno capolino anche field recording: una donna parla con una bambina, suoni naturali, catture auditive di vita quotidiana in un villaggio, narrazioni astratte che ci lasciano scivolare in un mondo parallelo. Durand è molto attento ai dettagli, sia alle emergenze auditive spontanee, sia ai suoni naturali fatti dalle macchine, ai crepitii e ad altri suoni che si manifestano come un regalo inaspettato. Quelle che scaturiscono – infine – sono ninne nanna assai ipnotiche, risonanti d’alchemiche vibrazioni, pazientemente calibrate dall’autore, abile nell’organizzare ogni minimale elemento, ogni armonia, ogni millimetrica sovrapposizione d’eventi timbrici. Musicalità che si fanno progressivamente più intime e coscienziose, accostando momenti quietisti ed ispirate sintonie, atmosfere nostalgiche e rêverie poetiche: ricordi che galleggiano impalpabili, cesellati in un minimalismo sempre complice e sensibile, sentimentali e non privi d’una confortevole grazia ancora sperimentale.
Federico Durand – A Través Del Espejo
