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.
CD – Scarlet Records
Laurie Spiegel, who in 1980 had already released her first LP The Expanding Universe, is a pioneer of computer music. She made her work with software tools for algorithmic composition. Her “Music Mouse: An Intelligent Instrument” was presented in 1986 and made available for Mac, Atari and Amiga. Using the same software Spiegel created “Cavis Muris” and “Three Sonic Spaces”, some basic works within the scope of electronics. Then in 1991 Unseen Worlds was released: a sexy and elegiac album published by Scarlet Records, an ambient, electronics and new age label that, unfortunately, folded shortly after. In time the release become famous within electronics circles, but impossible to find on the market. And so we welcome to this new edition, which brings us back to Spiegel’s twists, layers and sonic environments and whose beauty and charm is undeniable from both a contemporary and historical point of view. Similar projects of the time were not as abstractly conceptual and complicated as they might be today; the inspiration was most likely coming from classical music, rather than from an Eno-influenced ambient or American Serial music tradition. So too, the increasing mood of pagan neo-spiritualism, very cool in the States, influenced some of cosmic, mystical and dreamy visions. Unseen Worlds is worthy of a special mention, thanks to its general process, DIY attitude and innovative procedures. Due in part to this work, Laurie Spiegel deserves a special place in the ranking of musicians who enlightened the international electronics scene. However, we can also find some correspondence between these sounds and advanced forms of American folk music. When referring to her own works, the composer defines the computer as a precise but innocent tool, whose usage is defined only by the sensitivity and emotions the author instills in the work. The album is comprised of twelve tracks and it’s easy to get lost in these sweet and musical passages, some of which are very quiet, refined and permeated by the kindness of harmonic sounds and heavenly atmospheres. Some water has passed under the bridge, and things change, but some artists deserve more recognition for being ahead of their time and yet producing works whose value is everlasting. This is not a trivial achievement in an age where everything burns out in 15 minutes.
1Laurie Spiegel – Unseen Worlds
