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.
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.
Rapper Prince Harvey, after his computer crashed and his external drive was stolen, managed to record an entire album in Apple Store SoHo in four months, befriending employees, hiding files and using USB sticks and mail. as support. Abbie Hoffman would have been proud.
3 CD box set – Sofa
Tempo is a very interesting 3-CD box set published by Sofa and recorded live during a 4-hour performance held at the Rothko Chapel in 2013. The jam was led by the improvisation trio Mural: →
CD – Amorfon
We are at the extreme borders of experimental jazz and free form, where they collide with different musical wisdom and expertise. Jorge Queijo is a Portuguese drummer, Hiroki Chiba is a Japanese bassist and Yoshio Machida is →
CD – Cronica
From the Portuguese label Cronica comes the latest work by Arturas Bumšteinas, Gamelan Descending a Staircase, a composition of over fifty minutes whose instrumental sound materials were recorded in summer 2013 during a research visit at the →
CD – Klangbad
The duo consists of F.M. Einheit, the renowned percussionist and actor, and Hans Jochaim Irmler, keyboardist in the Krautrock group Faust. The pair collaborated between 2012 and 2015, meeting at Faust’s studio for eight jam sessions, each →
CD + booklet – Acte
This composition by Gabriel Ledoux is accompanied by a 60-page booklet that features pop artwork by Gabriel Jasmin and texts by six different authors. The music immediately pushes towards a particular climax, associating traditional structures →
CD – Chmafu Nocords
The metaphor of the virus has marked the history of art and contemporary electronic music perhaps more than any other concept over the last fifty years. The seminal visions of William S. Burroughs and Laurie Anderson’s →
CD – Buh
This CD is a limited edition reissue of only 300 copies and is part of the Sounds Essentials Collection issued by Buh Records. The project aims to preserve some fundamental works of Peruvian avant-garde music through regular →
CD – Erstwhile
There was not much in Jeph Jerman’s formative musical years suggestive of an abstract and experimental approach. Percussionist and sound designer Tim Barnes’ early work as part of the New York avant-jazz and indie rock scenes also →
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2CD – Phonophon
With artwork by Tobias Schmitt – a name familiar to those who follow Gruenrekorder – this release celebrates the fifth anniversary of the Verein zur Förderung von Phonographie und experimenteller Musik e.V. and the phonophon concert series. →
Spatial sound diffusion is usually associated with electronic and electroacoustic music. Over the course of the 20th century a number of institutions were created that allowed pioneering composers to experiment with spatial audio diffusion, in most cases under the generous tutelage of →
