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.
Lady is a tramp by Dvein is an experimental animation testing the perception of an entity as human or human-like.
Matt Brailsford used a modified old tape player as interface to this Raspberry Pi + Spotify Media Server, so listener can use the player (and the cassettes) as physical interface to the different playlists.
Ryoji Ikeda’s “test pattern [times square]” will bring artist’s trademark flickering black and white patterns to one of the most touristic New York City places, noon to midnight during October 2014.
Artist Jim Dessicino put an Edward Snowden statue in Union Square Park, in New York City, as part of the festival Art In Odd Places. Passers-by had to face a tall paradoxical memorial to an US citizen that US Security forces would just like to forget.
“Coming Out Simulator 2014, a half-true game about half-truths” by Nicky Case is a game with minimal interface (sms chat) and background soundtrack loops. Structured through multiple choices selection it’s verbally constructing an engaging narrative. http://ncase.itch.io/coming-out-simulator-2014
Cyborg Unplug by Julian Oliver, Samim Winiger, and Stop The Cyborgs, a simple device able to detect and fight back surveillance devices obtrusively accessing wireless networks, in fact breaking their unauthorised uploads and streams.
Ping-Reset by Bart Koppe is an installation where 36 internet routers attached to the ceiling are rebooted when functioning, making an attached object to make a sound, creating an orchestrated symphony generated by ping and reset.
After the government started to cut major social network platforms access, Occupy Central, Hong Kong protesters turn to mesh networks to evade China’s censorship http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191118-hong-kong-protesters-turn-to-mesh-networks-to-evade-chinas-censorship
Like Pearls by Morehshin Allahyari is an animated and interactive mash-up of the Farsi spam Allahyari receives in her mailbox.
Eternal September, the rise of amateur culture exhibition at Aksioma, curated by Valentina Tanni. From internet folklore to the deja vu “on the screen” an exploration of “amateur culture” quickly corroding certainties. http://www.aksioma.org/eternal.september/index.html
“If you publish this work on the Internet I will sue you” by Vigilante (FR/IT) is effectively placing itself on a billboard instantly evoking its digital transmission, in a classic conceptual art strategy (using the words to create an uncanny situation (and tension) in between two different dimensions.
http://dresdenpublicartview.tumblr.com/post/94541389865/vigilante-fr-it-if-you-publish-this-work-on
noPhone by Ingmar Larsen is meant to give people the “phone feeling” without their actual phone. It’s a 3D printed mockup, resembling mostly an iPhone, which should reassure the addicted person to still be in control of its obsession. A slick website and an hilarious FAQ are completing the effort. http://www.nophone.eu
“Cloud Piano” by David Bowen, uses a camera pointed to the sky recognising the clouds and activating consequently keys on a piano.
“Artwork by Anonymous” a screenshot of an anonymous post on the board pondering the diminished nature of art has been sold on Ebay for US $90,900.00. Officially buyer will receive a plain inkjet print in a frame.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Artwork-by-Anonymous-/221509460160?nma=true&si=JwIEfVK1ifFMbGhZ4OsiQTyanXA%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
