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.
According to some legal experts, after the ruling yesterday could be established mega fine against Napster, similar to that imposed long ago at mp3.com. Figures are assumed as $ 100,000 in damages for each CD copied, which would Fanning (pictured) and company into bankruptcy. An estimate of Webnoize talk about 3 billion songs traffic in the month of January. Another possibility would be required to report to the labels the presence of their songs, which could in turn ask the blocking of offending users. Even Rob Glaser of Real Networks claiming victory "There is a great demand for paid content. 150,000 subscribers to our service The Golden Pass Real Player prove it." And while Microsoft also takes the field with its system of protection included in the upcoming Windows (we would have to laugh given the previous security company), Jim Cady president of Rio, producer of its mp3 player, hides its head in the sand: "According to a recent survey, only 10 percent of our users are using Napster." As for the U.S. Congress, all are able to hide behind the defense of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, only useless act that fails to keep up with technical developments of the network. Yet Peter Gabriel representing the Artists Against Piracy says you need a 'fair compensation' for each track, otherwise the failure of many artists. But the 58 million Napster users who do they think? According to messages on the chat there are only two obvious and natural concerns: exploiting the channel as long as you can and soon find another program + protocol to exchange the songs in a different way.
