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.
. Art 
29.10.01 Digitized Bodies / Virtual Spectacles.
It was inaugurated a few days at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest (Hungary), 'Digitized Bodies / Virtual Spectacles' , an event consists of exhibitions and conferences on the transformation of preconceived representation of the human body under the influence of medical technology. A notion in this ever changing and in direct connection with the digitization of our culture. The exhibition includes the work of ten artists, most of which are accessible from the links of the site, who were able to marry artistic research and adequate medical knowledge. It is 'Embryogenesis of Breath' Jack Butler, who shows his artistic career by imitating the process of creation of human life, 'The Blood of Poets' (pictured) Kevin Clarke, which combines the methods of sequencing advanced DNA with photographic images; 'Trans-E: My Body, My Blood' Diana Domingues, interactive simulation of a cave that wants to reflect the states of a shamanic trance; 'GFP Bunny', by Eduardo Kac, the famous white rabbit (called Alba) undergoes an operation of genetic engineering does illuminate green in certain lighting conditions, 'The Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC &A;)' Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr & Guy Ben-Ary, a program of research and development of tissues intended as an artistic medium; 'Orlan' homonymous French artist who documented in its pages the surgical operations carried out artistically on his body, 'Frontiers of Utopia' by Jill Scott, which focuses on the concept of 'utopia' encouraged by the technology in contemporary society, through eight female figures representing various decades of the twentieth century; Stelarc with his official website that showcased his impressive work of prosthetic constructions and physical extents; 'Possessed' by Louise Wilson, in which sat on a bench by psychoanalyst you are face to face with a monitor showing an MRI of the brain with a hypnotic narration in the background, the work of Alexa Wright, including 'Skin 2000' with portraits of people who suffer from severe skin conditions. They are part of the program also includes two performance 'Would You digitalize Your Soul?' Tanja Ostojic and 'Corporeal' of Atau Tanaka, and 'Wired Body / Mediated Body' an international selection of videos on the subject.
