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.
. EMusic 
04:03:02 Audio Direct.
One of the directions of the most innovative audio technology is that of 'directed audio', ie of new technologies capable of projecting a 'sound beam' directed, such as a laser, able to be heard by a specific person and anyone around him . Two models are so far completed. L ' Audio Spotlight is developed at MIT by Joseph Pompei, the youngest engineer at Bose, at the age of only 16 years. Its equipment (pictured) can 'steer' a flow of sound in a space of 30 square centimeters and are proving particularly interested in science museums and art that could accommodate more apprecchiature and works well with visitors who would listen to their sounds stopping just in front of what interests them, without being distracted from the rest. Another application demonstration is that relating to the use of the radio stations in the car, with each of the people in the cockpit that could listen to his favorite station without interfering with those of others. The system has been shown to also personally interested in Bono, the lead singer of U2. The other system in competition is the ' Hypersonic Sound System that converts audio and ultrasonic waves makes waves audibili up to 100 meters in a wide area a couple of steps. But the American Technology, a manufacturer of technology, has recently signed a contract with the U.S. Army to develop a military use, ie act to psychological warfare. This technology, in fact, could be used to confuse the enemy into thinking that there is someone close to him. The same company also is developing the dreaded 'Directed Stick Radiator', which are nothing if not the kind of audio rifles, that 'shoot' sounds with very high decibel up to cause pain.
