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 
06:03:02 Six rules for the new net art.
In a public letter the net artist Eryk Salvaggio (atuore of several works that deconstruct the icons of the same navigation as' Compositions For Cursor Icon ', in the image) has expressed, between the serious and humorous, six rules which in his opinion should distinguish the works of net art contemporary art from the mere exercise in style. Assuming that the cliches of the first wave of net artists have now acquired and obsolete at the same time, given the increasing broadband penetration among users, described the steps that should reduce boredom in the enjoyment of what you want to be considered , as he himself calls 'New Net Art'. Rule 1: Do not use Flash, without this leading to a stance in the debate against corporations, but just wants to avoid the proliferation of colors, animations, schematics and layout increasingly similar. No more than thirty percent of a work should be done in flash. Rule 2: No introductory pages. The critical reviews, or declarations of intent are alienating and take away the responsibility of the user to interact with the work in order to discover its meanings, decreasing the intimacy typical of net art. Rule 3: Enough with the art done for the sake of the error. Garbage code, gif that flashano and references to computer viruses and fault data are already predominant aesthetic. Rule 4: The images must be original. Each image used on the site must have been scanned or photographed by the artist, as the images found on the network can not be recycled or riappropriate. This should lead to develop unique sensations and localized for all new net art. Rule 5: The technology is not an issue, the internet is not an argument. The new net art may not be reflective of networking technologies and their impact. These arguments are irrelevant given that the Internet is not new and its impact has been widely explored. Rule 6: the work is there alone. No CV can be included or distributed. The curriculum itself is irrelevant to the experience of any work of art.
