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.
Look around on a typical day at an exhibition of modern and contemporary art and you’ll probably find curious students in search of inspiration; professionals (who always seems to be doing something important); invigilators counting down the hours; loving couples →
The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262033930, English, 240 pages, 2015, USA
Maybe it won’t be the “folk art of the future” as Brett Gaylor foresaw it, but remix is a socially accepted cultural paradigm and a popular practice. Gunkel wants to →
What do we lose with the universal adoption of digital as a sub-medium technology? If the vast majority of pictures we see are in (even slightly) lossy jpg and the absolute majority of music we hear is in (even slightly) →
One interesting category that requires proper analysis is that of the media-art “remake”. How are examples proposed by the historical avant-garde recuperated by today’s practitioners, and when can concepts such as copy, remake, re-appropriation, interpretation or kitsch (in the sense →
Seeland Records, SEELAND030, English, 2CD+book, 2014, USA
Since their “Christianity Is Stupid” track on the 1987 album Escape From Noise, religion, and its monolithic communication, has been a topic for Negativland band, who return after six years with this “multimedia” →
Wood is unique in its acoustic properties. Coupled with its aesthetic appeal, it has always been the material of choice for both musical instruments and the interiors of concert halls. Roberto Pugliese‘s multi-channel sound sculpture, Concerto Per Natura Morta, consists →
CD – Touch
Geir Jenssen and Helge Sten – better known as Biosphere and Deathprod – have been called by Touch to create a project that is not a collaboration but rather a real split release, a selection that →
magazine, ISSN: 2292-0919, English,, 218 pages, 2014, Canada
In the liquid territory of creative expression that uses technology there’s a hybrid area that includes, to varying degrees, programming, design, sound, interaction and science. Holo is a luxurious new magazine, conceived →
unsounds, DVD, 29U
The use of text in short films is seen in many genres, including silent movies (obviously), experimental cinema and visual poetry. Kyriakides’ approach to this field has been described as “music text films”, which comprise of bold →
Bloomsbury Academic, ISBN: 978-1623565091, English, 216 pages, 2014, UK
Sound is unquestionably about space; being present where vibrations are induced, and time; the exact moment when this is happening. But the act of “hearing” is a way more multifaceted →
