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 
14:03:02 Lovebytes 2002 international festival of digital art.
Begins today (14/03) in Sheffield (UK), the Lovebytes 2002 international festival of digital art , which is held every two years in the former British industrial center. In this edition particular emphasis is given to the filmic dimension of electronic works with the first day devoted to seminars and workshops as well as the screening of the film electronic pioneer works such as those by Lillian Schwartz, and continuing with a selection of animated works accessible via the web. In the following days are planned workshop on dv and the presentation of 'Genitron' an interactive installation of Butler Brothers, based on the capability of the DVD. Also debuting 'Amen' Steve Hawley, a video palindrome and 'We Edit Life' by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), an exploration of the techniques of cutting and sewing, recontextualizing sequences 'found' with a cut surreal. An independent space is dedicated to the Whitney Brothers, and their research abstract animation through electronic and mechanical methods before then, as a special section was reserved for 'fanfilms', ie the sequences developed by fans of classic films such as Star Wars The saga of James Bond and Highlander. Also a rich program of evening concerts with: Yasunao Tone (Japan), Robert Lippok (Germany), Scanner (UK), Freeform (UK), People Like Us (UK), Baby Ford (UK), Gescom (UK), Vector Djs (UK) and a renowned minimalist Catania Massimo.
