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.
Hatje Cantz, ISBN-13: 978-3775743624, English, 112 pages, 2017, Germany
Instagram come fenomeno visivo e sociale, con i suoi settecento milioni di utenti in tutto il mondo, dovrebbe essere uno degli argomenti e degli spazi virtuali preferiti per le tesi di laurea. E a quanto pare lo è se uno di questi studenti ha suscitato l’interesse di un importante editore d’arte (Hatje Cantz) per pubblicare la sua tesi. Il lavoro di Drange è semplice ed efficace. Egli ha accoppiato i post di Instagram di una donna celebre con il commento di un’altra donna. Sono stampati su pagine nere, ne esaltano il formato e il colore e spesso si presentano come un dialogo reale, assurdo, ovviamente inesistente. Nella sua breve introduzione, scrive di una “nuova forma di culto” in cui gli smartphone diventano “shrine device”, e il contenuto selezionato non fa che rafforzare questo concetto. Le celebrità sono le più seguite su Instagram: Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner e Kim Kardashian. L’illusione di un rapporto diretto con loro è il santo Graal per ogni fan serio. L’ambiente lo permette formalmente, con milioni di canali di comunicazione diretta aperti tra le celebrità e i fan. Il registro formale visivo utilizzato da Drange è impressionante, con un confronto schietto fianco a fianco, pagina dopo pagina, tra l’eccitato culto del fan e la star ufficiale in una posa iconica. Infine, possiamo considerare Relics non troppo distante da un classico libro d’artista, che campiona cinicamente la cultura pop digitale e induce il gusto inquieto della modernità.
