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.
12” vinyl – Kvitnu
Ilpo Väisänen was mostly known as one of the two founders of Pan Sonic. He was not very productive as a solo artist: we mostly remember his work in bands such as Angel, Fistpost, IBM, Rude Mechanic and VVE (his partnership with Mika Vainio ended in 2009 after their third release, Gravitoni). Also known as I-LP-O In Dub, Liima e Piiri, he released several albums, as “Communist Dub” for Mego or the 10” of the Versions for Kangaroo, or some experimental “jazz-like” works for Vertical Form, Traum Schallplatten and Mind Records. A constant trait of Ilpo Väisänen is his passion for the construction of the rhythmic parts, however he always follows a conceptual approach, experimental and inspired at the same time. In this Syntetisaattori Musiikkia Kuopiosta the rhythm may actually be a possible interpretation key. It is pushed in a deep, cruel and hypnotic way, behind some slippery and acidic treatments. The album is released by Kvitnu and includes one track per side: on the A side, “Osat 1-5” is long eleven minutes, the second one, “Osat 6-9” is slightly shorter. Both the productions are made in a minimalist and electronic way. The loops and the sound structures are very refined and precise by the milliliter, but also strongly connected to the place where it was written and recorded: Kuopio, located in northern Savonia, Finland. Being an album with just two tracks, which are not very long either, this release can’t be defined as a long form and is the result of nine short developments, connected with no special jumps. We don’t bet that the old fans of Pan Sonic will like this release, however we are sure that the experimental technoheads will enjoy these weaves and find in them the right inspiration. As usual for Kvitnu, the album edition is prestigious: the 180g black vinyl record is limited to 500 copies. The artwork of Zavoloka is designed with an extreme care: it is inlayed into high quality 5-color print and has a heavy cardboard envelope with additional golden hot foil pressing. The photography for the art work credited to Dmytro Fedorenko.
ILPO VÄISÄNEN – Syntetisaattori Musiikkia Kuopiosta (KVITNU 49)
